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Since his best films are set in the heart of moral crises, it's fitting that Fred Zinnemann was at the center of such a battle when he died of a heart attack March 14. The director, who was 89, had spent months publicly denouncing Universal Pictures for attempting, in his view, to ''hijack'' the title The Day of the Jackal for a new Bruce Willis movie bearing slight resemblance to Zinnemann's 1973 assassination thriller or to the original Frederick Forsyth novel. (The flick's current compromise title is plain old The Jackal.) It was just this sort of tenacious, principled, and perhaps slightly melodramatic stance that Zinnemann had coaxed from performers over the years. Among his finest hours, all A-worthy, are:
-- HIGH NOON (1952, Republic) Gary Cooper, then past his career peak, got hot all over again as a weathered, friendless Western lawman facing a gang of outlaws. Coop won the Oscar for Best Actor, but Zinnemann's real-time approach to narrative, chronicled by numerous on-screen clocks, was the film's unsung star.
-- FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953, Columbia TriStar) Zinnemann marshaled a powerhouse ensemble -- Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra -- for this eve-of-Pearl Harbor epic, which won eight Academy Awards. That Kerr-Lancaster clinch in the surf remains one of the most famous and sensual scenes in Hollywood history.
-- THE NUN'S STORY (1959, Warner) Audrey Hepburn wowed critics with her Oscar-nominated performance as a nun whose humanitarian passion chafes against the restrictions of her holy order. With drab convents and hospitals as his settings, Zinnemann crafted the screen's most compelling religious drama.
-- A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966, Columbia TriStar) As Chancellor Sir Thomas More, who refused to sanction Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Paul Scofield turned a notable martyr into a master soliloquizer. The film won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.
-- JULIA (1977, Fox) Lillian Hellman's memoir, Pentimento, came vibrantly to life, thanks to the performances of Jane Fonda as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as her titular friend, an anti-Nazi crusader who meets a tragic end. Watch for a scene-stealing debut, in a brief supporting role, by a Zinnemann protegee: Meryl Streep.
