William Sachs(1942-2024)

William Sachs was an American film director/producer and writer. Besides his work as a writer and director, since working on Joe (1970), Sachs has been particularly noted for successfully doctoring others' films prior to release in order to conform them to the producers' wishes for broader commercial appeal. His films have screened and received more than 25 awards at various festivals.

Originally, Sachs studied business and accounting, but disliked it. After enlisting in the United States Air Force and serving in England, he enrolled at London Film School where he studied film and directed three short films that won awards. In addition, he studied acting with Michael Gough in London, and with various teachers in the US. Following his studies, he started working in the US, first re-working films deemed problematic by producers, including Joe (1970), for which Sachs declined a co-director credit and picked a credit as "Post Production Supervisor" because he felt it reflected his involvement in post production best.

Working in Italy in the early 1970s, he started planning his first feature-film as a writer and director: There Is No 13 (1974). This film, which is the first film in which Ralf Bode is credited as cinematographer, was screened at Berlin Film Festival 1974, where it received a lot of praise and attention. The film has been called "probably Sachs' best film, certainly his most profound."

In the following decades, in addition to directing films that became cult classics (like Le monstre qui vient de l'espace (1977), Galaxina (1980), On en a rien à secouer! (1979)), Sachs also reworked/doctored numerous films by other directors in post-production prior to release.

His most recent feature-film work as a writer/director, Spooky House (2001), starring Ben Kingsley, received numerous awards. Sachs died with multiple films in development, including one about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Beside his work in feature-films, Sachs has also directed numerous commercials, music videos, public service announcements and a special effects video used by Pink Floyd during concerts. He has also been a guest lecturer at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Cal State Northridge and the California Institute of the Arts.

William Sachs himself mentions that his style is primarily influenced by surrealists like Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel and others. In many of his films, there are surrealistic elements. There Is No 13 (1974), written, directed and co-produced by Sachs, is a highly surrealistic comedy that showcases his style very well: The mood, music and style switches from scene to scene, and realistic elements are interwoven with absurdist, surrealistic ones.

In Sachs' later films that he again often wrote in addition to directing them, producers sometimes interfered with his style, although it still shines through in many points. Le monstre qui vient de l'espace (1977), for example, was meant as a surrealistic comedy by Sachs, but many intentionally absurdist elements were removed by the producers from the final film to give it a more "serious" tone. Still, scenes like the ending (in which a janitor wipes up the molten remains of the titular character into a bucket) give a hint of the surrealist tone that Sachs wanted for the film.

In On en a rien à secouer! (1979), a number of comedic scenes of a police officer on a beach, being handcuffed to his car, show a gradually more and more surrealist tone as the film progresses. In the course of the film, he gets approached by a mysterious biker stealing his possessions, a dog and ultimately, towards the end of the film, his own mother who is worried about her boy while police searches for his location.