interview with the Village Voice, he insisted, "I don't know anything about 'the Mulligan style.' If you can find it, well, that's your job." Chicago critic Jonathan Rosenbaum once hailed Mulligan as: Critic and filmmaker François Truffaut also championed the director's work. Truffaut was, in particular, a fan of Fear Strikes Out and was impressed that it was only Mulligan's first feature, writing, "It is rare to see a first film so free of faults and bombast." Summing up Mulligan's talents as a whole, Truffaut concluded: Another filmmaker who admired Mulligan's work was Stanley Kubrick, who featured a clip from Summer of '42 in The Shining (1980). Of his fellow filmmakers, Mulligan admired Ingmar Bergman for his "wonderful use of that simple, honest technique" of allowing the camera to "rest on a human face quietly, unobtrusively, and let something happen." He championed the films of Satyajit Ray and joined in a protest with Bergman and David Lean when Ray's film, Charulata, was rejected at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. Mulligan also had his critics. Actor James Caan described him as the most incompetent filmmaker he had ever worked with saying "A lot of mediocrity was produced" following their work on Kiss Me Goodbye in 1982. Caan cited his experiences as a key reason why he made no movies for 5 years from 1982 to 1987. Mulligan was also an avid fan of the novels of Charles Dickens, whose work he had devoured in his youth: Filmography References External links 1925 births 2008 deaths United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II American television directors Film directors from New York City Fordham University alumni People from the Bronx United States Marines