The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (232 page)

Emir Kusturica
, b. Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, 1955
1981:
Sjecas li se, Dolly Bell/Do You Remember Dolly Bell?
. 1985:
Onc Na Sluzbenom Putu/When Father Was Away on Business
. 1988:
Dom Za Vesanje/Time of the Gypsies
. 1993:
Arizona Dream
. 1995:
Underground
. 1998:
Crna Macka, Beli Macor/Black Cat, White Cat
. 2001:
Super 8 Stories
(d). 2004:
Zivot Je Cudo/Life Is a Miracle
. 2007:
Zavet/Promise Me This
. 2008.
Maradona
(d).

The Kusturica of
Underground
and
Black Cat, White Cat
is hard to take, for an exceptional talent seems to be whipping itself out of control. But that may only be the response of relative cultural stability beholding the many recent ordeals of the Balkans. To put it another way: in his first two movies—about coming of age and then, in
When Father…
, a child’s dazed view of bureaucracy and worse—Kusturica appeared to possess the shapely irony and battered humanism that make life comfortable for the customers of art-house cinemas in those countries that are not being bombed or cleansed. Or not so as you’d notice, or feel the hurt.

When Father Was Away on Business
won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and it got an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. All because of ways in which it was digestible, and not alien. But that Kusturica has blown himself up. Has he broken down, or gone crazy? Or has he simply found the assurance or horror to act out the fearful energies and real chaos for which irony is no medicine?

Time of the Gypsies
may have been the turning point in that it was a willful departure—Kusturica is not Gypsy; he hardly grasped the language of his own film; and the style—whether magic realism or indulgent fantasy—lunged towards confusion. Or was it
Arizona Dream
, the bizarre encounter with Americana, well acted (by Faye Dunaway, Johnny Depp, and Jerry Lewis) but increasingly private, and so far from Arizona’s understanding?

Underground
and
Black Cat, White Cat
are very spectacular: indeed, there is the feeling of having all of film’s possible or farfetched elements thrown at one. Such dynamics have their admirers. But the essence grows thinner as the maelstrom becomes more contrived and angry. It’s as if Kusturica now takes madness and the intolerable burden of the artist for granted. Yet such things are usually more affecting if they appear as surprises.

More recently, Kusturica acted—with power—as the man who is to be hanged in
The Widow of St. Pierre
(00, Patrice Leconte);
The Good Thief
(02, Neil Jordan);
Jagoda u Supermarketu
(03, Dusan Milic);
Hermano
(03, Givoanni Robbiano);
L’Affaire Farewell
(09, Christian Carion).

Machiko Kyo
, b. Osaka, Japan, 1924
Knowledgeable moviegoers in the West were always aware of serious “foreign” film. They knew the Odessa steps, the frenzy of
Metropolis
, the baker’s wife, and the bicycle thief. But although a very few movies were imported from Japan during the thirties, the great twenty-five-year tradition of Japanese film was unknown until it sprang, fully grown, from the head of Akira Kurosawa with his 1950
Rashomon
, which won the Grand Prize at Venice in 1951. It also introduced a new actress to the West—Machiko Kyo, who played the wife. In 1953, two movies built on
Rashomon
’s success—
Ugetsu
(53, Kenji Mizoguchi) and
Gate of Hell
(53, Teinosuke Kinugasa)—and both featured Kyo. In
Ugetsu
, especially, as the ghost princess, she had a sensual languor that was both magical and sinister.

So Western introductions to Japanese film were automatically linked to our view of Kyo—always in period costume, always seductive, mysterious, and gently easing away that Western prejudice: that Asian women could not be erotic or attractive. Ironically, Kyo was probably more publicized than valued in Japan during this period—she had begun as a dancer and in 1949 was given the full starlet treatment, the first Japanese actress to go the route of cheesecake and sex appeal.

This all led to her appearance with Marlon Brando in
The Teahouse of the August Moon
(56, Daniel Mann)—if only it could have been in
Sayonara!
. But her career was revitalized in Japan because of Western respect—it
had
begun to fade. Now there was no stopping her, and in all she has made over ninety films—as
Yang Kwei Fei
(55, Mizoguchi); out of period clothes as a defiant young prostitute in Mizoguchi’s last film,
Street of Shame
(56); erotic, ambiguous, and deadly in Ichikawa’s
Odd Obsession
(59), based on Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel
The Key
, and one of four films for Ichikawa; effective as the leading lady of the theatre company in
Floating Weeds
(59)—the only film she made for Ozu. She worked once for Naruse, in
Older Brother, Younger Sister
(53); and more frequently for other leading directors—Kozaburo Yoshimura, Daisuke Ito, and, notably, Shiro Toyoda, in
Sweet Sweat
(64).

Though her range extended, she never lost her compelling sexual glamour—the seductive walk, the heavily lidded eyes, the inviting lips. But always in our mind’s eye there is the secret, provocative expression of that sensual face, framed in the cascade of black hair, which riveted us in
Rashomon
. How far did that breakthrough owe its success to Kyo’s resemblance to our femmes fatales and to
Rashomon
’s very persuasive evidence that women were not to be trusted? That paranoia is vital to world cinema.

L

Neil LaBute
, b. Detroit, Michigan, 1963
1997:
In the Company of Men
. 1998:
Your Friends & Neighbors
. 2000:
Nurse Betty; Bash: Latterday Plays
(TV). 2002:
Possession
. 2003:
The Shape of Things
. 2006:
The Wicker Man
. 2008:
Lakeview Terrace
. 2010:
Death at a Funeral
.

The titles of Neil LaBute’s first two films were sometimes assaulted as cunning, or poker-faced, tricks to lure innocent viewers into his uniquely chilling way of observing a group. As if there were innocent viewers any longer! Some shrank from LaBute (it was pointed out with horror that he was a graduate of Brigham Young University and therefore … a Mormon?). A few others observed that the misanthropy went with a very cool directorial hand, observant writing, and fine playing. It made one wonder what Fritz Lang might have done with
Friends
.

LaBute is first of all a writer: he absorbs talk (like someone released from deafness) and the helpless ways it betrays us. He also seems to see everyone as a helpless, unpaid actor. His pose as a director is what is special: the detachment; the unwillingness to scold malice, wickedness, or unkindness; and the subsequent, quite casual suggestion that we sort it out. There is also a steady development in his work—after all, who could have guessed that the “nasty” setup in
In the Company of Men
would lead to the good-natured panorama of
Nurse Betty?

Your Friends and Neighbors
rose to nearly intolerable heights (in the Jason Patric performance—which was bravura but actually rather blunter than LaBute usually permits). I think there is a big future here, and I find it startling and exciting that he is now doing A. S. Byatt’s novel
Possession
. Not suitable? Maybe. But suppose that LaBute is learning who he is slowly, at a pace he recommends to us?

LaBute’s
Wicker Man
was a straw man and a big letdown. But
Lakeview Terrace
had much more mood and promise, and a hint of the demon in Samuel L. Jackson.

Gregory La Cava
(1892–1952), b. Towanda, Pennsylvania
1921:
His Nibs
. 1924:
The New School Teacher;
Restless Wives
. 1925:
Womanhandled
. 1926:
Let’s Get Married; Say It Again; So’s Your Old Man
. 1927:
The Gay Defender; Paradise for Two; Running Wild; Tell It to Sweeney
. 1928:
Feel My Pulse; Half a Bride
. 1929:
Big News; Saturday’s Children
. 1930:
His First Command
. 1931:
Laugh and Get Rich; Smart Woman
. 1932:
Symphony of Six Million; The Age of Consent; The Half-Naked Truth
. 1933:
Gabriel Over the White House; Bed of Roses; Gallant Lady
. 1934:
The Affairs of Cellini; What Every Woman Knows
. 1935:
Private Worlds; She Married Her Boss
. 1936:
My Man Godfrey
. 1937:
Stage Door
. 1939:
Fifth Avenue Girl
. 1940:
Primrose Path
. 1941:
Unfinished Business
. 1942:
Lady in a Jam
. 1947:
Living in a Big Way
.

Trained as a political cartoonist, La Cava wrote scripts for comedy shorts before being given the chance to direct. Most of his silent pictures were made at Paramount, including five Richard Dix films and two W. C. Fields pictures—
So’s Your Old Man
and
Running Wild
(Fields and La Cava were drinking buddies).

Some said La Cava drank on the set, and that he was a rebel. He didn’t like studio authority, and he could easily turn indignant over social conditions in the 1930s. Yet he loathed Roosevelt and liberal solutions. Actors loved working with him, and he had a manner that could let careful preparation seem spontaneous. He is a terrific comedy director, but—as James Harvey has pointed out—with an edge of disquiet, or anger, even. That edge is very important to
My Man Godfrey
, one of the greatest of comedies, but with many shivery insights, social and personal, and a true sense of a daft paradise ready to topple over the brink. Its theme plainly fascinated La Cava, for
Fifth Avenue Girl
(a lesser film) is the same story, with a woman (Ginger Rogers) in the Godfrey role.

Equally, despite Selznick’s heavy and sweet hand,
Symphony of Six Million
is moved by a city of painful contrasts, and
Gabriel Over the White House
—with Walter Huston as a crooked president who sees the light—plays with dangerous elements.

Stage Door
and
The Half-Naked Truth
are wonderful entertainments (Morrie Ryskind was a writer on
Stage Door
, and he was on
Godfrey
, too).
The Primrose Path
has Ginger Rogers as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks in love with the decent Joel McCrea.
What Every Woman Knows
(from J. M. Barrie) has Helen Hayes sorting out her dim husband’s political career. In general, La Cava delighted in struggles of moral intelligence between men and women.
She Married Her Boss
is a model title and attitude for La Cava films, and it was written by Sidney Buchman, but it is rather dull.

It’s ironic, in view of his critical eye on America, that he lost his way when war came. He was invariably good with actors, and I would guess that the answer to his ups and downs lies in his relations with actors. Allan Scott (who was on
Fifth Avenue Girl
and
Primrose Path
) has said that La Cava mulled over many versions of a scene before giving actors their pages an hour before the camera rolled.

La Cava is still underrated.
My Man Godfrey
gets smarter as we revive its age of contrasts.

Alan Ladd
(1913–64), b. Hot Springs, Arkansas
As a child, he moved to California and excelled at athletics and diving. Even so, he grew no higher than five feet six inches and remained blond, blue-eyed, and more serene than other leading men. It was more than Universal, his first Hollywood employer, could stomach, and Ladd stayed on the fringes of “The Day of the Locust” world from 1932 onward. He appeared in
The Goldwyn Follies
, worked on radio, was credited in
Once in a Lifetime
(32, Russell Mack);
Pigskin Parade
(36, David Butler);
Souls at Sea
(37, Henry Hathaway);
Come On, Leathernecks
(38, James Cruze);
Rulers of the Sea
(39, Frank Lloyd); and he is a shadowy presence at the end of
Citizen Kane
, one of the several reporters packing up, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, who says: “Or Rosebud.” The stance and the voice are inimitably Ladd, so that one can imagine him simply waiting for Gregg Toland’s low key to lift like the morning mist.

In fact, he was rescued by Sue Carol, an actress turned agent whom he later married, and in 1942 he had a first success in
Joan of Paris
(Robert Stevenson). Then, in a touch of Hollywood’s haphazard genius, Paramount cast him opposite Veronica Lake as the hired killer in
This Gun for Hire
(42, Frank Tuttle) and as Hammett’s man who walks alone in
The Glass Key
(42, Stuart Heisler). Although in life they did not get on, in films their miniature blond(e) embraces seemed to define visual harmony. Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. These films are still exciting, and Ladd’s calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel. He had a great voice, too, deeper than one expected.

For some ten years, Ladd was a prolific middle-rank star. His partnership with Lake was continued in
The Blue Dahlia
(46, George Marshall) and
Saigon
(48, Lesley Fenton). As well as making several films for John Farrow—
China
(43);
Two Years Before the Mast
(46);
Calcutta
(47); and
Beyond Glory
(48)—he made
Lucky Jordan
(42, Tuttle);
And Now Tomorrow
(44, Irving Pichel);
Salty O’Rourke
(45, Raoul Walsh);
OSS
(46, Pichel);
Wild Harvest
(47, Tay Garnett); and
Captain Carey USA
(50, Mitchell Leisen).