The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (318 page)

But in the list above, I have withheld the (d) description for a handful of films—for
200 Motels, Wagner, Puccini, Testimony
, and
The Children
, all of which I prefer to regard as “features,” if only because they are total statements that turn famous lives into story.
Puccini
is a musical biography like so much of Palmer’s work, but it has searing scenes with Robert Stephens and Virginia McKenna that feel like drama.
200 Motels
is a free meditation on Frank Zappa’s book.
Wagner
was an epic biopic, with Richard Burton, Ralph Richardson, and John Gielgud.
The Children
is adapted from Edith Wharton and it stars Kim Novak. As for
Testimony
, a life of Shostakovich, with Ben Kingsley as the composer, it is one of the greatest British movies ever made. It is also a great Russian movie.

Palmer was evacuated from London as a child. He lived in Suffolk and Cornwall, and then he went to Cambridge and from there to the BBC training program. He had trouble with the British broadcasting authorities—but are we to imagine that his difficulty kept his score down? On the other hand, almost alone among British makers, he has stayed at home and he has produced several tributes to the stiff upper lip so famous in his homeland—I’m thinking of his work on British composers (Britten, Walton, Purcell), but also his tributes to soccer player Bobby Moore, John Osborne, and Margot Fonteyn (his film on her semitragic life is a quiet horror piece).

Tony Palmer deserves seasons and study. As a stylist, he is first of all a cataloguer of film history. But when he turns his talent loose, you feel the proximity of opera, hysteria, and old Hollywood. Is he too old or austere to make a great fiction film? Is he interested? Meanwhile what is
Testimony
—the picture I suggest starting with and Ben Kingsley’s most profound contribution toward thought, hope, and dread in the twentieth century (just think about that one).

Lilli Palmer
(Lillie Marie Peiser) (1914–86), b. Posen, Germany
The daughter of an actress and a surgeon, she studied acting in Berlin and began work in stock and cabaret. In 1933, she left for France and in 1934 she came to England under contract to Alexander Korda. He changed his mind about her but she stayed on and made a film debut in
Crime Unlimited
(35, Ralph Ince). In the next year she had several small parts, including
First Offence
(36, Herbert Mason) and
The Secret Agent
(36, Alfred Hitchcock), and by 1937 she starred in
Sunset in Vienna
(Norman Walker),
Command Performance
(Sinclair Hill), and
Crackerjack
(Albert de Courville). She was a leading actress throughout the war:
Blind Folly
(39, Reginald Denham);
A Girl Must Live
(39, Carol Reed);
Thunder Rock
(42, Roy Boulting);
The Gentle Sex
(43, Maurice Elvey and Leslie Howard);
English Without Tears
(44, Harold French); with her husband, Rex Harrison, in
The Rake’s Progress
(45, Sidney Gilliat); and
Beware of Pity
(46, Elvey).

When Harrison went on contract to America, she accompanied him as a freelancer. In Britain, she had looked pretty, but “European.” In Hollywood she was turned into an intriguing beauty in four movies:
Cloak and Dagger
(46, Fritz Lang);
Body and Soul
(47, Robert Rossen);
My Girl Tisa
(48, Elliott Nugent); and
No Minor Vices
(48, Lewis Milestone). She jumped on
Cloak and Dagger
like a refugee offered a passport. Her quick change of the two Ginas—an Italian girl, and a woman hardened by war—is very touching. She played Shaw’s Cleopatra on Broadway, went to France for
Hans le Marin
(49), and played in
The Long Dark Hall
(50, Anthony Bushell) in England. With Harrison, she appeared on Broadway in
Bell, Book and Candle
, and they then made
The Four Poster
(52, Irving Reis).

During the London run of
BB and C
, the marriage broke up and Lilli Palmer commenced a nomadic career, working in France, Germany, Britain, America, Italy, or Spain, with all the insouciance of the mysterious, continental woman she was usually asked to play. It is a story of drudgery, haphazardly illuminated by parts worthy of her, chiefly
Montparnasse 19
(57, Jacques Becker) and
Le Rendezvous de Minuit
(62, Roger Leenhardt). Otherwise, even a sample list sounds wayward and forlorn:
Feuerwerk
(54, Kurt Hoffmann);
Anastasia die Letzte Zarentochter
(56, Falk Harnack);
Madchen in Uniform
(58, Geza von Radvanyi);
But Not For Me
(59, Walter Lang);
Conspiracy of Hearts
(60, Ralph Thomas);
Frau Warren’s Gewerbe
(60, Akos von Rathony);
The Pleasure of His Company
(61) and
The Counterfeit Traitor
(61), both by George Seaton;
Leviathan
(61, Leonard Keigel);
Finche Dura la Tempesta
(62, Charles Frend);
The Flight of the White Stallions
(63, Arthur Hiller);
Le Grain de Sable
(64, Pierre Kast);
Operation Crossbow
(64, Michael Anderson);
The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders
(65, Terence Young);
Le Tonnerre de Dieu
(65, Denys de la Patellière);
Kongress amusiert sich
(66, von Radvanyi);
Sebastian
(67, David Greene);
Paarungen
(67, Michael Verhoeven);
Nobody Runs Forever
(68, Thomas);
Oedipus the King
(68, Philip Saville);
Hard Contract
(69, S. Lee Pogostin);
De Sade
(69, Cy Endfield and Roger Corman);
La Peau de Torpedo
(69, Jean Delannoy);
La Residencia
(70, Narciso Ibanez Serrador);
Night Hair Child
(71, James Kelly); then regular performances, still beautiful but bereft of chance, in the TV series,
The Zoo Gang; Lotte in Weimar
(75, Egon Gunther);
The Boys from Brazil
(78, Franklin Schaffner); and
The Holcroft Covenant
(85, John Frankenheimer).

Gwyneth Paltrow
, b. Los Angeles, 1972
There have been too many Gwyneth Paltrow jokes by far—ranging from the play on words with “paltry” to the evident rapture felt for her by the boss of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein. But honest adoration in a mogul can be a fine and warming thing, and all his obsession has done is give her a host of silly films in which she can learn her craft. More useful by far to recollect that she is the child of director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner—one of the more strangely overlooked great actresses in America. So Paltrow may have been pushed in odd directions—into a leather bikini in
Talk
magazine; in the general direction of being “our” Grace Kelly. But she can act, and she seems to have a strong character that will cause little harm even if she doesn’t last as long as Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis. An Oscar for
Shakespeare in Love
(98, John Madden) was too generous—though she carried that role off without a fluff or a hesitation—but there have always been actresses (like Audrey Hepburn) who inspire daft generosity.

She began in
Hook
(91, Steven Spielberg) and
Shout
(91, Jeff Hornaday), so she had early lessons in the need to get better. But then she attracted real attention being slinky in
Malice
(93, Harold Becker) and
Flesh and Bone
(93, Steve Kloves), where she stole the show. Next she was in
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
(94, Alan Rudolph);
Jefferson in Paris
(95, James Ivory);
Moonlight and Valentino
(95, David Anspaugh);
Se7en
(95, David Fincher), where she is very touching;
Hard Eight
(96, Paul Thomas Anderson), another of her tougher performances;
The Pallbearer
(96, Matt Reeves), with David Schwimmer.

Emma
(96, Douglas McGrath) was her breakthrough, and a deserved success, followed by a run of poor pictures—
Great Expectations
(98, Alfonso Cuarón);
Hush
(98, Jonathan Darby);
Sliding Doors
(98, Peter Howitt);
A Perfect Murder
(98, Andrew Davis)—before the high demands of
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(99, Anthony Minghella).

It was about 1999, I’d guess, that the public began to feel they’d seen too much of her, that maybe they didn’t really like her. She stays working, but as if in panic:
Duets
(00, Bruce Paltrow, Daddy);
Bounce
(00, Don Roos); funny and sharp in
The Anniversary Party
(01, Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh);
The Royal Tenenbaums
(01, Wes Anderson);
Shallow Hal
(01, Bobby and Peter Farrelly);
Possession
(02, Neil LaBute);
View from the Top
(03, Bruno Barreto); very good as Sylvia Plath in
Sylvia
(03, Christine Jeffs);
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
(04, Kerry Conran);
Proof
(04, Madden).

Marriage and motherhood became big parts of her life, and the work slips further away—but not before one scene, as singer “Kitty Dean” in
Infamous
(06, Douglas McGrath) where she breaks down midsong—the best thing she ever did? Also,
Love and Other Disasters
(06, Alex Keshishian);
Running with Scissors
(06, Ryan Murphy);
The Good Night
(07, Jake Paltrow, her brother); as Virginia “Pepper” Potts in
Iron Man
(07, Jon Favreau);
Two Lovers
(08, James Gray).

Hermes Pan
(Panagiotopolous) (1909–90), b. Memphis, Tennessee
The musical is loaded with great talents who helped bring superb pictures into being—for example, David Abel photographed most of the Astaire-Rogers pictures at RKO, and it is too easy to say that Abel had the wit to photograph as Fred instructed. There was a producer, Pandro S. Berman, involved, too. And other talents (notably Francis Coppola on
Finian’s Rainbow
) demonstrated a startling ignorance over how to film Fred. Roger Edens was the musical associate, the arranger, or the songwriter on most of the M-G-M musicals. You could propose that those songs hardly needed arranging, but anyone who has ever worked on a musical knows it is all detail. People have heard of Edens, but not of David Abel. And then there is Hermes Pan—not a likely name, I daresay, but so inseparable from Fred Astaire that people began to notice how they looked alike.

Pan was the son of a Greek consul in America, a man who had a serious breakdown so that the family had to look after themselves. Pan was a dancer and a choreographer and he happened to be there on the set of
Flying Down to Rio
(33) and able to show Fred a few Latin steps he had picked up in New York. It must have been more complicated than that because Pan quickly became indispensable. He was choreographer on all the Fred-Ginger films:
Flying Down to Rio; The Gay Divorcee; Roberta; Top Hat; Follow the Fleet; Swing Time; A Damsel in Distress; Shall We Dance?
, and
Carefree
. He won an Oscar on
A Damsel in Distress
. It is clear that he worked very closely with Fred, though it may have been simply as a sympathetic critic or tester for Fred’s ideas. He rehearsed Ginger. He even dubbed in her “taps” on several films. And they looked enough alike for the story to get currency that Fred sometimes let Pan double for him.

So let’s say straightaway that in the long friendship, Hermes Pan seems to have had nothing to do with
Broadway Melody of 1940, The Band Wagon
, or
Funny Face
. So rest assured: Fred could do it without him—that is a joke. Moreover, after the RKO days, Pan was choreographer on a lot of Twentieth Century Fox musicals that are not very interesting (
That Night in Rio, WeekEnd in Havana, Sun Valley Serenade, Moon Over Miami
). There is not a great Hermes Pan film that lacks Fred Astaire—no, not even such things as
Pal Joey, Cleopatra, Porgy and Bess
, and
My Fair Lady
, where Pan was hired for himself.

Still, the two men were reunited eventually on
Blue Skies, The Barkleys of Broadway, Three Little Words
, the classic
Silk Stockings
, and even
Finian’s Rainbow
(where Pan was fired by Coppola). In addition, Pan sometimes danced on film—with Rita Hayworth in
My Gal Sal
, with Betty Grable in
Moon Over Miami
. Yes, he does look like Fred, but he can’t command attention in the same way.

It’s also clear that Pan was a discreet man who never fought for praise or attention. He also choreographed three of Fred’s four TV specials (and won an Emmy for one of them). Not a lot more is known, so we are left with the fairly plain conclusion: that Fred Astaire believed he needed Hermes Pan. I’m not arguing.

Anna Paquin
, b. Winnipeg, Canada, 1982
Though born in Canada, Anna Paquin was raised in New Zealand and that is where the part of Flora McGrath in
The Piano
(93, Jane Campion) found her. She won the supporting actress Oscar for that, and provided a steely but vulnerable observer for the astonishing story of passion and survival at the end of the earth. She was a charmer then with her mixture of modesty and conviction, but in hindsight
The Piano
looks like the training ground for a great actress. She is two years older than, say, Scarlett Johansson, an actress who seems pale and flimsy next to Paquin’s immense versatility and daring. If you make
The Piano
first, or a film like it, you have such standards.