The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (325 page)

At either end of his career he played men preoccupied with sex: as the urgent but flawed adolescent in love with Micheline Presle in
Le Diable au Corps
(47, Claude Autant-Lara) and as the amused, meditative orgiast, Valmont, bringing some of Laclos’s calm to Roger Vadim’s
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
(59). He was well suited to the self-observation of Stendhal’s young men. Although neither
La Chartreuse de Parme
(47, Christian-Jaque) nor
Le Rouge et le Noir
(54, Autant-Lara) is as true to Stendhal as Max Ophuls might have ensured, in both cases Philipe’s central performances—as Fabrizio and Sorel—caught the simultaneous involvement and detachment of Stendhal’s heroes.

Originally a stage actor, Philipe never abandoned the theatre. His first film was
Les Petites du Quai aux Fleurs
(43, Marc Allégret), but it was only after the war that his air of blighted hope made its impact, notably in
Le Diable au Corps
and as a wistful Mishkin in
L’Idiot
(46, Georges Lampin). His ability to bring a creative tension to modest films was emphasized in Yves Allégret’s
Une Si Jolie Petite Plage
(48). Not many films derive such poignant pessimism from the face that gazes out of its screen across that desolate wintry beach. After that, he was in
Souvenirs Perdus
(49, Christian-Jaque); as Faust in
La Beauté du Diable
(50, René Clair); as the Count in
La Ronde
(50, Ophuls) who regretfully assures Isa Miranda that happiness does not exist;
Avec André Gide
(51, M. Allégret); as the dreaming prisoner in
Juliette ou la Clé des Songes
(51, Marcel Carné);
Fanfan la Tulipe
(51, Christian-Jaque); once more as a romantic dreamer in
Night Beauties
(52, Clair);
Les Orgueilleux
(53, Y. Allégret); captivating as the Frenchman in London in pursuit of English roses, in
Knave of Hearts
(54, René Clément);
Si Versailles M’Etait Conté
(53, Sacha Guitry); the provincial garrison Don Juan, in
Summer Manoeuvres
(55, Clair);
La Meilleure Part
(55, Y. Allégret); in 1956 he acted in and directed
Les Aventures de Till l’Espiegle; Pot-Bouille
(57, Julien Duvivier); as Modigliani in
Montparnasse 19
(57, Jacques Becker);
La Vie à Deux
(58, Clement Duhour); in a version of Dostoyevsky’s long short story,
Le Joeur
(58, Autant-Lara). His last part, when he was seriously ill with cancer, was as the doomed South American administrator in
La Fièvre Monte à El Pao
(59, Luis Buñuel).

River Phoenix
(1970–93), b. Madras, Oregon
From his classic beginnings as the child of hippies who had moved from a cult, the Children of God, to getting on in Hollywood, to his abrupt death on the sidewalk outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles, River Phoenix is easier to accept as a character (in a TV movie of the week) than as an actual person. Yet at all stages of his short life, rumor and PR get in the way of the real facts. For anyone that famous that early, there is so little point in turning to reality as a point of saving reference.

He was a rock musician as well as an actor, and even before death he had become an icon to a generation. Was he promising, or good? Yes. But put his work next to Dean’s three films, and you can feel the difference between the loss of a myth and celebrity accident.

He made his debut in
Explorers
(85, Joe Dante);
Stand By Me
(86, Rob Reiner);
The Mosquito Coast
(86, Peter Weir);
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon
(88, William Richert);
Little Nikita
(88, Richard Benjamin); getting a supporting actor nomination as the son of runaway radicals in
Running on Empty
(88, Sidney Lumet); as young Indy in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(89, Steven Spielberg);
I Love You to Death
(90, Lawrence Kasdan);
Dogfight
(91, Nancy Savoca); narcoleptic and available in
My Own Private Idaho
(91, Gus Van Sant), the major source of his cult still;
Sneakers
(92, Phil Alden Robinson); singing in
The Thing Called Love
(93, Peter Bogdanovich);
Silent Tongue
(94, Sam Shepard).

It was a large family, and his younger brother, Joaquin, promises to be better still.

Maurice Pialat
(1925–2003), b. Cunlhat, France
1960:
L’Amour Existe
(s). 1964:
La Fleur de l’Âge, ou les Adolescentes
. 1969:
L’Enfance Nue/Naked Childhood/Me
. 1971:
La Maison des Bois
(TV). 1972:
Nous Ne Veillirons Pas Ensemble/We Will Not Grow Old Together
. 1974:
La Gueule Ouverte/The Mouth Agape
. 1979:
Passe Ton Bac d’Abord
. 1980:
Loulou
. 1983:
À Nos Amours
. 1985:
Police
. 1987:
Sous le Soleil de Satan/Under Satan’s Sun
. 1991:
Van Gogh
. 1995:
Le Garçu
. 1997:
Les Auto-Stoppeuses
.

The French critic Jean Narboni once wrote of Pialat’s performance—as the policeman—in
Que La Bête Meure
(69, Claude Chabrol), that it was: “Massive, abrupt and incredibly gentle.” The description applies to Pialat’s work as a director just as it seems to fit the very controversial filmmaker in person. He can be confrontational and arrogant; he is renowned as a difficult, demanding director; yet there is a delicacy and a compassion to his work that evokes the French naturalist tradition of Renoir.

He was over forty before he directed his first feature,
L’Enfance Nue
. He had studied art at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, and he worked for some years as a painter (his films sometimes refer to Bonnard—and, obviously, Van Gogh). It was in doing some work as an actor that he was led into film, and initially TV, and he came to his feature debut somewhat shyly. This should be stressed, for Pialat is now famous as a tyrant. There need be no contradiction, only the psychological truth of modesty and anger being neighbors.

His essential subjects are childhood and family, stability and the urge toward risk and adventure. He has often worked with nonprofessional actors, and he can show us a rougher, more naked texture in established actors we believe we know. He was himself a brooding presence as actor, notably in
Que la Bête Meure, Mes Petites Amoureuses
(74, Jean Eustache), and as the father in
A Nos Amours
. But, in addition, he has given us—and perhaps given herself—Sandrine Bonnaire, Gérard Depardieu in a couple of his major roles, and Jacques Dutronc as Van Gogh. Those are pieces of acting that seem like direct being, scarcely mediated or trained. In working and being with actors, Pialat seems to discover what he feels about life.

L’Enfance Nue
concerns an unwanted boy;
We Will Not Grow Old Together
describes the tortured end to an affair (the actors are Jean Yanne and Marlène Jobert);
The Mouth Agape
shows the way a mother’s imminent death from cancer affects her husband and children;
Passe Ton Bac
shows kids settling into an arid adult life;
Loulou
is a study in sexual affinity between a “beast” (Depardieu) and a more refined woman (Isabelle Huppert);
A Nos Amours
is one of the great movies about wild adolescence, granted that the older people in the movie know the dead ends wildness leads to;
Police
is the story of a cop (Depardieu) and a girl on the wrong side of the law;
Under Satan’s Sun
is a priest facing temptation (Depardieu and Bonnaire); and
Van Gogh
is that rare thing, a biopic in which the great man is in some ways less fascinating than the other characters.

Pialat’s is an actor’s cinema; yet that could make one forget the remarkable tenderness of his filming and editing. He is like Renoir and Truffaut in that he has a mastery of both very long scenes and fragments, and a way of putting them together that only film can manage. But, finally, he is a wounded, battered humanist, one of the last links we had left to the heritage of Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Renoir.

Michel Piccoli
, b. Paris, 1925
There is a marvelous note of the gloomy connoisseur in Piccoli. It is a quality that adjusts to films of very different mood, but that never seems to depart from the original. Apparently calm and even detached, Piccoli has the consistency that distinguishes important screen actors and that enables him to find something of himself in every part without striving. Such a personality is admirably suited to filling out parts only sketched in a scenario: thus he is excellent as the uneasy, self-reflective writer in
Contempt
(63, Jean-Luc Godard); as the sardonic lecher, complaining of the cold in
Belle de Jour
(67, Luis Buñuel); or as the man meditating on violence and escape in
Dillinger e’ Morto
(69, Marco Ferreri).

Piccoli is of Italian origins, as his lean dark looks as well as his name might suggest. He was on the stage for ten years, during which time he made only one film,
Le Point du Jour
(49, Louis Dacquin). But from 1955 he entered seriously into movies, soon to gather a string of parts as notable as those of any other French actor of his time:
French Cancan
(55, Jean Renoir);
Les Mauvaises Rencontres
(55, Alexandre Astruc);
Evil Eden
(56, Buñuel);
Les Sorcières de Salem
(57, Raymond Rouleau);
Le Doulos
(62, Jean-Pierre Melville);
Le Jour et l’Heure
(62, René Clément);
Climats
(62, Stellio Lorenzi);
De l’Amour
(64, Jean Aurel); the master of the house in
Diary of a Chambermaid
(64, Buñuel);
Masquerade
(64, Basil Dearden);
Le Coup de Grâce
(65, Jean Cayrol);
The Sleeping Car Murders
(65, Costa-Gavras);
Lady L
(65, Peter Ustinov);
Is Paris Burning?
(66, Clément);
La Guerre Est Finie
(66, Alain Resnais);
Les Créatures
(66, Agnès Varda);
Un Homme de Trop
(66, Costa-Gavras);
La Voleuse
(66, Jean Chapot);
La Curée
(66, Roger Vadim); as Monsieur Dame (Guillotine in the English version) in
The Young Girls of Rochefort
(67, Jacques Demy);
Mon Amour, Mon Amour
(67, Nadine Trintignant);
Benjamin
(67, Michel Deville);
Diabolik
(67, Mario Bava);
La Chamade
(68, Alain Cavalier);
La Prisonnière
(68, Henri-Georges Clouzot);
La Voie Lactée
(68, Buñuel);
Topaz
(69, Alfred Hitchcock);
L’Invitata
(69, Vittorio de Seta);
Les Choses de la Vie
(70, Claude Sautet);
Max et les Ferrailleurs
(70, Sautet);
L’Invasion
(70, Yves Allégret);
La Poudre d’Escampette
(71, Philippe de Broca);
Ten Days’ Wonder
(71, Claude Chabrol); as the modern caveman
Themroc
(72, Claude Faraldo);
Red Wedding
(73, Chabrol);
Blow-Out
(73, Ferreri);
Le Trio Infernal
(74, Francis Girod);
The Phantom of Liberté
(74, Buñuel);
Vincent, François, Paul et les Autres
(75, Sautet);
Couleur Clair
(77, François Weyergans);
Le Part du Feu
(77, Etienne Perrier);
Mado
(77, Sautet);
Des Enfants Gâtés
(77, Bertrand Tavernier);
L’Imprécateur
(77, Jean-Louis Bertuccelli);
La Petite Fille en Velours Bleu
(78, Alan Bridges); and
Le Sucre
(78, Jacques Rouffio).

He was in
Giallo Napoletano
(79, Sergio Corbucci);
Leap into the Void
(80, Marco Bellocchio);
La Fille Prodigue
(80, Jacques Doillon);
Atlantic City
(81, Louis Malle);
Passion
(82, Godard);
Une Chambre en Ville
(82, Demy);
Le Prix du Danger
(82, Yves Boisset); Louis XVI in
La Nuit de Varennes
(83, Ettore Scola);
The Eyes, the Mouth
(83, Bellocchio);
Viva la Vie
(83, Claude Lelouch);
Adieu Bonaparte
(84, Youssef Chahine);
Dangerous Moves
(84, Richard Dembo);
Peril en la Demeure
(85, Deville);
Success Is the Best Revenge
(85, Jerzy Skolimowski);
Mauvais Sang
(86, Leos Carax);
Paltoquet
(87, Deville);
May Fools
(90, Malle);
Martha und Ich
(90, Jiri Weiss); at his best as the sculptor in
La Belle Noiseuse
(91, Jacques Rivette); as Jean Genet in
L’Equilibriste
(91, Nico Papatakis).

As a veteran, he has apparently felt able to do anything. In fact, there are fewer good films, but that is hardly his fault:
Das Schicksal des Freiherrn von Leisenbohg
(91, Edouard Molinaro);
Le Bateau de Lu
(91, Christine Citti);
Le Bal des Casse-Pieds
(92, Yves Robert); as Jules Verne in
From Time to Time
(92, Jeff Blyth);
Le Souper
(92, Molinaro);
La Vie Crevée
(92, Guillaume Nicloux);
Archipel
(92, Pierre Granier-Deferre);
La Cavale des Fous
(93, Marco Pico);
Rupture(s
) (93, Citti);
L’Ange Noir
(94, Jean-Claude Brisseau); a short,
Train de Nuit
(94), which he wrote and directed himself;
Al-Mohager
(94, Chahine);
Bête de Scène
(94, Bernard Nissille);
Tödliches Geld
(95, Detlef Ronfeldt);
L’Insolent Beaumarchais
(96, Molinaro);
Party
(96, Manoel de Oliveira);
Tykho Moon
(96, Enki Bilal);
Compagna di Viaggio
(96, Peter Del Monte);
Généalogies d’un Crime
(97, Raul Ruiz);
Passion in the Desert
(97, Lavinia Currier);
Rien sur Robert
(99, Pascal Bonitzer);
Libero Burro
(99, Sergio Castellitto);
París Tombuctú
(99, Luis García Berlanga);
Tout Va Bien, On S’en Va
(00, Claude Mourieras);
Je Rentre à la Maison
(01, Oliveira);
Yadon Ilaheyya
(01, Elia Suleiman)—just a voice;
La Petite Lili
(03, Claude Miller), adapted from
The Seagull; Un Homme, un Vrai
(03, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu);
Ce Jour-là
(03, Raoul Ruiz).