The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (228 page)

There are plans now for her to play Scott Fitzgerald’s Zelda and Eliza Doolittle in a remake of
My Fair Lady
.

Masaki Kobayashi
(1916–96), b. Otaru, Japan
1952:
Musuko no Seishun
. 1953:
Magokoro; Kabe Atsuki Heya
. 1954:
Mittsu no Ai; Kono Hiroi Sora no Dokokani
. 1955:
Uruwashiki Saigetsu
. 1956:
Anata Kaimasu; Izumi
. 1957:
Kuroi Kawa; Ningen no Joken
, part 1. 1960:
Ningen no Joken
, part 2. 1961:
Ningen no Joken
, part 3. 1962:
Karami-ai
. 1963:
Seppuku/Hara-Kiri
. 1964:
Kwaidan
. 1967:
Joi-uchi/Rebellion
. 1968:
Nippon no Seishun
. 1971:
Inochi Bonifuro
. 1974:
Kaseki
. 1978:
Moeru Aki
. 1983:
Tokyo Saiban/Tokyo Trial
(d). 1985:
Shokutaka no nai ie/ The Empty Table
.

A philosophy student, Kobayashi was taken prisoner by the Chinese during the war. On his return, he worked as assistant and scriptwriter to Keisake Kinoshita before himself directing. Those of his films that have been released in the West suggest an accomplished but unadventurous talent. Kobayashi shows a familiar concern with the conflict between emotional impulse and ritualistic pattern, but the concern seems somehow obligatory whereas in Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Oshima it is profound and original. One has the feeling that Kobayashi keeps an eye on the art-house market outside Japan and that native themes have thus become diluted.
Seppuku
and
Rebellion
treat the infringement of society on the individual but, in the first, indulge in an orgy of disembowelling and, in the second, permit coproducer Toshiru Mifune a samurai extravaganza. The idea of
Rebellion
—of a samurai who rebels against the cynical manipulation of the elders in making and then breaking a marriage involving his son—is intriguing, but the resolution is conventionally exciting, bloodthirsty, and never poignant. One has only to recall that brief arc of suicidal blood in
The Ceremony
to feel Oshima’s greater gravity. Similarly, in
Kwaidan
, Kobayashi has resorted to three Lafcadio Hearn ghost stories as much in search of the exotic as to arouse the poetic and lyrical resignation that concludes
Ugetsu
.

Kobayashi’s major work is
Ningen no Joken—The Human Condition
—an immense humane account of a Manchurian factory owner who is victimized for aiding Chinese workers and then suffers terribly in the war with Russia. The complete work is over nine hours long, gruelling, conventional, and a little portentous, but inescapably moving.

Tokyo Trial
was a four-and-a-half-hour documentary on the Japanese war-criminal trials. It uses a great deal of newsreel, from many different sources, yet the film functions as a narrative.

Sir Alexander Korda
(1893–1956), b. Turkeye, Hungary
1916:
Egy Tiszti Kardbojt; Feher Ejszakak; Vergodo Szivek; Nagymama; Mesek az Ivogeprol; Egymillio Fontos Banko
. 1917:
Magnas Miska; A Ketszivu Ferfi; Szent Pter Esernyoje; A Golyakalifa; Magia; Faun, Harrison es Harrison; A Ketlelku Asszony
. 1918:
Az Aranyembr; Mary Ann; Se Ki Se Be
. 1919:
Ave Caesar; Feher Rosza; A 111-es; Yamata
. 1920:
Seine Majestat das Bettlekind
. 1922:
Herrin der Meere; Eine Versunkene Welt; Samson und Dalila
. 1923:
Das Unbekannte Morgen
. 1924:
Tragodie in Hause Hapsburg; Jedermanns Frau
. 1925:
Der Tanzer Meine Frau
. 1926:
Eine Dubarry von Heute; Madame Wunscht Keine Kinder
. 1927:
The Stolen Bride; The Private Life of Helen of Troy
. 1928:
The Yellow Lily; The Night Watch
. 1929:
Love and the Devil; The Squall; Her Private Life
. 1930:
Women Everywhere; Lilies of the Field; The Princess and the Plumber
. 1931:
Rive Gauche; Marius
. 1932:
Service for Ladies; Wedding Rehearsal
. 1933:
The Private Life of Henry VIII; The Girl from Maxim’s
. 1934:
The Private Life of Don Juan
. 1936:
Rembrandt
. 1941:
That Hamilton Woman/ Lady Hamilton
. 1945:
Perfect Strangers
. 1948:
An Ideal Husband
.

Korda was the self-ordained khan of the British film industry. Having worked as a director in his native Hungary, Germany, America, and France, he went to England in 1931 and remained there the rest of his life, receiving the accolade as a solace when he had lost most of his money. No doubt the knighthood moved him, for he responded fulsomely to service and patriotism and would have absorbed all of England’s heritage if he could. His films had already done more for English history than the rest of the industry put together. Should England, then, be grateful? Or is it possible that, in introducing the vain thought that England could rival Hollywood, Korda distracted England from a modest, secure native industry, working to small budgets on indigenous subjects with something like the stylistic innovation achieved in France in the 1930s? Of course, there is ample evidence of commercial wrongheadedness and limited talent apart from Korda, but still he dragged England in a fruitless direction, the ponderous aftermath being J. Arthur Rank’s attempt at postwar imitation.

That said, it is ungenerous not to respond to the Hungarian’s sense of “pomp, magic, and madness,” nor to admire the shameless gaiety of the goulash he made out of England. He grasped one point—years later a credo of BBC TV—that the English had a limitless appetite for their own cozy history, that they loved its pretext for flashy acting, rich costumes, and class distinction. As for authenticity, Korda had that sinuous charm that can make the truth sound unreliable—not that he wasted much time on the truth. In America, he had tested the commercial viability of the “private life” of some household name from history. And with Henry VIII—the safest of all such figures—he successfully produced an international film that made a lot of money in America, never seemed threadbare, and found a major screen personality in Charles Laughton.

It was unfortunate that success came so early, for it urged Korda into grand plans. None of his later films had the same success, even if
Rembrandt
is a better movie. He founded London Films, Alexander Korda Film Productions, borrowed from the Prudential to build Denham studios, and surrounded himself with a coterie of talents—his brothers, Zoltan and art director Vincent, many indifferent Hungarians, and some technicians of great talent, like Georges Périnal.

The labor of organization drained his own zest for direction, so that his last film, from Oscar Wilde, with sets by Cecil Beaton, photographed by Périnal, and with Paulette Goddard as Mrs. Cheveley, is a listless mess. In America, he had directed for First National, often from Hungarian stories, and with Billie Dove or his first wife, Maria Corda. After a brief interlude in France, where his
Marius
fitted into Pagnol’s trilogy, he came to England and married again to Merle Oberon, who appeared in
Henry VIII
and
Don Juan
and whose car accident mercifully interrupted
Claudius
, already riven by the impossible egotism of himself, Laughton, and von Sternberg.

Even so, in
Fun in a Chinese Laundry
Sternberg speaks with rare and unaffected warmth of Korda’s ability to survive in a sea of deceits and debts. Sternberg paints a pretty picture of himself seeing an almost penniless Korda off from Hollywood. Truth to tell, they were made for each other. And if Sternberg was too prickly a talent for the fragile mock-Babylon at Denham, still he was a character from Korda’s world. Either one might have immortalized the other with more luck. As it is, the footage of
Claudius
is exquisite and perverted.

After 1939, Korda devoted himself to the war effort, and in peace he smiled his way through decline. From 1949 onward he took up a rather vague role as executive producer. The result, as always, was a string of oddities, a sort of Xanadu necklace, each piece glittering but flawed. The British cinema is inconceivable without Korda, and yet perhaps he gave it illusory standards. Look at a selection of the pictures he produced: not a dull one among them, not one that does not sparkle with silliness (if nothing else):
Catherine the Great
(34, Paul Czinner), the Bergner version, made to tease Sternberg, perhaps;
The Scarlet Pimpernel
(34, Harold Young);
Sanders of the River
(35, Zoltan Korda);
The Ghost Goes West
(35, René Clair);
Things to Come
(36, William Cameron Menzies);
Elephant Boy
(36, Z. Korda and Robert Flaherty);
Knight Without Armour
(37, Jacques Feyder);
The Drum
(38, Z. Korda);
The Four Feathers
(39, Z. Korda);
The Thief of Bagdad
(40, Tim Whelan, Ludwig Berger, and Michael Powell)—perhaps the best, and the most influential;
The Jungle Book
(42, Z. Korda);
Anna Karenina
(48, Julien Duvivier);
The Fallen Idol
(48, Carol Reed);
The Small Back Room
(48, Powell);
The Third Man
(49, Reed);
Gone to Earth
(50, Powell);
Seven Days to Noon
(50, John Boulting);
The Tales of Hoffmann
(51, Powell);
Cry, the Beloved Country
(52, Z. Korda);
The Sound Barrier
(52, David Lean);
Hobson’s Choice
(53, Lean);
The Deep Blue Sea
(55, Anatole Litvak); and
Richard III
(55, Laurence Olivier).

Anna Karenina
is a dud, but consider that run from
The Fallen Idol
to
The Tales of Hoffmann
—six films, no two alike, all full of enterprise and showmanship, and all as moving as on the day they were shot.
The Third Man
was all the more of an achievement in that Korda had to ward off the heavy breathing of a fellow-monster, Selznick. Not that Selznick could ever have delivered the tough, bitter romance of
The Third Man
.

Zoltan Korda
(1895–1961), b. Turkeye, Hungary
1927:
Die Ey Teufel
. 1933:
Cash
. 1935:
Sanders of the River; Conquest of the Air
. 1936:
Elephant Boy
(codirected with Robert Flaherty);
Forget Me Not
. 1937:
Revolt in the Jungle
. 1938:
The Drum
. 1939:
The Four Feathers
. 1942:
The Jungle Book
. 1943:
Sahara
. 1945:
Counter-Attack
. 1947:
The Macomber Affair
. 1948:
A Woman’s Vengeance
. 1952:
Cry, the Beloved Country
. 1955:
Storm Over the Nile
(codirected with Terence Young).

The younger brother of Alexander Korda, Zoltan fought throughout the First World War for Austria-Hungary. He entered films in Germany in the 1920s as an editor and cameraman. After making his first feature in Germany, he went to America and wrote the script for
Women Everywhere
(30, A. Korda). For the next ten years he worked in Britain as one of his brother’s cohort of Magyars.

Zoltan played an enthusiastic part in that incongruous sympathy of one lost empire for another fast dying.
Sanders of the River
was so smugly jingoistic that Paul Robeson, who played the African chief, preferred to disown it. In retrospect, however, the imperial offensiveness seems peripheral to an engaging taste for adventurous nonsense. It was the feeling for romance that inspired the Korda empire, and it was only proper that they should need to establish themselves as refugees. Robeson may have been angered, but Sabu was exactly the Little Black Sambo they needed. He was featured in
Elephant Boy
, with an impact on Flaherty (used to indigenous peoples) that can only be imagined, in
The Drum
and
The Jungle Book
.

By then, Zoltan had gone back to Hollywood.
Sahara
is a foolish League of Nations war movie set in the Libyan desert. But in his next films, Zoltan unwrapped ambitions not encouraged by his brother.
The Macomber Affair
, from Hemingway’s short story, is respectable and benefits from Joan Bennett; while
A Woman’s Vengeance
is a version of Aldous Huxley’s
The Gioconda Smile
. As if to make amends for
Sanders of the River
, Zoltan filmed Alan Paton’s
Cry, the Beloved Country
, an early, if conventional, cinematic rehabilitation of the black experience. He came back to England to lend his experience to
Storm Over the Nile
, a remake of
The Four Feathers
.

Harmony Korine
, b. Bolinas, California, 1974
1997:
Gummo
. 1999:
Julien Donkey-Boy
. 2007:
Mister Lonely
. 2009:
Trash Humpers
.

There’s no wonder at the appeal of minimalism in an age of budgets over $100 million, of astonishing special effects and a widening gap between the harsh realities in which most people exist and the daft fantasies they are supposed to aspire to. But minimalism can grow out of political anger, a critique of capitalism, stylistic austerity, or a kind of numb, pretentious helplessness that sees the irony in a copy of
Vogue
floating on the toxic surface of a full latrine. A genuine political dismay would be best advised to get into politics, to change things that way. But then the aesthetic response—the urge, say, to make Dogme-like films, or simply to record the passing of unending human disaster—can seem cold and exploitative. In the end, what is the point of minimalism if it only works in the dark?