The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (264 page)

Malick was the son of an oil man, sent to Harvard and then awarded a Rhodes scholarship. He read philosophy and alternated between journalism and teaching at MIT, before he tried Greystone, the AFI academy in California. He thrived there and started writing scripts. He has a credit on
Pocket Money
(72, Stuart Rosenberg), a study of lugubrious male companionship that inaugurates the listless surrealism of dim people as conceived by a fine mind in the narration of Malick’s two feature films. It is unique and eloquent; but it comes close to being patronizing.

Badlands
is derived from a real incident, but its tone is the half-understood legend of fame pursued by boys watching James Dean and girls steeped in romantic magazines. Its beauty is never obtrusive or patronizing toward the uncultivated characters. The story moves on with an energetic fatalism, worthy of
You Only Live Once
, another of its sources. The narration was poignant rather than portentous, and the playing by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek was far more gripping than the numb gestures of
Days of Heaven
. Above all,
Badlands
balanced the externals of landscape and violence with their imaginative resonance. It was legitimate for the film to avoid explanation because the action was so dense and eloquent, the myth so solid and matter-of-fact.

Days of Heaven
was a very disappointing follow-up. The imagery had become thunderous and stately, as if Malick and Nestor Almendros were so greedy for prestige that they couldn’t release a frame unless it had that sentimental, decorous spaciousness beloved by Andrew Wyeth. And as the image had grown in vanity, so the action subsided into a vague biblical allegory. Monologue was used again, with such helpless repetition that one was forced to question Malick’s inventiveness. His obsession seemed defensive and wilting, even if it was unique. The young outlaws now appeared to be shadowy symbols becalmed by significance.

After that, Malick became not just an absentee but a recluse. It was said that he did an early script for what became
Great Balls of Fire
(89, Jim McBride). Occasionally, magazine journalists attempted to discover where he was and what he might have been doing.

There was enormous anticipation for
The Thin Red Line
. I can think of few recent American movies in which so many critics and viewers hoped to find glory and excellence. What happened? I have read a script (by Malick) very different from, and far more challenging than, the picture released. Yes,
The Thin Red Line
is “beautiful,” but that sort of beauty had always been Malick’s greatest jeopardy. It is also flagrantly incoherent and terribly arty. Too many of the dazzling cast are wasted, or embarrassed. One longs to hear the full story of how that film went astray.

John Malkovich
, b. Benton, Illinois, 1953
There are people who rank Malkovich among the handful of top American actors of the moment—though they probably think of stage as much as screen. Yet is there more than a handful (at the level of audience) that wants to see him—let alone in leading romantic roles? There is no hiding his strangeness—gangling frame, thick legs, receding hair, buttony eyes, blank look, hallucinated voice … to all of which Malkovich brings a deliberate, nearly insolent, affectlessness. He does not seem quite normal or wholesome—he can easily take on the aura of disturbance or unqualified nastiness. So it is all the more remarkable that, by the age of fifty, he does stay within reach of being a lead actor.

From the Illinois State University he joined the Steppenwolf theatre company in Chicago. It was there that he made his initial impact, and to this day he declares a greater allegiance to theatre work—“I don’t like seeing this scene taken and put here when it was specifically constructed to be put there. Who the fuck says they [directors] can do that? I wouldn’t
dream
of doing that to a
writer’s
work.”

He was seen first on the small screen:
Word of Honor
(81, Mel Damski);
American Dream
(81, Damski); as the older brother in Sam Shepard’s
True West
(82, Gary Sinise and Alan Goldstein), a Steppenwolf production, transferred to American Playhouse. He played the blind man and won a supporting actor nomination in
Places in the Heart
(84, Robert Benton);
The Killing Fields
(84, Roland Joffe);
Eleni
(85, Peter Yates); as Biff to Dustin Hoffman’s Loman in
Death of a Salesman
on Broadway and then as a TV movie (85, Volker Schlondorff);
Making Mr. Right
(87, Susan Seidelman);
The Glass Menagerie
(87, Paul Newman); excellent as the survivor rat in
Empire of the Sun
(87, Steven Spielberg); and
Miles from Home
(88, Sinise).

He bought the rights to Anne Tyler’s
The Accidental Tourist
, but then let William Hurt play the lead in the movie (88, Lawrence Kasdan); a boxoffice success, as Valmont in
Dangerous Liaisons
(88, Stephen Frears); on British TV, with Kate Nelligan and Miranda Richardson, in Harold Pinter’s
Old Times
(90, Simon Curtis); brilliantly, innocently self-destructive in
The Sheltering Sky
(90, Bernardo Bertolucci); very droll in
The Object of Beauty
(91, Michael Lindsay-Hogg);
Queens Logic
(91, Steve Rash);
Shadows and Fog
(92, Woody Allen); a very gentle giant in
Of Mice and Men
(92, Sinise); and
Jennifer 8
(92, Bruce Robinson).

His intelligence and mischief were put to very cunning ends playing the assassin in
In the Line of Fire
(93, Wolfgang Petersen). With sheer deft detail of reaction and stealthy malice he made his killer essential to the movie’s game. We love our movie monsters so much, and
In the Line of Fire
may have sealed Malkovich’s future in villainy. For TV, he was Kurtz, up the river and as high as old cheese, in
Heart of Darkness
(94, Nicolas Roeg).

In the years since, Malkovich has made himself an institution—not just a fine and versatile actor but one who seems to divine the ease with which modern cinema ranges between garbage (
Con Air
) and ventures of exceptional integrity (
The Portrait of a Lady, Shadow of the Vampire
). In a single gesture or drawled word, Malkovich can go from high camp to rare delicacy. It leaves him as maybe the most mannered and riveting of modern players. As for his attitude—his mix of humor and adventure—one has only to realize the immense support he gave to
Being John Malkovich
—as if secure that no one else could or should do it.

Just think of the range, the risk, and the fun in this recent list:
Beyond the Clouds
(95, Wim Wenders and Michelangelo Antonioni);
The Convent
(95, Manuel de Oliveira); Jekyll and Hyde in
Mary Reilly
(96, Stephen Frears); the test site director in
Mulholland Falls
(96, Lee Tamahori);
Der Unhold
(96, Volker Schlondorff); Osmond in
The Portrait of a Lady
(96, Jane Campion); Cyrus the Virus in
Con Air
(97, Simon West); Athos in
The Man in the Iron Mask
(98, Randall Wallace);
Rounders
(98, John Dahl); as Charlus in
Time Regained
(99, Raul Ruiz);
Being John Malkovich
(99, Spike Jonze); the Dauphin in
Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
(99, Luc Besson); Herman Mankiewicz in
RKO 281
(99, Benjamin Ross); Murnau in
Shadow of the Vampire
(00, Elias Merhige); Javert in
Les Misérables
(00, Josee Dayan);
Les Ames Fortes
(01, Ruiz).

Does anyone so particular work harder:
Hotel
(01, Mike Figgis);
Je Rentre à la Maison
(01, de Oliveira); as Talleyrand on TV in
Napoleon
(02, Yves Simoneau); and, at last, sublime casting, Ripley in
Ripley’s Game
(02, Liliana Cavani). He acted in
Johnny English
(03, Peter Howitt), and then directed a first film—
The Dancer Upstairs
(03)—altogether too calm and plain. He acted again in
Un Film Parlé
(03, de Oliveira); and very odd as the impersonator in
Color Me Kubrick
(04, Brian W. Cook).

Without losing any originality as an actor, Malkovich is an increasing figure on the independent film scene: he produced and played Charles II in
The Libertine
(04, Charles Dunmore);
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
(05, Garth Jennings);
Art School Confidential
(06, Terry Zwigoff);
Eragon
(06, Stefen Fangmeier); as
Klimt
(06, Ruiz); figuring in a documentary,
Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place
(07, Henry Ferrini);
In Transit
(07, Tom Roberts);
Beowulf
(07, Robert Zemeckis);
Gardens of the Night
(08, Damian Harris);
Burn After Reading
(08, the Coen Brothers);
Changeling
(08, Eastwood);
The Great Buck Howard
(08, Sean McGinly);
Disgrace
(08, Eve Jacobs);
Afterwards
(08, Giles Bourdos);
Jonah Hex
(09, Jimmy Heyward), as the trainer to
Secretariat
(10, Randall Wallace).

He has also directed a second feature,
Blazing Satchels
, but it appears to have had no release.

Louis Malle
(1932–95), b. Thumeries, France
1956:
Le Monde du Silence
(codirected with J. Y. Cousteau) (d). 1957:
Ascenseur pour L’Échafaud/ Lift to the Scaffold; Les Amants
. 1960:
Zazie dans le Métro
. 1962:
Vie Privée
. 1963:
Le Feu Follet/Will of the Wisp
. 1965:
Viva Maria!
. 1967:
Le Voleur
. 1968: “William Wilson,” an episode in
Histoires Extraordinaires
. 1969:
Inde 68
(d);
Calcutta
(d). 1971:
Le Souffle au Coeur/Dearest Love
. 1973:
Lacombe Lucien
. 1975:
Black Moon
. 1978:
Pretty Baby
. 1980:
Atlantic City
. 1981:
My Dinner with Andre
. 1984:
Crackers
. 1985:
Alamo Bay; God’s Country
(d). 1987:
Au Revoir les Enfants
. 1990:
Milou en Mai/May Fools
. 1992:
Damage
. 1994:
Vanya on 42nd Street
.

A student at IDHEC, Malle participated on Cousteau’s voyages for several years and was then assistant to Robert Bresson on
Un Condamné à Mort s’est Échappé
(56). Although he began to work at the same time as the New Wave directors, he was a speculative, conventional talent: sophisticated and polished, but moving rather aimlessly from one subject to another, only rarely discovering more than entertainment in his films. Too often, his choice of material was overambitious or fashionable, and his working out of human situations melodramatic. At worst, he had a taste for glossy, commercial packages that masquerade as artiness, and it seemed reasonable to regard him as the successor to such proficient but shallow directors as Autant-Lara and Duvivier.

Ascenseur pour L’Échafaud
was a good thriller, though without the moral undertones in Chabrol’s films, that wore its Miles Davis score rather modishly.
Les Amants
was a claustrophobic exercise in passion disrupting the bourgeoisie, foolishly proclaimed in its time for sexual candor but as cold as plastic flowers and with a fatal, world-weary slowness. It was also one of Jeanne Moreau’s few heartless pictures. It may have been the eye for polite taste that suggested
Les Amants;
it was certainly a search for intellectual respectability that prompted
Zazie
, a crushingly unfunny film.
Vie Privée
, made with American money, was an opportunist decoration on Brigitte Bardot’s own life, helpless with the limits of the woman and driven to an awful mock-operatic ending.

Even so, Malle captured huge audiences with his idiotic pairing of Bardot and Moreau in
Viva Maria!
, a silly extravaganza that was exactly the sort of “modern film” required by audiences frightened of Godard and Rohmer. His Indian documentaries, including a series of films shot for television, showed his visual elegance but offended many Indians with their superficial criticism of the country. The most glaring crack in Malle’s output is the meretricious
Le Souffle au Coeur
, a sub-Truffaut study of youth in the 1950s, full of accurate detail and not without charm or humor, but ruined by its dependence on an unconvincing and rosily conveyed moment of incest.

Only two films stand out from this persistent cheating.
Le Feu Follet
, based on a novel by Drieu la Rochelle, penetrates a man’s advance on suicide. This mood of pessimism is more compelling still in
Le Voleur
, Malle’s best French film, a study of chronic theft as a response to social decay. It thrives on the abrupt laconicism of Belmondo and ends with one character saying, “Life seems so cold … We are surrounded by madness … It is so wearying.” It is the most revealing moment in Malle’s work, even if the other films might suggest it was only glib fatalism.

Pretty Baby
was Malle’s American debut, rich with the promise of a piquant subject, Sven Nykvist as photographer, and the eerie poise of Brooke Shields. It probably trapped itself in that it had to be timid to protect the child actress from charges of pornography and exploitation. The interior atmosphere of the brothel from the child’s point of view was managed very well, but caution and taste smothered the city of New Orleans, the jazz, and the trade of sex. Worse, the beguiling topic of a photographer who can only make love with a lens was thrown away.