The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (125 page)

E. A. Dupont
(Ewald André Dupont), (1891–1956), b. Leitz, Germany
Before 1918:
Die Buchhalterin; Durchlaucht Hypochonder; Der Ewige Zweifel; Mitternacht; Nur am Tausend Dollars; Der Onyxkopf; Das Perlenhalsband; Der Saratogakafer; Die Sterbenden Perlen; Die Japanerin
. 1918:
Das Geheimnis der Amerika-Docks; Der Mann aus Neapel; Die Schwarze Schachdame; Der Lebende Schatten; Der Teufel
. 1919:
Die Apachen; Das Grand Hotel Babylon
. 1920:
Mord ohne Tater; Der Weisse Pfau
. 1921:
Die Geierwally; Kinder der Finsternis
. 1922:
Sie und die Drei
. 1923:
Das Alte Gesetz; Die Grune Manuela; Ein Film aus dem Sueden
. 1925:
Der Demutige und die Sangerin; Variété
. 1927:
Love Me and the World Is Mine
. 1928:
Moulin-Rouge; Piccadilly
. 1929:
Atlantic
. 1930:
Cape Forlorn; Two Worlds
. 1931:
Salto Mortale
. 1932:
Peter Voss, der Millionendieb
. 1933:
Der Laufer von Marathon; Ladies Must Love
. 1935:
The Bishop Misbehaves
. 1936:
A Son Comes Home; Forgotten Faces; A Night of Mystery
. 1937:
On Such a Night; Love on Toast
. 1939:
Hell’s Kitchen
(codirected with Lewis Seiler). 1951:
The Scarf
. 1953:
Problem Girls; The Neanderthal Man; The Steel Lady
. 1954:
Return to Treasure Island
.

A film critic, Dupont began writing scripts:
Renn Fieber
(16, Richard Oswald);
Es Werde Licht
(18, Oswald). As a director,
Variété
is his best work, a story of sexual exchange among a troupe of trapeze artists. It is the film in which Emil Jannings resolutely turned his back on the camera, the sort of schematic device favored by Dupont. He excelled, in Lotte Eisner’s words, at “capturing and fixing fluctuating forms which vary incessantly under the effect of light and movement. His objective is always and everywhere the ebb and flow of light.” This is especially so in the shots of illuminated white trapeze performers above the crowd.

Dupont went to America to make
Love Me and the World Is Mine
for Universal and then to Britain for five films. In
Moulin-Rouge
and
Piccadilly
, especially, his use of lighting is very successful. But
Atlantic
, the first complete sound film to be made in Europe, was very slow and too preoccupied with the novelty of sound. In 1933, Dupont opted for America, but was rarely more than a director of second features. In 1939, he went back to journalism and started an agency for actors. He returned, twelve years later, with
The Scarf
, an oddity starring John Ireland, but slipped back to B pictures. Before his death he wrote the script for
Magic Fire
(56, William Dieterle).

Marguerite Duras
(Marguerite Donnadieu) (1914–96), b. Giodinh, Indochina
1966:
La Musica
(codirected with Paul Sebau). 1969:
Détruire, Dit-Elle
. 1971:
Jaune le Soleil
. 1972:
Nathalie Granger
. 1975:
India Song
. 1976:
Des Journées Entières dans les Arbres/Entire Days in the Trees; Son Nom de Venise dans Calcutta Desert
. 1977:
Baxter, Vera Baxter; Le Camion/The Truck
. 1979:
Le Navire Night
. 1984:
Les Enfants/The Children
.

Although Marguerite Duras came to moviemaking rather late, and despite her participation in the development of that strictly literary form—
le nouveau roman
—she seems to be as movie-mad as another experimentalist with words, Alain Robbe-Grillet. For by now, with
The Lover
(92, Jean-Jacques Annaud), and with the Duras novel that inspired the film
and
her response to Annaud’s film,
The North China Lover
, Duras is a character in film, not just a creative force. And as with Lillian Hellman in some of her suspect nonfiction writing, Duras’s passion has blurred boundaries of truth and fiction. Duras the adult is decidedly more homely than Jane March in the Annaud film. But Duras has aged rather as Simone Signoret did—and we know that Duras regarded herself as a part to be played. Indeed, the formal exchanges of
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
(59, Alain Resnais) took on the fire of obsession once one realized the sheer perseverance of Duras with the situation of Oriental man and French woman. Thus, Marguerite Duras has been a little like a Bette Davis hiding within a Gertrude Stein or a Virginia Woolf.

We see Duras now as someone equally at ease in the novel, the stage play, or the movie, and someone accustomed to rewriting material in different media. Her themes are memory, loss, and the interplay of reality and fictional perception. Her own films make a rarefied yet absorbing body of work. Yet her influence goes much further—into scripts she has written for others, in her ability to crystallize their talents, and in her poised balancing of intellect and melodrama. Her scripts include:
Moderato Cantabile
(60, Peter Brook);
Une Aussi Longue Absence
(61, Henri Colpi); and
10:30 P.M. Summer
(66, Jules Dassin). But, in addition, her novels have led to
The Sea Wall
(57, René Clément) and
The Sailor from Gibraltar
(67, Tony Richardson).

Her own films make great play with words, and with words that are more than normally separated from their images.
India Song
, for example, has most of its talk “off” camera; and then
Son Nom de Venise …
takes the track from the first film and plays it over exploring shots of the house where the movie was made.
Le Camion
has
Mme.
Duras reading the film’s script to actor Gérard Depardieu, gradually broken in on by the images of the film. In
Nathalie Granger
, Jeanne Moreau and Lucia Bosé do little more than exist in a house and garden talking and in juxtaposition with radio commentaries.

If much of this sounds like radio, there is no denying Duras’s love of words and incantation (the music of the dialogue was striking in
Hiroshima Mon Amour
). But the films show an equal fascination with movement, faces, and even decor. Duras is one of those people quite happy to be stunned by moving imagery.

Deanna Durbin
(Edna Mae Durbin), b. Winnipeg, Canada, 1921
When still only fourteen years old, her singing caught the ear of MGM. But they used her only in one short,
Every Sunday
(36, Felix Feist). Instead, she was taken to Universal by producer Joe Pasternak as a way of saving that studio from financial disaster. Pasternak appears to have grasped that Durbin was a rarity: a true teenage star, pretty, cheerful, clean, and tuneful. He used her as a beaming social worker to unhappy adults, and such balm proved very efficacious just before and in the early years of the war. Usually, Pasternak entrusted his protégée to director Henry Koster:
Three Smart Girls
(36, Koster);
One Hundred Men and a Girl
(37, Koster), in which she acts as matchmaker for Leopold Stokowski and some unemployed musicians;
Mad About Music
(38, Norman Taurog);
Three Smart Girls Grow Up
(39, Koster);
First Love
(39, Koster);
It’s a Date
(40, William A. Seiter);
Spring Parade
(40, Koster);
Nice Girl
(41, Seiter); and
It Started with Eve
(41, Koster).

At this point Pasternak left for MGM and Durbin foundered without his guidance. Already married, she tried to take on fully adult parts but hardly had the talent required. Jean Renoir quit
The Amazing Mrs. Holliday
(43, Bruce Manning) either because of her inability or because of producer Manning’s pressure, and although she was mostly successful in
His Butler’s Sister
(43, Frank Borzage), she was hopelessly adrift playing a shady nightclub chanteuse in
Christmas Holiday
(44, Robert Siodmak). She stayed on for several years but in quicker and cheaper films:
Can’t Help Singing
(44, Frank Ryan);
Because of Him
(46, Richard Wallace);
I’ll Be Yours
(47, Seiter); and
Up in Central Park
(48, Seiter). She retired in 1949 and went to live in France.

She had been the un-Judy, a good girl, talented, but the perfect example to all those foolish people ready to sacrifice everything for talent.

Dan Duryea
(1907–68), b. White Plains, New York
In striped suit, bow tie, and straw hat, the Duryea of
Scarlet Street
(45, Fritz Lang) is a delicious villain. A sly man, he creeps up on malice as if it were a cat to catch, and is unable to prevent a giggle cracking his high-pitched voice: a door-to-door salesman just waiting for bored wives. Duryea’s three films for Lang, his gunman in
Winchester 73
(50, Anthony Mann), and his debut as cousin Leo in
The Little Foxes
(41, William Wyler) are his best work, but he was never dull, even when called on to be friendly:
Ball of Fire
(41, Howard Hawks);
The Pride of the Yankees
(42, Sam Wood);
Sahara
(43, Zoltan Korda);
Man from Frisco
(44, Robert Florey);
None but the Lonely Heart
(44, Clifford Odets);
Mrs. Parkington
(44, Tay Garnett); flexing a pair of scissors in
Ministry of Fear
(44, Lang);
The Woman in the Window
(44, Lang);
The Great Flamarion
(45, Mann);
Valley of Decision
(45, Garnett);
Along Came Jones
(45, Stuart Heisler);
Black Angel
(47, Roy William Neill);
Another Part of the Forest
(48, Michael Gordon);
Criss Cross
(48, Robert Siodmak);
Too Late for Tears
(49, Byron Haskin);
One Way Street
(50, Hugo Fregonese);
Underworld Story
(50, Cy Endfield);
Thunder Bay
(53, Mann);
World for Ransom
(54, Robert Aldrich);
This Is My Love
(54, Heisler);
Silver Lode
(54, Allan Dwan);
Foxfire
(55, Joseph Pevney);
Storm Fear
(56, Cornel Wilde);
Battle Hymn
(57, Douglas Sirk);
The Burglar
(57, Paul Wendkos);
Walk a Tightrope
(63, Frank Nesbitt);
Taggart
(64, R. G. Springsteen);
The Flight of the Phoenix
(65, Aldrich); and
Stranger on the Run
(67, Don Siegel).

Robert Duvall
, b. San Diego, California, 1931
Was ever a role better designed for its actor than that of Tom Hagen in both parts of
The Godfather?
Robert Duvall the actor relates to high stardom like an Irishman among Italians. He is not beautiful or forceful enough to carry a big film—his starring parts reveal both his limitations and his lack of clout. But stars and Italians alike depend on his efficiency, his tidying up around their grand gestures, his being perfect shortstop on a team of personality sluggers. His Tom Hagen is a detailed study of a self-effacing man, a time server, someone fulfilled by being discreet and helpful. A hero worshiper, perhaps, all the more vulnerable at the end of
Part II
when Michael Corleone deliberately humiliates him: a trusted servant is always a slave to such tyranny. Duvall has worked harder than any of his star contemporaries. He seems likely to remain a treasured support, but on occasions his prominent forehead and his possessed gaze have conveyed an anguish or obsession that might be more worthwhile than moody glamour.

He was the son of a rear-admiral, and he was educated at Principia College before entering the army. He studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and was praised in a 1955 off-Broadway production of
A View from the Bridge
. Duvall has remained attached to the stage, as witness his villain in
Wait Until Dark
and his championing of David Mamet’s
American Buffalo
.

His first movie role was as the recluse in
To Kill a Mockingbird
(62, Robert Mulligan). His early parts were mostly in a vein of troubled loneliness that testifies to the staring severity of his face: a catatonic in
Captain Newman M.D
. (63, David Miller); the forlorn husband of Janice Rule in
The Chase
(66, Arthur Penn);
Countdown
(68, Robert Altman);
The Detective
(68, Gordon Douglas);
Bullitt
(68, Peter Yates);
True Grit
(69, Henry Hathaway); very good in
The Rain People
(69, Francis Ford Coppola); an outsider driven mad by the gang in
M*A*S*H
(70, Altman);
The Revolutionary
(70, Paul Williams);
THX 1138
(70, George Lucas);
Lawman
(71, Michael Winner);
Tomorrow
(71, Joseph Anthony), from a Faulkner story in a part he had created onstage; Jesse James in
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid
(71, Philip Kaufman);
The Godfather
(71, Coppola);
Joe Kidd
(72, John Sturges);
Lady Ice
(73, Tom Gries);
Badge 373
(73, Howard W. Koch); as a loner taking on the mob in
The Outfit
(73, John Flynn);
The Godfather, Part II
(74, Coppola); as the mogul in
The Conversation
(74, Coppola), as impressive and as remote as his Doberman;
Breakout
(75, Gries);
The Killer Elite
(75, Sam Peckinpah); the domineering boss in
Network
(76, Sidney Lumet); a German in
The Eagle Has Landed
(76, Sturges); as Dr. Watson in
The Seven-Percent Solution
(76, Herbert Ross); and
The Greatest
(77, Gries).