A Serious Man is the first movie in which the Coen brothers come back to the Minneapolis suburbs where they grew up. To coincide with the release of the film, FilmInFocus’ resident film historian David Parkinson examines a selection of pivotal movies made by auteurs returning home.

Ernst Lubitsch never did it. Neither did Joseph Losey nor Andrei Tarkovsky. Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick sort of did it, but Peter Weir hasn't so far and Hiner Saleem longs to.

The history of cinema is strewn with exiles who were driven from their homelands by repressive regimes or left them voluntarily to boost their own careers. Some never got to go home; others simply don't want to. Yet the vast majority of prodigal directors who do return make films that either gush with patriotic sentimentality or disguise their socio-political critique with nostalgic period allegory.

The biggest exodus of cinematic talent took place in the 1930s when filmmakers from Spain to the Soviet Union (many of whom were Jewish) fled the continent before the eruption of the Second World War. William Wyler, Michael Curtiz and Henry Koster were among the few Mitteleuropean directors who elected not to return after the defeat of Nazism, while silent pioneer Joe May managed only to greenlight a Berlin restaurant called Piowati. But Fred Zinnemann (The Search, 1948), Billy Wilder (A Foreign Affair, 1948) and Douglas Sirk (A Time to Love and a Time to Die, 1958) all ventured back to explore the impact of defeat and destruction upon ordinary citizens, and Otto Preminger (Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach, 1953), Robert Siodmak (Die Ratten, 1955) and Fritz Lang (The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse, 1960) were among those to return to West Germany in their wake.

The war has continued to inspire returnees like Louis Malle (Au Revoir les Enfants, 1986), Roman Polanski (The Pianist, 2002) and Paul Verhoeven (Black Book, 2006). But several postwar émigrés, among them Max Ophüls (La Ronde, 1950) and Jean Renoir (French Cancan, 1954), opted for more obviously escapist fare, and Ingmar Bergman (Fanny and Alexander, 1982), Milos Forman (Amadeus, 1984), Andrzej Wajda (A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents, 1986), Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000) and John Woo (Red Cliff, 2008) have since resorted to spectacle to ease their own passage home.

Having been blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Jules Dassin was more forthright on his Stateside return with Up Tight! (1968), which explored the rage of black militancy in the days after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Akira Kurosawa (Dodes'ka-den, 1970), Amos Gitai (Devarim, 1995), Philip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2002) and Jerzy Skolimowski (Four Nights of Anna, 2008) have since been equally unflattering about their respective homelands. But Bernardo Bertolucci (Stealing Beauty, 1996), Bill Forsyth (Gregory's Two Girls, 1999) and Woody Allen (Whatever Works, 2009) have returned to survey familiar territory with a more benign gaze and confirmed the maxim avouched in everything from The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Away We Go (2009) that there really is no place like home.

Prodigal Directors Come Home: Part 1 of 4

David Parkinson first looks at Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, Fred Zinnemann's The Search, and Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair.

Prodigal Directors Come Home: Part 2 of 4

Our resident film historian next turns his attention to Max Ophüls' La Ronde, Jean Renoir's French Cancan and Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and a Time to Die.

Prodigal Directors Come Home: Part 3 of 4

Parkinson moves on to consider Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse, Luis Buñuel's Viridiana, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy and Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander.

Prodigal Directors Come Home: Part 4 of 4

And in a fourth and final segment, Parkinson looks at Andrzej Wajda's A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents, Louis Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants, Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty and Paul Verhoeven's Black Book.