The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (20 page)

She made a few films for other directors—
Le Signe du Lion
(59, Eric Rohmer);
La Peau de Torpedo
(70, Jean Delannoy); and she fitted admirably into
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(72, Luis Buñuel), smiling through every disaster as if it were glass and urgently hauling her husband into the rhododendrons for a quick one before lunch.

Her vapid glossiness suited comedy of manners and may have lured Chabrol away from character studies to the absurd games of people as much corrupted by pretense as their situations are by B pictures. She is so much an image, so little a person:
Juste Avant la Nuit
(71);
Les Noces Rouges
(72);
Folies Bourgeoises
(76); and
Blood Relatives
(78). At the same time, she worked outside France, but with no more warmth:
B. Must Die
(73, José Luis Borau);
And Then There Were None
(74, Peter Collinson);
The Black Bird
(75, David Giler);
Silver Bears
(77, Ivan Passer); and
Eagle’s Wing
(78, Anthony Harvey). But she was revealed as a bitter middle-aged woman, dowdy beside Isabelle Huppert in
Violette Nozière
(78).

Since then, generally as a supporting actress, she has made
Le Gagnant
(79, Christian Gion);
Le Soleil en Face
(79, Pierre Kast);
The Big Red One
(80, Samuel Fuller);
Il Etait une Fois des Gens Heureux … les Plouffe
(80, Gilles Carle);
Coup de Torchon
(81, Bertrand Tavernier);
Brideshead Revisited
(81, Charles Sturridge);
Le Beau Monde
(81, Michel Polac);
Le Marteau Pique
(81, Charles Bitsch);
Le Choc
(82, Robin Davis);
Boulevard des Assassins
(82, Boramy Tioulong);
Les Affinités Electives
(82, Chabrol);
Le Paradis pour Tous
(82, Alain Jessua);
Mortelle Randonnée
(83, Claude Miller);
La Scaralyine
(83, Gabriel Aghion);
Thieves After Dark
(83, Fuller);
Le Sang des Autres
(84, Chabrol);
El Viajero de las Quatro Estaciones
(84, Miguel Littin);
Mistral’s Daughter
(84, Douglas Hickox and Kevin Connor);
The Sun Also Rises
(84, James Goldstone);
Poulet au Vinaigre
(85, Chabrol);
Night Magic
(85, Lewis Furey);
La Cage aux Folles III
(85, Georges Lautner);
Le Gitane
(85, Philippe de Broca);
Suivez Mon Regard
(86, Jean Curtelin);
Un’isola
(86, Carlo Lizzani); as Babette in
Babette’s Feast
(87, Gabriel Axel);
Les Saisons du Plaisir
(87, Jean-Pierre Mocky);
Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story
(87, Charles Jarrott);
Sons
(89, Alexandre Rockwell); and
Betty
(93, Chabrol).

She was in
The Turn of the Screw
(92, Rusty Lemorande);
Le Fils de Gascogne
(95, Pascal Aubier);
Au Petit Marguery
(95, Laurent Benegui);
Maximum Risk
(96, Ringo Lam);
Petit
(96, Patrick Volson);
Arlette
(97, Claude Zidi); as Lady Covington (née Cucuface) in
Madeline
(98, Daisy von Scherler Mayer);
Belle Maman
(99, Aghion);
Le Pique-nique de Lulu Kreutz
(00, Didier Martiny);
La Bicyclette Bleue
(00, Thierry Binisti);
J’Ai Faim!!!
(01, Florence Quentin);
Ma Femme … S’Appelle Maurice
(02, Jean-Marie Poiré);
Sissi
(04, Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe);
La Battante
(05, Didier Albert);
Trois Femmes … Un Soir d’Été
(05, Sébastien Grall).

Bille August
, b. Copenhagen, 1948
1978:
Honning Måne
. 1983:
Zappa
. 1985:
Tro, Håb og Kaerlighed/Twist and Shout
. 1987:
Pelle Erobreren/Pelle the Conqueror
. 1992:
Den Goda Viljan/Best Intentions;
an episode for the series
Young Indiana Jones
(TV). 1993:
The House of the Spirits
. 1996:
Jerusalem
. 1997:
Smilla’s Sense of Snow
. 1998:
Les Misérables
. 2002:
A Song for Martin
. 2003:
Deltajer
(TV). 2007:
Goodbye Bafana
.

August was trained as a still photographer in Stockholm, and at the Danish Film Institute. He worked as cinematographer for several years and worked on—among others
—Men Can’t Be Raped
(78, Jorn Donner) and
The Grass Is Singing
(81, Michael Raeburn). As a director, he has gone from strength to weakness;
Zappa
is a very fresh, energetic film about children;
Twist and Shout
showed the kids in their teens;
Pelle the Conqueror
was a nineteenth-century epic about a widower and his son, Swedish immigrants in Denmark—its warmth won the Oscar for best foreign film.
Best Intentions
was from Ingmar Bergman’s script about his own parents, and it was a triumph. But his attempt at Isabel Allende’s
The House of the Spirits
had too many stars, too little mood or magic.
Jerusalem
, adapted from Selma Lagerlöf’s novel, was made for Swedish TV.
Smilla
had a striking first half, followed by chaos. And his version of
Les Misérables
seemed restrained or halfhearted.

Claude Autant-Lara
(1903–2000), b. Luzarches, France
1923:
Fait Divers
(s). 1926:
Vittel
(d). 1927:
Construire un Feu
(s). 1930:
Buster Se Marie
. 1932:
Le Plombier Amoureux; L’Athlète Incomplet; Le Gendarme Est sans Pitié
(s);
Un Client Serieux
(s);
Monsieur le Duc
(s);
La Peur des Coups
(s);
Invite Monsieur à Diner
(s). 1933:
Ciboulette
. 1936:
My Partner Mr. Davis
. 1937:
L’Affaire du Courier de Lyon
. 1938:
Le Ruisseau
. 1939:
Fric-Frac
. 1942:
Le Mariage de Chiffon; Lettres d’Amour
. 1943:
Douce
. 1945:
Sylvie et le Fantôme
. 1947:
Le Diable au Corps/The Devil in the Flesh
. 1949:
Occupe-Toi d’Amélie
. 1951:
L’Auberge Rouge
. 1952: “L’Orgueil,” an episode in
Les Sept Péchés Capitaux
. 1953:
Le Bon Dieu Sans Confession
. 1954:
Le Blé en Herbe; Le Rouge et le Noir
. 1955:
Marguérite de la Nuit
. 1956:
La Traversée de Paris
. 1958:
En Cas de Malheur/Love Is My Profession; Le Joueur
. 1959:
Les Régates de San Francisco; La Jument Verte
. 1960:
Le Bois des Amants
. 1961:
Non Uccidere; Tu Ne Tueras Point; Vive Henri IV … Vive L’Amour!; Le Comte de Monte Cristo
. 1962:
Le Meurtrier
. 1963:
Le Magot de Joséfa
. 1965:
Journal d’une Femme en Blanc
. 1966:
Une Femme en Blanc Se Révolte
. 1967: “Aujourd’hui,” episode in
Le Plus Vieux Métier du Monde
. 1968:
Le Franciscain de Bourges
. 1970:
Les Patates
. 1971:
Le Rouge et le Blanc
. 1977:
Gloria
.

Autant-Lara is representative of the placid urbanity of French cinema of the 1950s so despised by the New Wave. He served a long and dutiful apprenticeship from 1919 onward; eventually graduated to features; gathered together a band of accomplished collaborators and adopted respectable literary subjects. There was a surface daring in his work—he was anticlerical and a proponent of sexual frankness—but it did not prevent a romantic and bourgeois realism from settling on him, evident in the most conventional use of structure and a style that surrenders to literary prestige, glamorous acting, and claustrophobically atmospheric settings.

He began as an art director and costume designer and worked in that capacity on
Le Carnaval des Vérités
(19, Marcel L’Herbier);
L’Homme du Large
(20, L’Herbier);
Don Juan et Faust
(22, L’Herbier);
L’Inhumaine
(23, L’Herbier);
Paris Qui Dort
(23, René Clair);
Le Voyage Imaginaire
(25, Clair); and
Nana
(26, Jean Renoir). He made an experimental short,
Fait Divers
(23), and a few silent documentaries, and in the early 1930s he worked in America on French-language versions of Hollywood movies:
Buster se Marie
, for instance, is Keaton’s
Spite Marriage
, and
Plombier Amoureux, The Passionate Plumber
. On his return to France he took up direction, but only became properly established during the war.

Douce
was a meticulous study in female psychology,
Sylvie et le Fantôme
a pleasant comedy, but
Le Diable au Corps
was the film that really made him: a clever adaptation of the Raymond Radiguet novel by his all-but-constant writers, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, that brought considerable psychological authenticity to a doomed love affair between a married woman and a teenager. Despite fine playing from Micheline Presle and Gérard Philipe, the film remains a bourgeois gesture toward
l’amour fou
, made from a stance that readily invokes fate as a disguise for its own reserve; it is an academic and decorative reference to a theme rather than an embodiment of it. That is Autant-Lara’s besetting defect, and his periodic pursuit of lofty subjects—Colette’s
Le Blé en Herbe
, Stendhal’s
Le Rouge et le Noir
, the Faustian
Marguérite de la Nuit
, or the long-nurtured
Tu ne Tueras Point
—is never reinforced by anything more than narrative directness and production values. He was not abashed by the New Wave, but his palatable, academic seriousness is out of fashion.
En Cas de Malheur
is the best of the later films: a collision of generations and attitudes when Jean Gabin meets Bardot. He is the sort of director to film classic novels for educational television, adept at glossing meaning and arranging furniture.

Daniel Auteuil
, b. Alger, Algeria, 1950
At first sight, Auteuil lacks the looks or the command to be a leading actor. Still, it’s clear that he is second only to Gérard Depardieu now in France. He is very versatile: he could manage the hunchback Ugolin in
Jean de Florette
and
Manon of the Spring;
he can play comedy or drama with equal ease; and as his several affairs with beautiful actresses suggest, he has sex appeal.

He was the child of two singers, members of the Opéra chorus, so it was natural that he was drawn into theatre—and he continues to perform on the Paris stage. He began appearing on French TV in 1974 and he made his movie debut in
L’Agression
(75, Gérard Pirès). Since then, these are some of his more important jobs:
Attention les Yeux
(75, Pirès);
La Nuit de Saint-Germain-des-Prés
(76, Bob Swaim);
L’Amour Violé
(76, Yannick Bellon);
A Nous Deux
(79, Claude Lelouch);
La Banquière
(80, Francis Girod);
Les Fauves
(83, Jean-Louis Daniel);
Petit Con
(84, Gérard Lauzier);
Jean de Florette
(86, Claude Berri);
Manon of the Spring
(87, Berri).

That pair established him at a new level:
A Few Days with Me
(88, Claude Sautet);
Romuald et Juliette
(89, Coline Serreau);
Lacenaire
(90, Girod);
A Heart in Winter
(92, Sautet); with Catherine Deneuve in
My Favorite Season
(93, André Téchiné); Henri of Navarre in
La Reine Margot
(94, Patrice Chéreau);
Une Femme Française
(95, Regis Wargnier);
Le Huitième Jour
(96, Jaco Van Dormael);
Les Voleurs
(96, Téchiné);
Passage à l’Acte
(96, Girod);
Lucie Aubrac
(97, Berri);
Le Bossu
(97, Philippe de Broca);
The Girl on the Bridge
(99, Patrice Leconte); working in English, though not with ease, in
The Lost Son
(99, Chris Menges);
The Widow of Saint-Pierre
(00, Leconte); as
Sade
(00, Benoît Jacquot);
The Closet
(00, Francis Veber);
Vajont—La Diga del Disonore
(01, Renzo Martinelli);
L’Adversaire
(02, Nicole Garcia);
Petites Coupures
(03, Pascal Bonitzer);
Après Vous
(03, Pierre Salvadori);
Rencontre avec le Dragon
(03, Hélène Angel).

He is very versatile, and not too old to be romantic:
36, Quai des Orfèvres
(04, Olivier Marchal);
To Paint or Make Love
(05, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu);
Caché
(05, Michael Haneke);
N: Napoleon & Me
(06, Paolo Virzi);
Mon Meilleur Ami
(06, Leconte);
The Valet
(06, Veber);
Le Deuxième Souffle
(07, Alain Corneau);
La Personne aux Deux Personnes
(07, Nicolas Charlet);
15 Ans et Demi
(08, François Desagnat and Thomas Sorriaux).

Gene Autry
(Orvon Gene Autry) (1907–98), b. near Tioga, Texas; and
Roy Rogers
(Leonard Franklin Slye) (1911–98), b. Cincinnati, Ohio
If you (or I) can’t quite muster enough interest in Autry or Rogers on their own, is it any better if we put them together? Well, yes, I think so. This will never be a rivalry or a pairing to match that of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, but there is a story. Consider, it’s Gene Autry vs. Lennie Slye; it’s rural Texas against Cincinnati; it’s two men less handsome than their horses but rated as singers on the principle that that whining sound sometimes keeps restless cattle calm. They were singing cowboys who went from next-to-nothing to fortunes in excess of $100 million. More than that, they are the link between people like Will Rogers, William S. Hart, and Tom Mix, and those guys in false teeth, ten-gallon hats, and swishy buckskins who can be found selling real estate subdivisions all over the modern West. They are—if you recall—the models for Curly Bonner, the Joe Don Baker character in Sam Peckinpah’s
Junior Bonner
.