Fred Zinnemann

The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won three for Best Screenplay (Alvin Sargent) Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards) and Best Supporting Actress for Redgrave who drew scattered boos on Oscar night for her "Zionist hoodlums" acceptance speech. In protest Zinnemann filed a lawsuit against the studio and it would be seven years before he would make his next film. Earlier in the decade in fact Zinnemann had worked with documentarian Robert Flaherty an association he considered "the most important event of my professional life".

He won Academy Awards for directing films in many genres including thrillers westerns film noir and play adaptations. Fred Zinnemann (29 April 1907 – 14 March 1997) was an Austrian-American film director.