The listing of Oscar-winning administrators for brief movies who’ve gone on to main careers within the feature-length realm is shorter than you may think. Andrea Arnold, Martin McDonagh and Claude Berri achieved arthouse success; David Frankel made multiplex hits like “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Marley & Me.” But maybe solely Taylor Hackford, a winner in 1979 for an affecting little mockumentary titled “Teenage Father,” turned a full-scale Hollywood model — a reputation related to a sure temperature of glossy studio gloss and versatile style smarts. 

In an business more and more given over to auteur reverence, Hackford has as an alternative constantly confirmed the important worth of the distinguished craftsman — the type that retains the business operating, even when the standing doesn’t earn you as many glittering prizes or prestigious competition berths. Consider the Festival Lumière’s tribute to Hackford a welcome exception. The 4 movies chosen by the competition to signify the director’s oeuvre — “White Nights” (1985), “Blood In Blood Out” (1993), “The Devil’s Advocate” (1997) and “Ray” (2004) — aptly level to the vary and scope of a constantly mainstream profession that has at all times veered between populism and status, sometimes binding the 2.  

Critics, for instance, didn’t thrill to “White Nights,” a far-fetched mix of Cold War thriller and dance film that starred Mikhail Baryshnikov as a Russian-American ballet star combating his Soviet repatriation with the help of Gregory Hines’ American expat faucet dancer.

The script is ludicrous, however Hackford knew its promoting factors: as a car for the celebs’ spectacular footwork, Twyla Tharp’s elaborate choreography and successful soundtrack of easy mid-‘80s pop (touchdown Lionel Richie an Oscar), the movie — lensed with a creamy luxe end by David Watkin — delivers in spades. Today it stands as, if no masterwork, an exemplary time capsule of its period. It additionally launched Hackford to his future spouse Helen Mirren, right here solid as a thickly accented love curiosity. 

If “White Nights” maintains some phantasm of seriousness, “The Devil’s Advocate” (definitely the Hackford movie that this critic has watched most frequently) gleefully flirts with outright trash. Starring Keanu Reeves as a callow protection legal professional who finds himself working for Satan himself — a cloven-hooved Al Pacino at his most leeringly ripe — it’s sizzling nonsense, compulsive and exquisitely lacquered, that solely glancingly touches emotional fact by way of Charlize Theron’s sharp mettle-proving efficiency because the lawyer’s luckless spouse. One would possibly name it a responsible pleasure, however the place’s the guilt? 

“The Devil’s Advocate” definitely wasn’t aiming for any high-minded accolades; “Blood In Blood Out,” a muscular three-hour exploration of brotherly bonds in L.A.’s Chicano neighborhood, arguably was. Its preliminary box-office fizzle was a disappointment, indicative of American audiences’ resistance to Latino tales, but the movie has endured as a touchstone for a lot of Mexican-American viewers. 

1 / 4-century after his quick movie win, Hackford lastly caught the Academy’s consideration once more with “Ray,” a handsomely gilded Ray Charles biopic that earned him his solely Best Director nomination, and a win for Jamie Foxx’s all-in efficiency because the soul legend.  

Grossing $125 million worldwide, “Ray” was Hackford’s final hit. His three movies since — the blowsy Mirren car “Love Ranch,” the comparatively nameless Jason Statham auctioneer “Parker” and the mellow Robert De Niro indie “The Comedian” — won’t ever be listed as prime Hackford, although maybe the upcoming “Sniff,” a twilight-years detective story starring Morgan Freeman alongside Mirren and Pacino, will fare higher. 

Either manner, Hackford’s legacy as an aesthetic, old-school Hollywood leisure service provider is firmly cemented. Somewhat surprisingly, the Lumière fest’s choice doesn’t embrace his greatest and maybe most enduring field workplace smash “An Officer and a Gentleman,” a sturdy, full-hearted mix of swoony romance and making-of-a-man army drama that launched 1,000,000 daydreams of a crisply uniformed Richard Gere sweeping you up and away out of your day by day drudgery. It’s nonetheless stirring, 41 years on.  

Nor does it embrace a number of the most attention-grabbing outliers in his profession, amongst them 1987’s terrific, Chuck Berry-centered live performance documentary “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll,” nonetheless a mannequin of the shape at its most straightforwardly efficient, or “Dolores Claiborne,” his most daring and maybe greatest fiction function. A Stephen King adaptation that induces shivers, although not within the standard manner related to the writer, this perverse psychodrama of failed mother-daughter relations and suburban sociopathy rests on two icily exact performances by Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and unnerved audiences to better-than-expected field workplace within the spring of 1995. Prickly however florid, confessional however elusive, it’s removed from what one would possibly sometimes label “a Taylor Hackford film” — a time period that resists definition the longer you take a look at his restlessly crowd-pleasing profession.