The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (109 page)

That Juliet was not admired by everyone. Her cracking voice was not exactly in the tradition of fine verse-speaking; but she could seem intense, raw, needy—like an actual teenager. Some said she was not as pretty as Juliet ought to be. Add to this a line of actresses more or less the contemporaries of Judi Dench who were certainly pretty—Claire Bloom, Mary Ure, Susannah York—and who grew far ahead of Dench as movie actresses, yet have not quite lasted, or had the depth of character to insist on sexual attractiveness as well as vapid “prettiness.”

I wouldn’t stress this but for what is now largely forgotten: that as a young actress, in difficult material, Judi Dench took a big shot at the screen and then—after it had seemingly failed—she gave up. Her looks and her raw feeling did not suit that time, and so few people saw her films, or were seduced by her:
The Third Secret
(64, Charles Crichton);
He Who Rides a Tiger
(65, Crichton);
A Study in Terror
(65, James Hill); the most important, a genuine attempt at a new kind of film,
Four in the Morning
(65, Anthony Simmons); and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(68, Peter Hall). One would have to add to that list her most searing screen performance, for TV, in the four-part
Talking to a Stranger
(66, Christopher Morahan), written by John Hopkins, who had liked her in one of his episodes for
Z Cars
.

She concluded that the camera didn’t like her, and did only a little TV and the movie
Dead Cert
(73, Tony Richardson), before returning in the early eighties, often in supporting parts. On TV again, opposite Frederic Forrest, in the excellent
Saigon: Year of the Cat
(82, Stephen Frears);
Wetherby
(84, David Hare);
A Room with a View
(85, James Ivory);
84 Charing Cross Road
(86, David Jones);
A Handful of Dust
(87, Charles Sturridge); Mistress Quickly in
Henry V
(88, Kenneth Branagh); J
ack and Sarah
(94, Tim Sullivan); her first M in
GoldenEye
(95, Martin Campbell); Hecuba in
Hamlet
(95, Branagh); as Queen Victoria, Oscar-nominated in
Mrs. Brown
(96, John Madden);
Tomorrow Never Dies
(97, Roger Spottiswoode); winning the supporting actress Oscar for a few words as Elizabeth in
Shakespeare in Love
(98, Madden);
Tea with Mussolini
(99, Franco Zeffirelli); very much a capital M in
The World Is Not Enough
(99, Michael Apted);
Chocolat
(00, Lasse Hallstrom).

And now, she contrives to show us another Dench—a movie star, in her sixties: haunting as the failing
Iris
(01, Richard Eyre) and the only authentic human being in
The Shipping News
(01, Hallstrom). She repeated her stage Lady Bracknell for
The Importance of Being Earnest
(02, Oliver Parker), and she was back as M in
Die Another Day
(02, Lee Tamahori);
The Chronicles of Riddick
(04, David Twohy);
Ladies in Lavender
(04, Charles Dance).

She was Lady Catherine in
Pride & Prejudice
(05, Joe Wright); she got an Oscar nomination for
Mrs. Henderson Presents
(05, Stephen Frears); M in
Casino Royale
(06, Martin Campbell); quite alarming in
Notes on a Scandal
(06, Eyre), and another nomination—her sixth. Then, after
Quantum
of Solace
(08, Marc Forster), she was the best thing in
Nine
(09, Rob Marshall).

Catherine Deneuve
(Catherine Dorléac), b. Paris, 1943
She is the younger sister of Françoise Dorléac (1942–67). I was watching a TV program on Buñuel with a friend when it showed a clip of Buñuel directing a scene from
Belle de Jour
(67). It was the beach scene in which Catherine Deneuve stands tethered to a post in a long white gown that leaves her arms bare. Buñuel was supervising the way mud would be thrown at Deneuve and, as the ordurelike filth splattered over her, he and she joked together. “How can a woman do that sort of thing for a living?” asked my friend. To which I replied, “Exactly in the way that a bourgeoise in her tasteful home one fine day might dream herself a whore.”

Acting and cinema free the fantasies and Deneuve is a fantastic actress, her beauty a receptacle for any imagination, perhaps the greatest cool blonde, forever hinting at intimations of depravity. In her best work, she deserves a place with the most enchanting women of cinema, childlike, reserved, a novice on the way to a brothel. Of course, Buñuel is the master at uncovering the imaginative potency of bourgeois fashion plates; still photographer David Bailey may have married Deneuve, but it was Buñuel who revealed her. Thus, the sensual visibility of
Belle de Jour
and
Tristana
(70) is suffused with blondeness. And it was Buñuel, in two films, who showed that Deneuve was one of those few actresses who could be transformed by a touch or a thought. In
Belle de Jour
she moves within seconds from the threatened virgin to the voluptuary. And in
Tristana
, it is the height of her art to be the ingenue in pigtails and beret and the scarlet woman on the balcony who condescendingly shows herself to the boy.

She began in her teens and has worked hard ever since:
Les Portes Claquent
(60, Jacques Poitrenaud/Michel Sermaud); in the “Sophie” episode from
Les Parisiennes
(61, Marc Allégret), on which she met Roger Vadim. She had a child by Vadim, but never married him and proved a rather deeper woman than he was used to:
Et Satan Conduit le Bal
(62, Grisha M. Dabat);
Le Vice et la Vertu
(62, Vadim), based on de Sade’s Justine;
Vacances Portugaises
(63, Pierre Kast); in the “L’Homme qui Vendit la Tour Eiffel” episode from
Les Plus Belles Escroqueries du Monde
(63, Claude Chabrol);
La Chasse à l’Homme
(64, Edouard Molinaro);
Un Monsieur de Compagnie
(64, Philippe de Broca);
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
(64, Jacques Demy); as the girl who goes mad in a Kensington flat in
Repulsion
(65, Roman Polanski);
Das Liebenskarussel
(65, Rolf Thiele);
La Vie de Château
(65, Jean-Paul Rappeneau);
Le Chant du Monde
(65, Marcel Camus);
Les Créatures
(66, Agnes Varda); with her sister in
The Young Girls of Rochefort
(66, Demy);
Le Dimanche de la Vie
(66, Jean Herman);
Benjamin
(67, Michel Deville);
Manon 70
(68, Jean Aurel);
La Chamade
(68, Alain Cavalier); to America, to play opposite Jack Lemmon in
The April Fools
(69, Stuart Rosenberg);
Mayerling
(69, Terence Young); as the femme fatale in
The Mississippi Mermaid
(69, François Truffaut);
Peau d’Âne
(70, Demy);
Ça N’Arrive Qu’aux Autres
(71, Nadine Trintignant);
Dirty Money
(72, Jean-Pierre Melville); and
The Slightly Pregnant Man
(73, Demy).

In America, by advertising perfume and expensive cars she became an epitome of classy beauty and marketable romance. That aura of moneyed glamour was vital to her call girl in
Hustle
(75, Robert Aldrich). She has also made
L’Agression
(75, Gerard Pires);
Les Sauvages
(75, Rappeneau);
Anima Persa
(76, Dino Risi);
La Grande Bourgeoise
(77, Mauro Bolognini);
March or Die
(77, Dick Richards);
Coup de Foudre
(77, Robert Enrico);
L’Argent des Autres
(78, Christian de Chalonge);
Ecoute Voir …
(78, Hugo Santiago); and
Ils Sont Grands Ces Petits
(79, Joel Santoni).

By the age of forty, Deneuve was better known outside France in cosmetics advertisements than in films. She was only rarely international, but in France, and at Cannes, especially, she was an empress, heavier perhaps as the years passed, but impassive and exquisite still:
À Nous Deux
(79, Claude Lelouch);
Courage, Fuyons
(80, Yves Robert); having a big hit, with Depardieu, in
The Last Metro
(80, Truffaut);
Je Vous Aime
(80, Claude Berri);
Le Choix des Armes
(81, Alain Corneau);
Reporters
(81, Raymond Depardon);
Hôtel des Ameriques
(81, André Téchiné);
Le Choc
(82, Robin Davis);
L’Africain
(82, Philippe de Broca);
The Hunger
(83, Tony Scott);
Le Bon Plaisir
(83, Francis Girod);
Fort Saganne
(84, Corneau);
Love Songs
(84, Elie Chouraqui);
Let’s Hope It’s a Girl
(85, Mario Monicelli);
Scene of the Crime
(86, Téchiné);
A Strange Place to Meet
(88, François Dupeyron);
Fréquence Meurtre
(88, Elizabeth Rappeneau);
Terres Jaunes
(89, Regis Wargnier);
La Reine Blanche
(91, Jean-Loup Hubert); and in a stirring comeback, nominated as best actress, in
Indochine
(92, Wargnier);
Ma Saison Préférée
(93, Téchiné), which also starred her daughter (by Marcello Mastroianni), Chiara Deneuve.

She is still a leading player, very beautiful, but a touch dilute. It’s the loss of youth, of course. She seems a fine lady now, one who has smoothed away the fascinating contrasts that once made her a phenomenon:
La Partie d’Echecs
(94, Yves Hanchar);
The Convent
(95, Manoel de Oliveira);
Les Voleurs
(96, Téchiné);
L’Inconnu
(96, Pierre Montazel);
Généalogies d’un Crime
(97, Raul Ruiz);
Place Vendôme
(98, Nicole Garcia);
Le Vent de la Nuit
(99, Philippe Garrel);
Belle Maman
(99, Gabriel Aghion);
Pola X
(99, Leos Carax);
Le Temps Retrouvé
(99, Ruiz);
Est-Ouest
(99, Wargnier);
Dancer in the Dark
(00, Lars von Trier);
The Musketeer
(01, Peter Hyams);
Le Petit Poucet
(01, Olivier Dahan);
Je Rentre à la Maison
(01, Oliveira);
8 Femmes
(02, Francois Ozon);
Au Plus Près du Paradis
(02, Tonie Marshall); as Marquise de Merteuil in a TV
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
(03, Josée Dayan);
Un Film Parlé
(03, Manoel de Oliveira);
Marie Bonaparte
(04, Benoît Jacquot).

With more and more TV, she settled:
Rois et Reine
(04, Arnaud Desplechin);
Les Temps Qui Changent
(04, Techiné);
Palais Royal
(05, Valérie Lemercier);
Le Concile de Pierre
(06, Guillaume Nicloux);
Le Héros de la Famille
(06, Thierry Klifa);
Aprés Lui
(07, Gaël Morel);
Suddenly Gina
(07, Maria von Heland).

Robert De Niro
, b. New York, 1943
De Niro is the kind of actor who reminds you how genteel American movies are. They may say “fuck” and “damn,” and leave their victims in the gutter, but the blood is always Carmine Interlude, and the mad-dog killers are household pets. The people in films are models hired at ridiculous expense, people who can hold a pose for seven hours with minds just as set. Most of them. They neither smell nor lie; they get their lines right—all their mistakes are thrown away. Their fraud and their sordidness are clever charades for the comfortable classes. Nothing gives us the coarse, monotonous, and unpredictable undergrowth existence of life. The movies are fake, and De Niro is hanging on by broken fingertips, for he seems as averse to charm as a lurcher dog. As a screen presence, he’s as threatening and ungraspable as a sweet-faced madman who pours a torrent of talk over you on the subway, trapped in the tunnel between Bellevue and Groucho.

De Niro seems no cozier offscreen than on it. He is reported to be immersed in his character preparation, and he resists most public relations. Yet American stars, eventually, live by finding ways of being likeable and digestible. If he’s got sense, he makes no more trouble than a president. But De Niro likes awkward, unmanageable people: it is hard to think of one dutifully sentimental scene in which he has figured. Has he ever kissed a girl on screen without eating her? But it is easy to conjure up his frosty, recessive victims of solitude, in all of whom there is a harsh flame of inspiration.
New York, New York
(77, Martin Scorsese) is so painful a film because De Niro’s drive prefers private, sinister ecstasies to the wholesome bliss of the 1940s musical. He makes the musical noir. In the long opening sequence, he “wins” Liza Minnelli not out of sentiment, but because she is the available target that his fierce boredom selects. His Jimmy Doyle overpowers people or ignores them; he cannot deal with them. Thus, the abrupt humor, the compulsive routines just like sax solos (he never makes it to sex)—and that steel-trap grin. Communication systems, but not the natural gestures of feeling. How astute it was in
Taxi Driver
to have him talk to himself.

That is the impulse behind Travis Bickle in
Taxi Driver
(76, Scorsese), and why the film is so disturbing in its portrait of a man of good intent and weirdly fine nature driven to slaughter. Travis cannot express his anguish or perplexity, except in coffin-solitary monologue and ritual violence. This leaves him more unable to comprehend his own tangled sense of right and wrong. The street kid struts to prove he is significant. Killing for Travis is the only creative alternative to breakdown or a kind of reflection that would undermine his dynamic. Still, the goodness of his own ideal of himself shows in the ravishing razor-blade smile, the chilling kindness, and the naïveté that understands Betsy’s freeze-dried personality. Travis wants to save others, unable to help himself. The lean body he straps with guns and knives is like a saint’s in a flagellation. Its livid whiteness shows spiritual stress. He needs a child whore or a presidential stooge to absorb his yearning for nobility. De Niro’s presence substantiates the allusions to Bresson better than Paul Schrader’s screenplay.