John G. Avildsen | Film stars stories

John G. Avildsen | Film stars stories

John G. Avildsen

John G. Avildsen, b. Chicago, 1936 3968: Okay Bill (s). 1969; Turn on to Love (s); Sweet Dreams (s). 1970: Guess What We Learned in School Today?; Joe. 1971: Cry Uncle. 1972: The Stoolie. 1973; Save the Tiger. 1975: W.W. and the Dixie Dancekirtgs; Fore-play. 1976: Rocky. 1978: Slow Dancing in the Big City. 1980: The Formula. 1981: Neigh-burs. 1983; A Night in Heaven. 1984: The Karate Kid. 1986: The Karate Kid U. 1987: Happy New Year. 1988: For Keeps; Guartlian Angels; Lean on Me. 1989: The Karate Kid III. 1990: Rocky V: The Final Hell 1992: The Power of One. 1994: 8 Seconds. Avildsen worked as an assistant director and : as a cameraman, and he had credits on I Mickey One (65, Arthur Penn), Hurry Sundown (67, Otto Freminger), arid Out of It (69, Paul Williams), before he made

Robert Altman | Movie stars

Robert Altman | Movie stars

Robert Altman, b. Kansas City, Missouri, 1925 1955; The Delinquents. 1957; The James Dean Story. 1964: Nightmare in Chicago. 1967: Countdown. 1969: That CM Day in the Park. 1970: M’A'S’H; Brewster McCloud. 1971: McCabe rind Mrs. Millar. 1972: Images; The Long Goodbye. 1974-. Thieves Like Os; California Split. 1975: Nashville. 1976: Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson. 1977: 3 Women. 1978: A Wedding.1979: Quintet’ A Perfect Couple. 1980: Health; Popeye. 1982: Come Back to the 5 6- Dime, jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. 1983: Streamers. 1984: Secret Honor. 1985: Fool for Lone. 1987: “Les Boreades,” an episode from Aria; Beyond Therapy; O.C. and Sfiggs. 1988: Tanner ’88 (TV). 1990: Vincent and Theo. 1992: The Player. 1993: Short Cuts. In 1975, before I had seen Nashville, 1 wrote, “Altman seems less interested in structure than in

Bruce Beresford | Movie stars

Bruce Beresford | Movie stars

Bruce Beresford, b. Sydney, Australia, 1940 1972; The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. 1974: Barry McKenzie Holds His Own. 1976: Don’s Party. 1977: The Getting of Wisdom. 1978: Money Movers. 1979: Breaker Morant. 1980: The Club. 1981: Puberty Blues. 1983: Tender Mercies. 1985: King David; Crimes of the Hearty The Fringe Dwellers. 1988: “Die Totestadt,” an episode from Aria. 1989: Her Alibi; Driving Miss Daisy. 1991: Mister John­son; Black Robe. 1993: Rich in Love. 1994: A Good Man in Africa; Silent Fall. From Sydney University, Beresford went into advertising and thence to London. He spent two years in the mid-sixties in Nigeria work­ing as a film editor, and in 1966 he got a post at the British Film Institute Production Board, where he administered funds. He began to direct features himself only on returning to Australia in 1971. He shows what a fine line there can be today between struggling to stay in work and getting the laurel.

Bruce Beresford

Bruce Beresford

Bruce Beresford, b. Sydney, Australia, 1940 1972; The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. 1974: Barry McKenzie Holds His Own. 1976: Don's Party. 1977: The Getting of Wisdom. 1978: Money Movers. 1979: Breaker Morant. 1980: The Club. 1981: Puberty Blues. 1983: Tender Mercies. 1985: King David; Crimes of the Hearty The Fringe Dwellers. 1988: "Die Totestadt," an episode from Aria. 1989: Her Alibi; Driving Miss Daisy. 1991: Mister John­son; Black Robe. 1993: Rich in Love. 1994: A Good Man in Africa; Silent Fall. From Sydney University, Beresford went into advertising and thence to London. He spent two years in the mid-sixties in Nigeria work­ing as a film editor, and in 1966 he got a post at the British Film Institute Production Board, where he administered funds. He began to direct features himself only on returning to Australia in 1971. He shows what a fine line there can be today between struggling to stay in work and getting the laurel. Thus, in 1989 he was in charge of the stolid Tom Selleck-Paulina

Laslo Benedek

Laslo Benedek
Laslo Benedek (1907-92), b. Budapest, Hungary 1948: The Kissing Bandit. 1949: Port of New fork. 1951: Death of a Salesman. 1953: The Wild One. 19.54: Bengal Brigade. 1955: Kinder, Mutter und ein General 1957: Affair in Havana. 1959; Moment of Danger. 1960; Hecours en Grace. 3966: Namu the Killer Whale (d). 1971: The Night Visitor. 1975: Assault on Agathon. Benedek never settled, and be seemed as uneasy with the solemn allegory of Death of a Salesman as with the rampant motor-bike horniness of The Wild One. How that last film ever came to be banned in some tender quar­ters, or regarded highly anywhere, is a puzzle, It is too willing to be a motorized Western

Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks

Mel Brooks (Melvin Kaminsky), b. Brooklyn, 1926 1968: The producers. 1970: The Twelve Chairs. 1974: Blazing Saddles; Young Frankenstein. 1976: Silent Movie. 1977: High Anxiety. 1981: History of the World—Part I 19S7; Spacebalh. 1991: Life Stinks!. 1993: Robin Hood: Men in Tights. A besetting handicap of modern comedy is its belief that media conventions and genre take-offs are funnier than human predicaments. The noblest comedians created a character who might have lived and suffered anywhere, without self-consciousness. The events of their comedies are everyday and ordinary. But for Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, humor grows in the hothouse of burlesque. Their own comic attitudes are less subtle and appealing because their clenched personalities are preoccupied with the cliches of entertainment and the task of rip-off parody. With Allen, this may be a substantial loss. But in the case of Brooks, everything suggests a brash, superficial personality dependent on the role of stage scbmuck

Candice Bergen

Candice Bergen Can dice Bergen, b. Beverly Hills, California, 1946 Candice Bergen had been in movies, and vei4 social on the Hollywood scene, for ow twenty years. She is smart, funny, and has show business in the blood (or the grain one of her childhood companions Charlie McCarthy, for she was the daughls of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen). For while, she was the companion to innovatM producer Bert Schneider. She was in a " classy pictures, like Carnal Knowledge ("| Mike Nichols) and The Group (66, Sid Lumet). But she was taken for granted as| pretty piece of female furnishing. No noticed she could play comedy. Not even i riage to Louis Malle, in 1980, pron salvation.

Pedro Almodovar

Pedro Almodovar

Pedro Almodovar, b. Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, 1951 1974; La Caida de Sodoma (s); Dos Putas, o Historia de Amor que Termina en Boda (s). 1975: Hamenaje (s); E! Sueno (s). 1976; El Estrella (s), 1977: Complementos (s); SKXU Va (s). 1978; Polle, t'olle, Folleme, Tim; Salome (s). 1980: Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del MotitoWPepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom. 1982: Laberinto de Pasiones/Labyrinth of Passion 1983: Entre Tinieblas/Dark Habits. 19&4; Qiie He Hecho Yo Para Merecer Esto?/ What Hace I Done to Deserve This?. 1985; Trayler para Amantes de lo Prohibtdo (s), 1986; Mdtador. 1987: La Ley del Deseo/Lato of Desire. 1988: Mujeres al Borde de wn Ataque de Nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. 1990: Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!. 1991: High Heels. 1993: Kifai. Almod6var was one of the most welcome explosions of the eighties and a sign of the new Spain. Whereas Carlos Saura (nearly twenty years older than Almodovar) made intensely measured and psychologically reflective films, with the innate secrecy of someone raised under the Franco regime. Almodovar is excessive, garish, outlandishly inventive, and irrepressible. He is openly gay, devoted to sexual confusion, and eternally committed to the chance of love.

Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner (1900-79), b. San Francisco 1927: Fashions for Women; Ten Modern Commandments; Get Your Man. 1928: Manhattan Cocktail 1929: The Wild Party. 1930: Sarah and Son; Anybody's Woman; Behind the Makeup (eodireeted with Robert Milton); an episode from Paramount on Parade. 1931: Honor Among Lovers; Worfcing Girls. 1932: Merrily We Go to Hell. 1933: Christopher Strong. 1934; Nona. 1936: Craig's Wife. 1937: The Bride Wore Red. 1940; Dance, Girl, Dance. 1943: First Conies Courage. Dorothy Arzner was a professional director of American movies who worked regularly for over a decade, and was a woman. (Only Lois Weber could have made the same claim.) She was not a great filmmaker, and her pioneering should not inflate her reputation. But she turned out some fascinating pictures and clearly was able to pursue a personal if undoc-trinaire interest in the issue of women's identity. That said, one has to confess that she generally played according to the Hollywood concept of "a woman's picture." She did not stretch or threaten the system, as Barbara Loden did with Wanda; hut that is also a sign of how far the 1930s romance was susceptible to a feminist sensibility. And Dorothy Arzner made more films than ever came from Barbara Loden. Ar/ne-r got into pictures through hard work and paying her dues, and she stayed near the top long enough for her retirement to be an act of choice. All of which says very little about why she was unique. The daughter of a Hollywood restaurateur, she dropped out of the University of Southern California and worked her way up at Paramount from typist to cutter to editor to director's assistant.

Richard Boleslavsky

Richard Boleslavsky

Richard Boleslavsky (Ryszard Srzednicki Boleslavsky) (1889-19 b, Warsaw, Poland 1918i Khleb (codirected with Boris Sush vich), 1919: Bohaterstwo Polskiego 1921- Cud Nad Wisk 1930: Treasure • The Last of the Lone Wolf. 1931: The ' Diplomat; Women Pursued, 1933: and the Empress; Storm at Daybreak; B& for Sale. 1934: Men in White; Fugitive 1 Operator 13; The Painted Veil; Holly Party (codirected with Allan Dwan and Roy Rowland). 1935: Clive of India; Les Mi-sfrables; Metropolitan; O'Shauefinessy's Boy. 1936: The Garden of Allah; Theodora Goes Wild; Three Godfathers. 1937: The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (codirected with George Fitz-maurice). For ten years before the First World War, Boleslavsky was an actor at the Moscow Arts Theatre; indeed, he was later to write books on Stanislavsky's teachings. He had acted in Russian films before he began to direct. During the Civil War he fought for the Poles and made a film about the war for them.

Robert Benton | Movie stars

Robert Benton | Movie stars
Robert Benton, b, Waxahachie, Texas., 1932 1972: Bod Company. 1977: The Late Show. 1979: Kramer os. Kramer. 1982: Still of the Night. 1984: Places in the Heart. 1987: Nadine. 1991: Billy Bathgate. Bentou was the Texan on Bonnie and Clyde (67, Arthur Perm), the man who knew the area and the landscape where those outlaws had driven. He studied painting at the Uni­versity of Texas at Austin, and then went on to Columbia after the army. As art director at Esquire magazine, he met die writer David Newman. They collaborated on articles and scripts and conceived Bonnie and Clyde for Truffaut or Godard before it found Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn. Benton has other coscreenplay credits— There Was a Crooked Man (70, Joseph L. Mankiewiez); What’s Up, Doc? (72, Peter Bogdanovich); and Superman (78, Richard Donner). As a director, his first two movies were unexpected and highly original, and they were marked by a sour regard for heroics.

Lionel Barrymore | Film stars stories

Lionel Barrymore | Film stars stories

Lionel Barrymore (Lionel Blythe) (1878-1954), b. Philadelphia The older brother of Ethel and John, Lionell was unlike John in all important ways: profes-l sional, hardworking, ambitious, humorless,! and dull. He began in the theatre hut in the! years before the First World War he jomedl D. W. Griffith’s company and acted in a great! many two-reelers, occasionally contributing! scripts. He became a leading player only in, the mid-3920s when he established himself at| MGM; The Face in the Fog (22, Crosland); The F-temal City (23, George) Fitzrnaurice); America (24. Griffith); Th Splendid Road (25, Frank Lloyd); The , (26, James Young); The Barrier (26, Geors Hill); The Lucky Lady (26, Baoul Walsh); Tk Temptress (26, Fred Niblo); The Show (27; Tod Browning); Women Love Diamonds (271

June Allyson

June Allyson
June Allyson (Ella Geisman), b, Bronx, New York, 1917 Trained as a dancer, she was a chorus girl while still at school, and went on to play in Broadway musicals. Her film debut was in Best Foot Forward (43, Edward Buzzell), which repeated a stage role. She was put under contract by MGM—as the sort of girl men overseas might like to come home to— for Girl Crazy (43, Norman Taurog); Thousands Cheer (43, George Sidney); Two Girls and a Sailor {44, Richard Thorpe); and Music for Millions (44, Henry Koster). Her petite, sore-throated charm was perfected in Tilt the Clouds Roll By (46, Richard Whorf); Good Netvs (47, Charles Walters); Words and Music (48, Taurojj); as Jo in Little Women (49, Mervyn Le Roy); with her husband, Dick Powell, i

Claudette Colbert- Films, Biography, Photos.

Claudette Colbert- Films, Biography, Photos.
Claudette Colbert (Claudette Lily Chauchoin), b. Paris, 1903 At her best, she was sophisticated gaiety personified,'a tender yet spirited comedienne, most stimulated by the chance to be provocative. She was less convincing in sultry or tear-jerker parts, and she could turn 'smug or superficial in dull roles. She was also fixed in her ways, preferring to give her left face to the camera, a stickler for regular hours, and so demanding before State of the Union ("By five in the afternoon 1 am tired and my face shows it") that Capra replaced her with Katharine Hepburn, Maybe Colbert knew a thankless part when she read it. Her family came to New York when she was six, and after secretarial training she went on the stage, playing romantic leads by the late twenties. She made one silent picture. For ttie Low of Mike (27, Capra), but it was her facility with dialogue (she never seemed French— but English) that persuaded Paramount to sign her up in 1929. She began modestly but by 1930 was taking on a wide range of parts: Manslaughter (George Abbott); Honor Among I-wers (Dorothy Arzner); His Woman (31, Edward Sloman); and The Smiling Lieutenant (31, Ernst Lubitsch), De Mille liked ber enough to make her iiis leading lady: as Poppaea, batbing in asses' milk and the director's boyish lasciviousness in The Sign of the Cross (32); in Four Frightened People (341; as a delectable if silly Cleopatra (34).

Glenn Close- Films, Biography, Photos.

Glenn Close- Films, Biography, Photos.

Glenn Close, b. Greenwich, Connecticut, 1947 Playing Gertrude to Mel Gibson's Hamlet (90, Franco Zeffirelli) may define Glenn Glose's dilemma: men are permitted to play younger. so actresses have to move up a generation— and down a class, for Glose is an experienced stage actress who h;is played in Lave for Love, The Real Thing, and Death and the Maiden. She is only nine years older than Mel Gibson. This is a strange movie career, full of English-like mums or brave girls (she does rather resemble Virginia McKenna): The World According to Carp (82, George Hoy Hill), TV Big Chill (83, Lawrence Kasdan); The Stone Boy (84, Chris Cain); and The Natural (84, Barry Levinson). She dubbed Andie McDowell in Greustoke (84, Hugh Hudson), failed at comedy in Maxle (S.l, Paul Aaron), and did a competent lawyer in love amid the hokum of jagged Edge (85, Hichard Mar-fjuand). Then she won one oi the plum roles of the last decade, Ale\ in Fatal Attraction (87, Adrian Lyne).

Glenn Close | Film stars stories

Glenn Close | Film stars stories

The Real Thing, and Death and the Maiden. She is only nine years older than Mel Gibson. This is a strange movie career, full of English-like mums or brave girls (she does rather resemble Virginia McKenna): The World According to Carp (82, George Hoy Hill), TV Big Chill (83, Lawrence Kasdan); The Stone Boy (84, Chris Cain); and The Natural (84, Barry Levinson). She dubbed Andie McDowell in Greustoke (84, Hugh Hudson), failed at comedy in Maxle (S.l, Paul Aaron), and did a competent lawyer in love amid the hokum of jagged Edge (85, Hichard Mar-fjuand).

Clive Brook

Clive Brook

Clive Brook (Clifford Brook) (1887-1974). b. London The son of an opera singer, Brook was educated at Dulwich College. After working as a writer and violinist, he served with distinction in the First World War: that effortless reference to military service in Shanghai Express was based on Vimy Ridge. After the war, he became an actor, onstage, but principally in the British cinema; Trent's Last Case (20, Richard Garrick); The Loudwater Mystery (21, Norman MacDonald); Daniel Derttnda (21, Walter Rawden); Sonia (21, Denison Clift); Shirley (22, A. V. Bramble); Married to a Woman (22, H. B. Parkinson); Debt of Honor (22, Maurice Elvey); Through Fire and Water (23, Thomas Bentley); Royal Oak (23, Elvey); Woman to Woman (23, Graham Cutt's): The White Shadow (24, Cutts); and The Passionate Adventure (24, Cutts). He then went to America under contract to Thomas Ince: Christine of the Hungry Heart (24, George Archainbaud); The Mirage (24, Archainbaud); Compromise (25, Alan Crosland); Enticement (25, Archainbaud); Seven Sinners (25, Lewis Milestone); and For Alimony Only (26, William De Mille), Thereafter he worked generally for Paramount: You Never Know Women (26, William Wellman); Barbed Wire (27, Rowland V. Lee); The Devil Dancer (27, Fred Niblo); French Dressing (27, Allan Dwan); opposite Clara Bow in Hula (27, Victor Fleming); as "Rolls Royce" in Underworld (27, Josef von Sternberg); The Perfect Crime (28, Bert Glennon); The Yellow Lily (28, Alexander Korda); A Dangerous Woman (29, Lee); The Ftmr Feathers (29, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack); Anybody's Woman (30, Dorothy Arzner), with Ruth Chatterton; Slightly Scarlet (30, Louis Gasnier); Sweethearts and Wives (30, Clarence Badger);

John Boorman

John Boorman

John Boorman, 1). Shepperton, England, 1933 1965: Catch Us If You Can 1967: Point Blank. 1968: Hell in the Pacific. 1970: Leo the Last. 1972: Deliverance. 1973: Zardoz. 1977; Exorcist II: The Heretic. 1981: Excalibur. 1985: The Emerald Forest. 1987: Hope and Glory. 1990: Where the Heart Is. 1991: / Dreamt I Woke Up. The embattled mentality of anyone who has tried to make films in Britain shows through in most of John Boorman's work. Blank is the most authentic film made by an Englishman in America, almost as a challenge to the cramping attitudes of the British industry. Yet Boorman never became American, or settled into fixed genres. At sixty, he finds it hard to keep in work. He is as commercially unreliable as he is artistically unpredictable. The commercial success of Point Blank and Deliverance brought him to a position of eminence. That both films were intensely American shows how far the cinematic instincts of a young British filmmaker could fit into American subjects and idioms. The brilliant atmospheric eye that distinguished Boot-man i'rom most of his British contemporaries was itself an attribute of the American emphasis on violent action growing out of environment. And the fact that Point Blank was so urban and Deliverance such a unique portrait of wilderness showed, once again, Boorman's will to stretch the range of his own talent. The serious box-office failures in his list—Hell in the Pacific, Leo the Last, Zardvz, and The Heretic—hear witness to the strain of guessing where the next film is coming from. For there is a tension in his work between full-blooded entertainment and allegorical significance. HeU in the Pacific may have incurred the interference of distributors because it fell uneasily between a war film and a sort of Robinson Crwoe/Terri-toriat Imperative in which Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune could not dispense with the enmity thrust upon them by war. Boorman tends to see subdivisions within the species of man.

Claude Chabrol

Claude Chabrol

Claude Chabrol, b. Paris, 1930 1958: Le Beau Serge. 1959; Les Cousins; A Double Twir/Web of Passion; Les Bonnes femmes. 196L Les Godelureatix. 1962: "L'Avarice," episode in Lea Sept Pechiis Caai-feur; L'Oeil du Malitt; Ophelia. 1963: Land™. 1964: "L'Homme qui Vendit la Tour Eiffel," episode in Les Phis Belles Kscroi/ueries du blonde; "La Mu^tte," episode in Paris Vu tar. . . ; Le Tigrc Aime la Chair Fraiche. 1965: Varif-Ckantal Contre le Docteur K)ta; Le _ ; Se Parfiitnc a In Dynamite. 1966: La Ligne r Demarcation; J> Scandale/Tlie Champagne urders. 1967: La Route de Corintlie. 1968: Les 3; La Femnu: Infidele. 1969: Que la BSte are. 1970: Le Voucher; La Rupture. 1971: savant la Nuit; La Decade Prodigieuse/Ten Wonder. 1972: Les Noces Ranges; •tear Popaut. 1974: Nada; Une Partie de tKif/Love Match. 1975: Les Innocents aux tins Sales/Innocents with Dirly Hand*. 76: Les Magidens; Folies Bourgeoises/Tfte tt. 1977. Alice, IM la Demierc Fugue. 1978: Liens de Sang/Eland Relatives; Violelte •e. 1979: Le Chet-al d'Orgetiil. 1982: Les du Chapelier. 1984: an episode in : Vu Par... 20 Ans Aprcs; The Blood of (TV). 1985: Poukt au Vinaigre. 1986: or Latardin 1987: Le Cri de Hibou; ties. 1988: Une Affaire dus Femmes/Story Vomn. 1989: Docteur U. 1990: Quiet r in Ctichy. 1991: Mathme Bovary. 1993: ; The Eye of Vichy [d], 1994: Enfer. Chabrol is one of the most enigmatic directors at work today. A fringe instigator of the original New Wave, he has managed to create a world for himself—some private Hollywood—in which it is possible to produce a stream of subtle studies ofhumaii motivation

Charles Chaplin

Charles Chaplin

Sir Charles Chaplin (1889-1977), b. London 1914: Making a Living; Kid Auto Races at Venice; Mabel's Strange Predicament; Between Showers; A Film Johnnie; Tango Tangles; His Favourite Pastime; Cruel, Cruel Looe, The Star Boarder; Mabel at the Wheel; Twenty Minutes of Love; Caught in a Cabaret; Caught in the Rain; A Busy Day; The Fata! Mallet; Her Friend the Bandit; The Knockout; Mabel's Busy Day; Mabel's Married Life; Laughing Gas; The Property Man; The Face i>n the Bar-Room Floor; Recreation; The Mas-querader; His New Profession; The Rounders; The New Janitor; Those Love Pangs; Dougft and Dynamite; Gentlemen of Nerve; His Musical Career; His Trusting Place; Tito's Punctured Romance; Gutting Acquainted; Ht? Prehistoric Past. 1915: His New Job; A Night Out; The Champion; In the Park; The jitney , Elopement; The Tramp; By the Sea; Work; A Woman; The Bank, Shanghaied; A Night in the Show. 1916: The Burlesque on Carmen,;i Police; The Floorwalker; The Fireman; The j Vagabond; One A.M.; The Count; The Puiwi-J shop; Behind the Screen; The Rink. 1917: Easy Street; The Cure; The Immigrant; Thsl Adventurer. 1918: Triple Trouble; A Dogil Life; The Bund; Shoulder Arms. 1919: Sunny-] .side; A Day's Pleasure. 1920: The Kid; Idle Class. 1922: Pay Day. 1923: The Pilg. A Woman of Paris. 1925: The Gold 1928: The Circus. 1931: City Lights. 19 Modern Times. 1940: The Great Dictate, 1947: Monsieur Verdoux. 1952: Limeligk 1957: A King in Neto Yorfc. 1967; A Cwintes from Hung Kimg

Stephane Audran | Movie stars

Stephane Audran | Movie stars

Lord Richard Attenborough | Movie stars

Lord Richard Attenborough | Movie stars

Movie Film Stars

Movie Film Stars

Alexandre Astruc

Alexandre Astruc, b. Paris, 1923 1948: Aller-Retour (s); Ulysse et les Mauvaises Rencontres (s). 1952; Le Rideau CramoisilThe Crimson Curtain (s). 1955: Les Mativatses Rencontres. 1958: line Vie. I960: !M Proie fioiir I'Ombre. 1961: [.'Education Sentwnen-talc 61. 1963: Le Puitfs et le Penduk (s). 1964: Evariste Gallois (s). 1966: La Longue Marche, 1%8: Flantmen sur l'AdriatiAstruc is a fascinating example of a man from literary culture identifying his true allegiance to the movies. He holds a special place in the still small library of worthwhile cinema theory, even if his own films rarely live up to all his admirable principles. Une Vie, though, is a perfect collaboration of Maupassant's novel, Astruc's treatment, the photography of Claude Renoir, Roman Vlad's music, and the presence of Maria Schei], Christian Mar-quand, Ivan Desny, Pascals Petit, and Antort-ella Lualdi. Rather out of fashion today, not even the considerably inferior quality of Astruc's other work can prevent it from some future rediscovery. It justifies the man as surely as Night of the Hunter does Charles Laughton. Une Vie is the demonstration of a view of cinema—la camera-stylo—that is a most fruitful critical bond between classical and modern cinema.
Astnic was a critic, a novelist—Les Vacances (45)—and assistant to Marc Allegret on Blanche Fury (47). In 1948, in £cran Francois, he wrote a short article, "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Cam era-Stylo." It argued for a new appreciation of the language of film:
... the cinema will gradually break free from the tyranny of what is visual, from the image far its own sake, from the immediate and concrete demands of the narrative, to become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written language.. . . We have tome to realise that the meaning which the silent cinema tried to give birth to through symbolic association exists within the image itself, in the development of the narrative, in every gesture of the characters, in every line of dialogue, in those camera movements which relate objects to objects and characters to objects. All thought, like all feeling, is. a relationship between one human being and another human being. . ..
That can still claim to be the most important critical theory the cinema has yet produced. It led Astruc to the identification of a pantheon that was shared by most of the Cahien group and that enriched the films they made-. Eisen-stein, Welles, Kenoir, Bresson, von Stroheim, Murnau. Hawks, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock, Lang, and Rossellini.
At the same time, it was not difficult to detect the young novelist at work, who looked forward to the cinema's achieving the autonomy of, say, Sartre, Camus, or Faulkner, Astruc's own films showed that in la camdra-stylo he remained very conscious of the pen. His movies relied not only on literary models, but what was often an academic demonstration of his theories. For example, Le Rideav Cramoisi is a very cold film, more engaged by the abstract realization of human connection than actually involved in it. Astruc is capable of passages of extraordinary beauty and utter clarity, but the heart is often left behind. No surprise that he once listed Anthony Mann's Men in War as a favorite film, for in that film Mann achieves an eerie detachment through cinematic grace. Une Vie works because of Maria Schell's insistent emotionalism—a quality that has marred other films, but brings a touching plaintiveness to Une Vie. Elsewhere, Astruc's films have the distinction of blueprints; by contrast, Renoir's sire untidy houses. It is a serious limitation, but Astruc's theory is still correct and vital. No student of the movies should neglect it or leave Une Vie unseen.


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Mary Astor (Lucille Langhanke) (1906-87)

Mary Astor (Lucille Langhanke) (1906-87), b. Quincy, Illinois
Mary As tor's autobiography. My Story, published in 1951, is better written than most similar exercises and much more frank. Dotted through her morf than one hundred movies, there are many signs of an intelligent woman. That those views are too rare was only one of her problems: originally, an ambitious German father had thrust her into the movies; after her affair with John Barrymore, her first husband, Kenneth Hawks, was killed in an air crash; three more marriages ended in divorce, and the second saw the scurrilous publication, in 1936, of alleged and lurid extracts from her diary, including a graphic love affair with playwright George Kaufman. She never stayed a star for more than one year at a time, and she slipped from supporting parts into alcoholism and sessions with an analyst that eventually led to the autobiography. Despite her long career, she disliked Hollywood—though whether for itself or for the way it thwarted her is an open question. Fairly early, she won ii reputation for being independent, and later something stuck from the diary incident; as a result, she had her best chances playing polite bitches or demure snakes in the grass—above all Hammett's Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (41, John Huston). That picture of chronic King did not hinder her genuine warmth as the mothers in Meet Me in St. iMtis (44, Vincente Minnelli) and Little Women (49, Mervyn Le Roy).
She made her debut in 1921 with Sentimental Tommy (John S. Robertson), and worked nomadically without ever being more than a promising newcomer: Bought and Paid For (22, William C. De Mille); Second Fiddle (22, Frank Tuttle); Puritan Passion (23, Tuttle); Success (23, Ralph Ince); Tlte Fighting Coward (24, James Cruze); Beau Brummel (24, Harry-Beaumont); Unguarded Woman (24, Alan Crosland); Inez from Hollywood (24, Alfred E. Green); Don Q, Son of Zorro (24, Donald Crisp); The Scarlet Saint (25, George Archain-baud); The Wise Guy (26, Frank Lloyd); and Don Juan (26, Crosland). That innovatory

sound Him (opposite a Barrymore who would have preferred^ Dolores Costello to his discarded mistress) boosted her, but she rarely got good parts: The Rough Riders (27, Victor Fleming); Two Arabian Knights (27, Lewis Milestone); No Place to Go (27, Le Roy); Dressed to Kill (28, Irving Cummings); and Dry Martini (28, Harry d'Arrast). Despite her subsequent prowess with good dialogue, she failed a test for talkies and was briefly put out of work before Ladies Love Brutes (30, Rowland V. Lee); The Runaway Bride (30, Crisp); Holiday (30. Edward H. Griffith); Other Men's Women (31, William Wellman); The Sin Ship (31, Louis Wolheim); The Royal Bed (31, Lowell Sherman); Smart Woman (31, Gregory La Cava); Red Dust (32, Fleming); The World Changes (33, Le Roy); The Kennel Murder Case (33, Michael Curtiz); Easy to Low (.34, William Kmghley); / Am a Thief (35, Robert Florey); and Page Miss Glory (35, Le Roy). Her career seems to have been enhanced by the diary scandal, for 1936-42 was the period of her best parts: Dodstoorth (36, William Wyler); never more beautiful than in The Prisoner of Zenda (37, John Cromwell); Hurricane (37, John Ford); Listen Darling (38, Edward L. Marin); There's Always a Woman (38. Alexander Hall); pregnant and hilarious during the making of Mia-night (39, Mitchell Leisen); Brigham young (40, Henry Hathaway); winning a best supporting actress Oscar opposite Bette Davis in The Great Lie (41, Edmund Goulding); looking too old in Across the Pacific (42, Huston); and Palm Beach Story (42. Preston Sturges), MGM put her under contract, but only for poor leads or good supporting parts: young Ideas (43, Jtiles Dassin); Thousands Cheer (43, George Sidney); Fiesta (47, Richard Thorpe); Desert Fury (48, Lewis Allen); fine as the hooker in Act of Violence (49, Fred Zin-nemann); and Any Number Can Play (49, Le Roy). Her crack-up meant that she played only small parts thereafter: So This Is Love (53, Gordon Douglas); A Kiss Before Dying (56, Gerd Oswald); The Devil's Hairpin (57, Cornel Wilde); This Hapjiy Feeling (58, Blake Edwards); A Stranger in My Arms (58, Helmut Kautner); Return to Peyton Place (61, Jos6 Ferrer); Youngblood Hawke (64, Delmer Daves); and Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (64, Robert Aldrich), After her autobiography, she was encouraged to go on to novels.

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Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz)

Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz) (1899-1987), b. Omaha, Nebraska There is something very suggestive of Americana in the way a Napoleonic battle is turned into a name without roots or etymology. Vet how evocative that name is; run the parts together and the result is as rhythmic as Fre-nesi; separate them and it could be Fred a Star or Fred on a staircase, astride the stair— thus Astaire, /'esprit d'escaiier.
It is proper to respond in this way because so much of Astaire is a matter of stylish carriage, and I do not think it accidental that the name evokes some specially serene agility. This leads to the questions, is Astaire a movie actor? and what makes for great acting in the cinema? There is a good case for arguing that, in the event of a visit by creatures from a far universe, ignorant of the cinema, one would do best to show them some steps by Astaire as the clinching evidence of the medium's potential. Better that than the noble actors— Olivier, Jannings, Brando, Barrymore, et al. Astaire is the most refined human expression of the musical, which is in turn the extreme manifestation of pure cinema: the lifelike presentation of human beings in magical, dreamlike, and imaginary situations. That might be thought to imply that Astaire's dancing depends on illusion. Not so. He was always the most technically exacting and ambitious of screen dancers, the most eager to perform in uninterrupted setups. In the 1920s, it would have been possible to see him dancing virtuoso routines on stage. The spatial and temporal continuity of theatre would have made clear how difficult the feat was. Cinema wipes away the sense of difficult)' and substitutes the ease that permits every transformation needed by the chronic dreamer. Astaire is not a great dancer so much as a great filmed dancer. Nureyev on film is less than in the

flesh, because he is himself most stimulated by an actual audience and a real leap. Astaire, like al! dreamers, is a perfectionist who loved to work in the feverish secrecy of a studio toward the flawless image of his own grace. He lends himself to the detachment of cinema because he is a rather cold, even indistinct personality who celebrates the spirit of elegance as channeled through elaborate, rapid, photographed motion.
Such a notion was underlined by Astaire's latter-day appearance in "straight" parts. After Silk Stockings, in 1957, he largely gave himself up to television spectaculars and to acting. The first sour fruit of this was On the Beach (59, Stanley Kramer), If anyone had ever doubted Kramer's crassness, here was final proof. For he cast Astaire as a motor-racing driver, a man essentially hidden in the shell of a car. Surely nuclear holocaust could have been as glibly dramatized by Astaire's playing a golfer? Then at least we might have enjoyed his dainty prowling round the greens. Yet once Astaire was asked to partake of earnest melodrama, it was a strain to watch him at all. In play-acting, he is downright shifty: like a philosopher at a bingo session, there is the embarrassing and depleting sense of a man having been caught on the blind side, but gamely trying to be polite. Furthermore, drama blurred his appearance. In On the Beach, he is sometimes disheveled, which is heresy against the perpetual grooming of his characteristic work. This applied as much to Finian's Rainbow (68, Francis Ford Coppola), a respectful and nostalgic tribute to his greatness, as to his other totally mediocre films of the 1960s: The Pleasure of His Company (61, George Seaton); The Notorious Landlady (62, Richard Quine); The Midas Run (69, Alf Kjellin); and The Towering Inferno (74, John Cuillermin).
In musicals, too, Astaire is the man without character; sometimes not so far from the man without humanity. But in the musicals, this is not so much a shortcoming as an audacious emphasis on style. Astaire is preeminently the saint of 1930s sophistication, the butterfly in motion till he dies, whose enchanting light voice kids the sentimentality of his songs. (He is a great singer—no wonder all the songwriters wanted him—who treats the song with reverence.) He is the man about town, empty of personality, opinions, and warmth, but a man who carries himself matchlessly. There is something of the eighteenth-century dandy in his preference for taking nothing seriously, save for the articulation of his superb movement.


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