The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (208 page)

A year later, he had two more good performances—as Hasselbacher in
Our Man in Havana
(59, Carol Reed), and in
Day of the Outlaw
(59, André de Toth). He was in
Let No Man Write My Epitaph
(60, Philip Leacock);
The Spiral Road
(62, Robert Mulligan); singing “The Ugly Bug Ball” in
Summer Magic
(63, James Neilson); the snowman narrator in
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
(64, Kizo Nagashima and Larry Roemer);
The Brass Bottle
(64, Harry Keller);
Ensign Pulver
(64, Joshua Logan); as Gepetto—with Peter Noone as
Pinocchio
(68, Sid Smith).

Thereafter, he concentrated on television, including
The Bold Ones: The Lawyers
(69–72), before coming back to movies:
Just You and Me, Kid
(79, Leonard Stern), with George Burns;
Earthbound
(81, James L. Conway);
White Dog
(82, Sam Fuller);
Uphill All the Way
(86, Frank Q. Dobbs); F. W. Woolworth in
Poor Little Rich Girl
(87, Charles Jarrott);
Two-Moon Junction
(88, Zalman King).

James Ivory
, b. Berkeley, California, 1928
1963:
The Householder
. 1965:
Shakespeare Wallah
. 1968:
The Guru
. 1970:
Bombay Talkie
. 1972:
Savages; Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization
(d). 1975:
The Autobiography of a Princess; The Wild Party
. 1977:
Roseland
. 1978:
Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures
. 1979:
The Europeans
. 1981:
Quartet
. 1983:
Heat and Dust
. 1984:
The Bostonians
. 1986:
A Room With a View
. 1987:
Maurice
. 1989:
Slaves of New York
. 1990:
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
. 1992:
Howards End
. 1993:
The Remains of the Day
. 1995:
Jefferson in Paris
. 1996:
Surviving Picasso
. 1998:
A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries
. 2001:
The Golden Bowl
. 2003:
Le Divorce
. 2004:
The White Countess
. 2008:
The City of Your Final Destination
.

It was over forty years ago that Ivory and the producer Ismail Merchant began their remarkable partnership, notably with an adaptation of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s novel
The Householder
. The trio has stayed together, and it may have reached its greatest triumph—and, it seems to me, its most characteristic work—in their collaboration on the film of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel
The Remains of the Day
. That film is all the more a vindication for them in that it was originally intended as a Mike Nichols film from a Harold Pinter script (Nichols remained one of the producers). Why did those two powerhouses cede the project? Presumably because they acknowledged the wisdom that no one did such things better than Ivory-Merchant (they are actually known as Merchant-Ivory—to avoid that odd note of the Indian market?).

And no one does it nicer. I saw the first public screening of
The Remains of the Day
in San Francisco, and emerged from the Presidio theatre into the roaring dazzle of Chestnut Street, at three or so in the afternoon, in a throng of elderly viewers congratulating each other on how nice, how lovely, how perfect it had all been, and how “they” didn’t make many films as good as that. Nichols and Pinter must have imagined such scenes, and acted accordingly—after all, deference and self-denial are the heart and soul of
The Remains of the Day
.

Let me look on the bright side first. Anyone must admire the friendly partnership that has stayed intact, surviving growing success and carving out a very respectable place in the picture business—for Merchant-Ivory films now do quite nicely at the box office, and they have done so well with the Academy’s statuettes that some cynics have wondered if those figures might not be called Maurice instead of Oscar. Ismail Merchant must be patient, an astute mix of the strong and the yielding, the diplomat and the magician. He must be likeable and seductive. Ruth Jhabvala has become a very adroit adapting screenwriter, even if she tranquilly overlooks all the things that such adaptation loses. And James Ivory, the director, seems decent, diffident, tasteful, and the least pronounced or necessary of the three. No one could accuse him of being seductive.

I suspect that Ivory would be gratified to hear that one finds little guile or direction in his films—not much directorial assertion. For wouldn’t that mean that the literary originals have come through clearly, like the view through one of the burnished windows at Darlington Hall? Far more vital to the films is the shapeliness of the screenplays, the pavilionlike distinction of the casts, and the banquet, the very feast, that might be called decor—allowing that England’s intimate countryside and a well-laid table are just kinds of art direction filling the screen.

The Remains of the Day
seems crucial because it depends on repressed emotion, and a level of morality that is indistinguishable from etiquette or good service. The film is built around the astonishing performance of Anthony Hopkins, who is so very clever, so lyrically hidden, so minutely detailed and expressive in his rendering of a man who cannot show his feelings that I felt tortured. I do not blame Hopkins. Actors can do very little but be, or try to be, intelligent, brilliant, and revealing. Stevens, the butler, is unactable, in truth. The concept of the character breaks apart once we see an actor trying. The book allowed him to be unseen, and so the implausibility of the character slipped by. In the book he is also a constipated fusspot who for no good reason tells the story (such men don’t tell anyone, not even themselves). Still, Stevens in the novel is closer to the smug, stupid fellow one must suppose from the facts of the story. There is no need to idealize servants. But Hopkins in the film is a kind of saint, a true and perfect knight no matter that the social order denies him.

The loveliness of Merchant-Ivory gives me the creeps. Their audience, I suspect, is that of people who have lost the habit of going to the movies—and why not?—but who have not read the books they adapt. Perhaps the team is a boon to book sales, to libraries and literacy, and to students who have too little time to read. Perhaps some people have read some of these books because of the films. In which case, why do they say “lovely” and pass by? Why do they not cry out that Henry James is much more? Even that there is distress, irony, doubt, and mystery in the voice of E. M. Forster that these films miss? Next to Merchant-Ivory, I still prefer the Cukor-Selznick
David Copperfield
because it is so alive, so passionate, and as close to crazy as Dickens.

Merchant-Ivory is
Masterpiece Theatre
moviemaking: prestigious, well furnished, accurate, prettily cast—and bland, anonymous, and stealthily interchangeable. Can you tell one Ivory-ized classic author from another? Is there virtue in the ultimate endorsement of buried hearts in
Remains of the Day?
Or may it just be the fallacy that those servants have hearts or are better than stuffed imitations of their idiotic and dangerous betters?

Ivory is American, and there is an American period, or wing, to his work, to go with the Indian and the English. But his “American” films—
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Slaves of New York, The Bostonians, Jane Austen in Manhattan, Roseland, The Wild Party
—are sometimes disasters, and seldom comfortable. And Ivory, I think, does like to be comfortable, which may be a way of saying he is uneasy if pushed into original thought or unhindered energy. He does not seem to ask large questions about his characters’ options. Nor is he inclined to employ robust or dangerous American actors. The impregnably ungiving Paul Newman was his choice for Mr. Bridge.

Still, he pleases many people, and it is not easy to dismiss their pleas for, say,
Howards End
and
The Remains of the Day
instead of
Look Who’s Talking Too, Demolition Man
, or
True Romance
—wastelands of energy. What troubles me most is not that there is room and an audience for Merchant-Ivory: after all, British TV adaptations of the classics established that long ago. Rather, I regret that for so many people they have come to be the epitome of intelligent, sensitive film. That has only been possible because the business, and so many good filmmakers, have given up on winning what is difficult territory. The calamity is that
Howards End
is better, more sophisticated, and more understanding than Scorsese’s
The Age of Innocence
.

More recently, he has had increasing trouble taking on real history, the life of Picasso, and maximum-depth Henry James. But he made a good movie out of the life of James Jones—
A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries
.

J

Hugh Jackman
, b. Sydney, Australia, 1968
Hugh Jackman is what used to be known as a “sport.” He is tall, handsome, cheery, and decent; he works himself silly just to be entertaining; and when he is called one of the fifty most beautiful men alive he has the proper sheepish grin to be modest about it. This is an unambiguous self-delight and health not seen since the heyday of Tyrone Power or Stewart Granger. Jackman does the Tonys (as a host) and he may have walked into the same role at the Oscars after his energetic, exuberant outing in 2009. He sings, he dances, he learns his lines. And he’s pleased to be asked. He seems ready to play Wolverine forever. He will do the most specious Woody Allen project. For three hours and a thousand miles, he was the Drover for Nicole Kidman in
Australia
(08, Baz Luhrmann). He never cracks or creases. And he has more upcoming projects than anyone alive. He is hot (I suppose). Now, he just needs to be interesting.

He worked in a number of Australian television series, and he was Curly in a London revival of
Oklahoma!
He also played Peter Allen in a stage tribute to that quirky entertainer—he did it with love, but Allen’s saucy edge was beyond him. Then his somewhat larger-than-life charisma got him the part of Wolverine in
X-Men
(00, Bryan Singer). The key to Jackman’s presence is that he seems to believe in the whole thing, which may explain my suspicion that he is having a better time than I am. But the trick keeps working:
X2
(03, Singer);
X-Men: The Last Stand
(06, Brett Ratner), et cetera.

As time passed, Jackman’s range was extended, but he keeps veering back to a kind of polite superman: with Ashley Judd in
Someone Like You
(01, Tony Goldwyn);
Swordfish
(01, Dominic Sena); outshining Meg Ryan in
Kate & Leopold
(01, James Mangold); helplessly exposed in the dire
Van Helsing
(04, Stephen Sommers);
Scoop
(06, Woody Allen); his enthusiasm nearly wiped out by
The Fountain
(06, Darren Aronofsky); laboring valiantly in
The Prestige
(07, Christopher Nolan);
Deception
(08, Marcel Langenegger). And
Australia
. That anyone can be “hot” after this record suggests that global warming has usurped our old big heat.

Glenda Jackson
, b. Birkenhead, England, 1936
Not even two Oscars ever softened the abrasive edge of Glenda Jackson’s militant intelligence, or gave it more understanding. She is a good illustration of stage authority seeming aggressive to the camera. We have so few actresses brave enough to scorn charm, it seems rash to chide her rarity. But she bullied with seriousness, and her calculated comedies reveal no true lightness. I think that so many floridly worthy parts and her gruff Englishness have helped disguise her doctrinaire flatness as a screen presence. She looks tense and determined, and only the palpable sense of strain has accounted for the respect in which some people hold her.

She was the daughter of a contractor, and she bristles with a politicized social worker’s antielo-quence, biting at her listeners. Her manner is faintly aggrieved, as if to relax might involve forgiving essential resentments. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963. On stage, she was Charlotte Corday in
Marat/Sade;
Masha in
Three Sisters;
the voice of haranguing rebuke in
US;
a sex-mad Joan of Arc in
Henry VI;
and an Ophelia so managing that one critic, Penelope Gilliatt, thought she was ready to play the Prince.

Her movie career began with a small part in
This Sporting Life
(63, Lindsay Anderson); Charlotte Corday again in the film of
Marat/Sade
(66, Peter Brook);
Negatives
(68, Peter Medak); an Oscar for
Women in Love
(70, Ken Russell);
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
(71, John Schlesinger), scripted by Penelope Gilliatt;
The Music Lovers
(71, Russell);
Mary, Queen of Scots
(71, Charles Jarrott), as Queen Elizabeth, a part she played with great success on a BBC TV series,
Elizabeth R; The Triple Echo
(72, Michael Apted); another Oscar for
A Touch of Class
(72, Melvin Frank), her first comedy; as Emma Hamilton in
Bequest to the Nation
(73, James Cellan Jones); as a nun in
The Tempest
(74, Damiano Damiani); in a film of Genet’s
The Maids
(74, Christopher Miles);
The Romantic Englishwoman
(75, Joseph Losey);
Hedda
(75, Trevor Nunn) from Ibsen’s
Hedda Gabler;
halfway to Hamlet, playing Bernhardt in
The Incredible Sarah
(76, Richard Fleischer); as the Nixon nun in
Nasty Habits
(76, Michael Lindsay-Hogg); and trying acid romance again in
House Calls
(78, Howard Zieff). She played the eccentric English poet in
Stevie
(78, Robert Enders); the teacher in
The Class of Miss MacMichael
(78, Silvio Narizzano); and
Lost and Found
(79, Melvin Frank).