King Vidor (1894-1982) had the longest career of any Hollywood director, and his works include some of the most dramatic, romantic, and sublime moments in the history of American cinema. Regarded by many film historians as one of the greatest of silent era filmmakers--especially given his masterworks The Big Parade, The Crowd and Show People--Vidor is nonetheless one of the most neglected and underrated of Hollywood's "old masters" in terms of his overall career. His sound era films include Hallelujah, Street Scene, The Champ, The Stranger's Return, Our Daily Bread, Stella Dallas, The Citadel, Northwest Passage, Duel in the Sun, Beyond the Forest, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry and War and Peace. He also helped to establish the Screen Directors Guild and served as its first president.

In this book, the authors chart the ways in which Vidor's vast, complex body of work ranges over diverse genres and styles while also expressing his recurring personal interests in spirituality (especially Christian Science), aesthetics, metaphysics, social realism, and the myth of America. This is the first book since 1988 to give a comprehensive view of Vidor's career and it is the only book to discuss his overall artistic evolution in a way that appeals to the general reader as well as to the film scholar.