The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (202 page)

Hunter is famous for being the top producer at Universal, not just Sirk’s best patron, but the driving force behind some of the best melodramas and romances of that decade. But he was more than that. He had an earlier career, in the mid forties, as an actor in B pictures—things like
Louisiana Hayride
(44, Charles Barton),
A Guy, a Gal and a Pal
(45, Budd Boetticher),
Hit the Hay
(46, Del Lord). When he flopped, he went away and taught school for a few years before returning to Universal as an associate producer.

Universal then was the last walled city in old Hollywood, a place famous for dotty adventures and its stable of young talent. He learned his trade as the associate producer on a group of authentic entertainments:
Flame of Araby
(51, Charles Lamont), a really gorgeous desert adventure, with Jeff Chandler and Maureen O’Hara;
Steel Town
(52, George Sherman);
Untamed Frontier
(52, Hugo Fregonese);
Son of Ali Baba
(52, Kurt Neumann), with Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie;
The Duel at Silver Creek
(52, Don Siegel);
The Battle at Apache Pass
(52, Sherman).

He was promoted to producer and that’s when he and Sirk really took off, but it was always mixed in with other directors:
All I Desire
(53, Sirk);
Tumbleweed
(53, Nathan Juran);
Take Me to Town
(53, Sirk);
Magnificent Obsession
(54);
The Yellow Mountain
(54, Jesse Hibbs);
Taza, Son of Cochise
(54, Sirk);
Naked Alibi
(54, Jerry Hopper);
Captain Lightfoot
(55, Sirk);
The Spoilers
(55, Hibbs);
All That Heaven Allows
(56, Sirk);
Battle Hymn
(57, Sirk);
Tammy and the Bachelor
(57, Joseph Pevney);
Interlude
(57, Sirk);
My Man Godfrey
(57, Henry Koster);
This Happy Feeling
(58, Blake Edwards);
The Restless Years
(58, Helmut Kautner);
A Stranger in My Arms
(59, Kautner);
Imitation of Life
(59, Sirk).

Sirk retired, and Helmut Kautner was no replacement, but Ross Hunter carried on, with Doris Day and Sandra Dee as his new motors:
Pillow Talk
(59, Michael Gordon);
Portrait in Black
(60, Gordon);
Midnight Lace
(60, David Miller);
Back Street
(61, Miller);
Flower Drum Song
(61, Koster);
Tammy Tell Me True
(61, Harry Keller);
If a Man Answers
(62, Henry Levin);
The Thrill of It All
(63, Norman Jewison);
Tammy and the Doctor
(63, Keller);
The Chalk Garden
(64, Ronald Neame);
I’d Rather Be Rich
(64, Jack Smight);
Madame X
(66, David Lowell Rich)—which really is the end of its genre’s line.

There were a few more years left in movies:
Thoroughly Modern Millie
(67, George Roy Hill);
Airport
(70, George Seaton), a new kind of genre and a smash hit;
Lost Horizon
(73, Charles Jarrott), proof that you can go to the remake well too often. After that, there were a few years in TV:
The
Lives of Jenny Dolan
(75, Jerry Jameson);
Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers
(76, Boris Sagal);
A Family Upside Down
(78, Rich);
Suddenly, Love
(78, Stuart Margolin);
The Best Place to Be
(79, Miller).

Isabelle Huppert
, b. Paris, 1955
The greatest surprise and failure in Huppert’s career came when she was not very good as Emma in Claude Chabrol’s lifeless
Madame Bovary
(91). In Chabrol’s conception, she seemed doomed, and contemplating poison, from the outset. There was none of the laughter, the flights of gaiety, romance, and casual earthiness of which Isabelle Huppert is capable. Ironically, she had come closer to the range and tumult of Emma Bovary a few years earlier, for Chabrol, in the very moving
Une Affaire de Femmes
(87). Was Chabrol simply constrained by the big prestigious subject? Or is there something innately wistful or watchful in Huppert, a pale, numb quality that cannot dominate large stories?

She has been industrious and versatile for over thirty years, unusually comfortable in English for a French actress, and intriguing to a great variety of directors (though she never worked for Truffaut). Indeed, she has to rate as one of the most accomplished actresses in the world today, even if she seems short of the passion or agony of her contemporary, Isabelle Adjani. An Adjani Bovary would not have been as controlled—and viewers would not have left the theatre underexercised.

Huppert began as a teenager:
Faustine et le Bel Été
(71, Nina Companeez);
César et Rosalie
(72, Claude Sautet);
Le Bar de la Fourche
(72, Alain Levent);
L’Ampélopède
(73, Rachel Weinberg);
Glissements Progressifs du Plaisir
(74, Alain Robbe-Grillet);
Making It
(74, Bertrand Blier);
Dupont Lajoie
(74, Yves Boisset);
Sérieux Comme le Plaisir
(74, Robert Benayoun);
Rosebud
(74, Otto Preminger);
Le Grand Délire
(74, Dennis Berry);
Aloise
(74, Liliane de Kermadec);
Docteur Françoise Gailland
(75, Jean-Louis Bertucelli);
Le Juge et L’Assassin
(75, Bertrand Tavernier);
Je Suis Pierre Rivière
(75, Christine Lipinska);
Le Petit Marcel
(75, Jacques Fansten);
The Lace-maker
(76, Claude Goretta), the film that won attention outside France;
Des Enfants Gâtés
(77, Tavernier);
Les Indiens Sont Encore Loin
(77, Patricia Moraz); to great acclaim as the young murderess, fascinating just because of her intent passivity, in
Violette Nozière
(78, Chabrol);
Retour à la Bien-Aimée
(78, Jean-François Adam); as Anne in
The Brontë Sisters
(78, André Téchiné); excellent, sensual, and commonplace in
Heaven’s Gate
(80, Michael Cimino), even if she seemed to sniff out a small, intimate picture about how frontier life was lived, instead of a fulminating epic;
Sauve Qui Peut
(80, Jean-Luc Godard), her placidity enduring or encouraging Godard’s frenzy of lecture; excellent in
Loulou
(80, Maurice Pialat);
La Dame aux Camelias
(80, Mauro Bolognini)—she does have a consumptive glow;
Orokseg
(80, Marta Meszaros);
Les Ailes de la Colombe
(81, Benoit Jacquot);
Coup de Torchon
(81, Tavernier);
Eaux Profondes
(81, Michel Deville);
Passion
(82, Godard);
The Trout
(82, Joseph Losey);
Entre Nous
(83, Diane Kurys);
Storia di Piera
(83, Marco Ferreri);
My Best Friend’s Girl
(83, Blier);
Signé, Charlotte
(84, Caroline Huppert, her sister);
La Garce
(84, Christine Pascal, her costar from
Enfants Gâtés
—Huppert has worked frequently with women directors);
Sac de Noeuds
(85, Josianne Balasko); losing her sight in
Cactus
(84, Paul Cox); doing Dostoyevsky in
Les Possédés
(87, Andrzej Wajda) and Bette Davis in
The Bedroom Window
(87, Curtis Hanson);
Milan Noir
(87, Ronald Chammah);
La Vengeance d’une Femme
(89, Jacques Doillon);
Malina
(90, Werner Schroeter);
Après l’Amour
(92, Kurys); and
L’Inondation
(93, Igor Minaev), from a novella by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which the actress had optioned personally.

She has remained a leading actress, versatile and ready for daring or unusual material: well paired with Sandrine Bonnaire in
La Cérémonie
(95, Chabrol);
Lumière et Compagnie
(95, Abbas Kiarostami); the voice of a horse in
Gulliver’s Travels
(96, Charles Sturridge); the interviewer in
Poussières d’Amour
(96, Schroeter);
Elective Affinities
(96, the Taviani Brothers); Marie Curie in
Les Palmes de M. Schutz
(97, Claude Pinoteau);
Rien ne Va Plus
(97, Chabrol);
Pas de Scandale
(99, Jacquot);
La Vie Moderne
(99, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa);
La Fausse Suivante
(00, Jacquot); Mme de Maintenon in
Saint-Cyr
(00, Patricia Mazuy);
Les Destinées Sentimentales
(00, Olivier Asssayas);
Comédie de l’Innocence
(00, Raul Ruiz);
Merci pour le Chocolat
(00, Chabrol); Clara Schumann in
Clara
(00, Helma Sanders-Brahms); startlingly erotic in
La Pianiste
(01, Michael Haneke);
8 Femmes
(02, François Ozon);
La Vie Promesse
(02, Olivier Dahan);
Deux
(02, Schroeter);
Le Temps du Loup
(03, Haneke);
Ma Mère
(04, Christophe Honoré);
I Heart Huckabee’s
(04, David O. Russell).

With two best actress awards from Cannes (for
Violette Nozière
and
La Pianiste
) and thirteen César nominations, Isabelle Huppert has only one rival in the world—Meryl Streep—and it beggars belief that the Academy has not found a single reason to nominate her (the Academy is a village, alas). As it is, Huppert works constantly, often in daring and experimental ventures:
Les Soeurs Fâchées
(04, Alexandra Leclère);
Gabrielle
(05, Patrice Chéreau), from Conrad;
L’Ivresse du Pouvoir
(06, Chabrol);
L’Amour Caché
(07, Alessandro Capone);
Nue Propriété
(07, Joachim Lafosse);
Médée Miracle
(07, Tonino De Bernardi);
Home
(08, Ursula Meier);
Un Barrage
Contre le Pacifique
(08, Rithy Panh);
Villa Amalia
(09, Jacquot—their fifth collaboration);
White Material
(09, Claire Denis).

John Hurt
, b. Shirebrook, England, 1940
Hurt has not just the name but the haggard face for presiding over crazy films. Equally, he has a remarkably diverse record as a supporting, or even a lead, player. In short, he is rarely dull and often playful, inventively desperate, and someone to treasure.

He was an art student at St. Martin’s School in London before going on to RADA. Among British actors, he is notable in that most of his work is in film and television, and not the theatre. He made his debut in
The Wild and the Willing
(62, Ralph Thomas), but drew serious attention as the betrayer in
A Man for All Seasons
(66, Fred Zinnemann). Zinnemann could not cast the part until he saw Hurt onstage in
Little Malcolm
and recognized his “explosive nervous energy.”

A run of worthwhile films followed:
The Sailor from Gibraltar
(67, Tony Richardson);
Before Winter Comes
(68, J. Lee Thompson); the lead as the young rogue in
Sinful Davey
(69, John Huston); the wretched Timothy Evans in
10 Rillington Place
(70, Richard Fleischer);
In Search of Gregory
(70, Peter Wood); with Hayley Mills in
Mr. Forbush and the Penguins
(71, Al Viola);
The Pied Piper
(72, Jacques Demy); the film of
Little Malcolm
(74, Stuart Cooper); and
The Ghoul
(75, Freddie Francis).

But what made him famous in Britain was his rich Quentin Crisp for TV in
The Naked Civil Servant
(75, Jack Gold); and his Caligula in TV’s
I, Claudius
(76, Herbert Wise). His best years now came in a rush:
East of Elephant Rock
(76, Don Boyd);
The Disappearance
(77, Cooper); a supporting actor nomination for
Midnight Express
(78, Alan Parker);
The Shout
(78, Jerzy Skolimowski); nursing the beast in
Alien
(79, Ridley Scott); much put-upon by make-up, but getting a best actor nomination as
The Elephant Man
(80, David Lynch); and in the most cuttable role in
Heaven’s Gate
(80, Michael Cimino)—he took the part in the spirit of “a lark,” worked a day and a half in ten weeks and nearly lost
The Elephant Man
(which was shot later
and
released earlier—do you see why some actors look like Hurt?).

In the same period, he delivered excellent voice-over to several animated films:
The Lord of the Rings
(78, Ralph Bakshi);
Watership Down
(78, Martin Rosen); and
The Plague Dogs
(82, Rosen).

As a live presence onscreen, he has never again been what he was in 1980 or so:
History of the World, Part I
(81, Mel Brooks) as Jesus; getting out of East Berlin in a balloon in
Night Crossing
(81, Delbert Mann); a gay cop in
Partners
(82, James Burrows); a jockey in
Champions
(83, John Irvin);
The Osterman Weekend
(83, Sam Peckinpah); as Winston Smith in
1984
(84, Michael Radford); a killer in
The Hit
(84, Stephen Frears); and
Success Is the Best Revenge
(84, Skolimowski).

He did voice-over on
The Black Cauldron
(85, Ted Berman); was in
Jake Speed
(86, Andrew Lane);
From the Hip
(87, Bob Clark);
Spaceballs
(87, Brooks); the voice of Van Gogh for
Vincent
(87, Paul Cox);
White Mischief
(87, Radford); very good as Stephen Ward in
Scandal
(89, Michael Caton-Jones);
The Field
(90, Jim Sheridan);
Resident Alien
(90, Jonathan Nossiter), a documentary about Quentin Crisp;
Frankenstein Unbound
(90, Roger Corman);
King Ralph
(91, David S. Ward); and
A Lapse of Memory
(91, Patrick DeWolf).