The Academy Awards air Sunday night, and this year I’m really pulled toward the best-director category. Pulled but confused. Like me, do you agree that directing is the most elusive part of filmmaking? Omniscient, generalized, powerful, it’s like the wind; you see its effects, but you don’t see it. In contrast, other contributions — an actor’s keen performance, a haunting soundtrack, era-summoning costumes — are more readily recognizable. What does a director actually do? Here’s how the great Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski summed it up: “I help.’’

Director Peter Bogdanovich spent decades asking how other directors helped, and 16 answered him in “Who the Devil Made It’’ (Knopf, 1997). The title comes from Howard Hawks. When Bogdanovich asked which directors he preferred, Hawks said: “I liked almost anybody that made you realize who in the devil was making the picture . . . Because the director’s the storyteller and should have his own method of telling it.’’

Take their tricks for coaxing performances from actors. Allen Dwan remembers how he got Shirley Temple to cry in “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’’ (1938): “[Y]ou’d simply say to her ‘Now, Shirley, I want you to think you’ll never see your mother again. She’s gone.’ And boy, the tears would boil out of her.’’ It took more than a suggestion to get Steve McQueen to cry, so in “Hell Is for Heroes’’ (1962), Don Siegel tried onions (no), slapping him hard (no), then resorted to blowing grit at his eyes (yes).

To Hawks’s comment about storytellers, I was impressed by his own regret over “Bringing Up Baby’’ (1938), one of the greatest screwball comedies of all time. “I think the picture had a great fault,’’ said Hawks. “There were no normal people in it’’ to contrast the antics. My favorite insight of all, though, came from Hitchcock, regarding his immortal crop-duster scene in “North by Northwest’’ (1959).

If you’ll recall, Eva Marie Saint has given an address to Cary Grant, who steps off a bus in the middle of nowhere. Hitchcock said his goal was to capsize convention: “When a girl sends a man to a given address, the cliché is for him to be waiting on the corner of the street, under a streetlamp at night and the cobbles washed by recent rains.’’ There’s eerie music, Hitch adds, a black cat. “Now what is the antithesis of this? Nothing! No music, bright sunshine, nothing but flat countryside — no nook or cranny to hide in.’’ Remember the suspense? The novelty? Genius.

Frank Capra’s memoir, “The Name Above the Title’’ (Da Capo, 1997) is perhaps less revealing than feel good (like his nonetheless marvelous films). But I loved learning how this “warm and wonderful man’’ (to quote John Ford) took the whole crew of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’’ (1939) on a D.C. sightseeing bus tour before shooting commenced. And how right that he changed the originally titled “Night Bus’’ to the more wink-wink “It Happened One Night’’ (1934). Most impressive was the story of Liberty Films, the postwar company he cofounded, a bold attempt to break the stranglehold of the big studios. Its first two pictures, which began production on the same day in 1946, did just that: Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life’’ and William Wyler’s Oscar-winning “The Best Years of Our Lives.’’

This next one is brooding, brilliant, and self-justifying. “Kazan on Directing’’ (Vintage, 2010) is spun from many sources, including the master’s journals from each shoot, plus his letters (to Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams, code enforcer Joseph Breen, and more). Throughout, he has a passion for passion. “I am a mediocre director except when a play or a film touches a part of my life’s experience,’’ writes Elia Kazan. So he was compelled toward “East of Eden’’ (1955) because of his troubled relationship with his own father and “On the Waterfront’’ (1954) because Brando’s Terry Malloy “names names’’ of corrupt longshoremen, just as Kazan did to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

All these books are delectable, but the most nuts-and-bolts insightful is “On Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director’’ (Faber & Faber, 2005). The author is Alexander Mackendrick (1957’s “Sweet Smell of Success’’), who taught film at the California Institute of the Arts for four decades. Wow, it immediately made me look differently at the art form. The first half breaks down the components of dramatic structure; the second elucidates “film grammar.’’ This plays out with these cool sketches and diagrams about how to draw the audience into a scene via various eyelines, axes, and close-ups. Mackendrick also uses three classic stories (“Cinderella,’’ “Hamlet,’’ “The Bicycle Thief’’) to probe narrative choices.

Speaking of narrative choices, I vote for Adam McKay for this year’s best director. He’s the force behind the giddily original genre mash-up, “The Big Short.’’ As McKay told one reporter: “What I loved about it was just constantly driving a stick shift. You were just changing tones all the time.’’ That helped me, to learn how he helped.

Katharine Whittemore is a freelance writer based in Northampton. She can be reached at katharine.whittemore @comcast.net.