The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (344 page)

Sir Michael Redgrave
(1908–85), b. Bristol, England
As a young man, Redgrave seemed interested in and respectful of the cinema. His debut was the prancing musicologist in Hitchcock’s
The Lady Vanishes
(38), a lively study of the ingenious idiot hero, too seldom investigated by Hitchcock. Apart from an interval during the war, he worked steadily in the British cinema in more than usually interesting parts. As well as three films for Carol Reed
—Climbing High
(39),
The Stars Look Down
(39), and
Kipps
(41)—he was the lighthouse keeper in
Thunder Rock
(42, Roy Boulting). He was in
The Way to the Stars
(45, Anthony Asquith) and
The Captive Heart
(46, Basil Dearden), and all aquiver as the ventriloquist whose dummy comes to life in
Dead of Night
(45, Cavalcanti).

After
The Man Within
(47, Bernard Knowles) and
Fame Is the Spur
(47, the Boultings), he went to America for the portentous
Mourning Becomes Electra
(47, Dudley Nichols), but stayed on for
Secret Beyond the Door
(48, Fritz Lang). In England he gave two excellent contrasted character studies: as the repressed teacher in
The Browning Version
(51, Asquith) and as the inane Worthing in
The Importance of Being Earnest
(52, Asquith).

But the British cinema smothered Redgrave’s interest: apart from playing Barnes Wallis better than
The Dambusters
(54, Michael Anderson) deserved, bringing the necessary chill to Big Brother in
1984
(56, Anderson), and quavering deliciously in
Confidential Report
(55, Orson Welles), his alcoholic father in Losey’s
Time Without Pity
(57) was his last worthwhile movie part.

He then drifted aimlessly from one guest spot to another, as if he lacked the stamina or concentration for a full-scale role.
The Quiet American
(58, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) was a failure, if not his fault. Otherwise he seemed oblivious of a film’s nature or objectives:
The Sea Shall Not Have Them
(54, Lewis Gilbert);
Oh, Rosalinda!!
(55, Michael Powell);
Shake Hands with the Devil
(59, Anderson);
The Innocents
(61, Jack Clayton);
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(62, Tony Richardson); never better than in the film of the National Theatre’s
Uncle Vanya
(63, Stuart Burge); as Yeats in
Young Cassidy
(65, Jack Cardiff and John Ford);
The Hill
(65, Sidney Lumet);
The Heroes of Telemark
(65, Anthony Mann);
Oh! What a Lovely War
(69, Richard Attenborough);
The Battle of Britain
(69, Guy Hamilton); and
David Copperfield
(70, Delbert Mann). His growing discomfort was put to some use as L. P. Hartley’s little boy, still numb with shock at sixty, in
The GoBetween
(71, Losey).

Vanessa Redgrave
, b. London, 1937
Vanessa Redgrave is over seventy now and a famous mother; she has outlasted the controversies she provoked—in the seventies especially, when she was an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause. She has put on natural weight, and she seems a woman of mature years, if still vulnerable to young hopes and ideas. That mixture is rare. Jane Fonda—Redgrave’s contemporary—has retired, still very trim, “young”-looking, but not as open. No one would claim that Fonda is Redgrave’s equal as an actress. Redgrave is romantic, wayward, and—to judge by her autobiography—swept along by forgetfulness or wishful thinking. She has made mistakes, but there is a case for her as the best actress alive, ready for further challenge.

She was the daughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson; she graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama with a glowing reputation; she was tall, beautiful, and commanding. And she was devoted to the theatre. That helped keep her out of movies after a disastrous debut in
Behind the Mask
(58, Brian Desmond Hurst).

Eight years later, she reappeared, lovely yet not much more than emblematic as the wife in
Morgan
(66, Karel Reisz), and a brilliant human exclamation mark in
Blow-Up
(66, Michelangelo Antonioni), where she is no more than a photograph—yet angry, alarmed, with her arms rigorously folded over her breasts. She may have disliked Antonioni’s indifference to character, but he saw how electric she could be.

She was Anne Boleyn in
A Man for All Seasons
(66, Fred Zinnemann), and gorgeous in
Camelot
(67, Joshua Logan), having an affair with Franco Nero that produced a child. She also had children (Natasha and Joely) by her marriage to director Tony Richardson for whom she made
The Sailor from Gibraltar
(67), where she was secondary to Richardson’s new amour, Jeanne Moreau, and
The Charge of the Light Brigade
(68).

Isadora
(68, Reisz) was meant as her breakthrough. She was Oscar-nominated for it, but she could not convey the élan of the dancer—Redgrave danced, seminude sometimes, but she seemed more sensual than aesthetic, and she stressed the elements of feminine liberation in the role. In the next ten years, she worked regularly but in unpredictable material, not a star, yet not quite a character actress:
The Seagull
(68, Sidney Lumet);
A Quiet Place in the Country
(68, Elio Petri);
The Devils
(71, Ken Russell);
Mary, Queen of Scots
(71, Charles Jarrott)—and another nomination;
The Trojan Women
(71, Michael Cacoyannis); and
Murder on the Orient Express
(74, Lumet).

She played Katherine Mansfield for British TV. She was in
Out of Season
(75, Alan Bridges); Lola Devereaux in
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
(76, Herbert Ross); winning the best supporting actress Oscar as
Julia
(77, Zinnemann), in which she seems more radiant as she becomes crippled and hunted. When she received that Oscar, she spoke out against “Zionist hoodlums” and stirred up protest that is still not altogether gone. She also produced and appeared in a documentary,
The
Palestinians
(77, Roy Battersby), and she was famous, and mocked, for being a member of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Yet she did not give up on mainstream work—
Agatha
(79, Michael Apted) and
Yanks
(79, John Schlesinger).

She was unresolved as an actress and evidently far enough into her forties to be beyond romantic lead parts. Her politics ensured her many enemies, and her outspokenness was easily built into a proof of her being difficult. All the more reason therefore to stress that she quietly went about her business of being astonishingly skilled and versatile:
Bear Island
(80, Don Sharp); winning an Emmy as Fania Fenelon on TV in
Playing for Time
(80, Daniel Mann);
My Body, My Child
(82, Marvin J. Chomsky) for TV, about abortion;
Wagner
(83, Tony Palmer);
The Bostonians
(84, James Ivory);
Steaming
(85, Joseph Losey); outstanding as the troubled teacher whose calm is destroyed in
Wetherby
(85, David Hare);
Three Sovereigns for Sarah
(85, Philip Leacock), about the Salem witch trials; as the literary agent in
Prick Up Your Ears
(86, Stephen Frears);
Comrades
(86, Bill Douglas); as Renee Richards in
Second Serve
(86, Anthony Page), handling the tennis and the sex change with tact and insight;
Consuming Passions
(88, Giles Foster); in the old Wendy Hiller role in
A Man for All Seasons
(88, Charlton Heston); making
Orpheus Descending
(90, Peter Hall) work by sheer force of imagination; with her sister Lynn in a TV remake of
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
(91, David Greene);
Young Catherine
(91, Michael Anderson); close to stumped in
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
(91, Simon Callow); superb and fading as fine wisteria in
Howards End
(92, Ivory); and
A Wall of Silence
(93, Lita Stantic).

As a great lady of film, she has become vulnerable to casting and the strange notions of what a middle-aged woman is, or wants. But nothing has taken away her instincts:
The House of the Spirits
(93, Bille August), showing how bad the results can be;
They
(93, John Korty);
Storia di una Capinera
(93, Franco Zeffirelli);
Mother’s Boys
(93, Yves Simoneau);
Great Moments in Aviation
(93, Beeban Kidron);
Little Odessa
(94, James Gray);
A Month by the Lake
(95, John Irvin);
Down Came a Blackbird
(95, Jonathan Sanger);
Mission: Impossible
(96, Brian De Palma);
Looking for Richard
(96, Al Pacino); the narrator to
The Wind in the Willows
(96, Terry Jones);
Two Mothers for Zachary
(96, Peter Werner);
Smilla’s Sense of Snow
(97, August).

She was outstanding as the mother in
Wilde
(97, Brian Gilbert) and as
Mrs. Dalloway
(97, Marleen Gorris);
Déjà Vu
(97, Henry Jaglom);
Bella Mafia
(97, David Greene);
Deep Impact
(98, Mimi Leder);
Lulu on the Bridge
(98, Paul Auster);
Cradle Will Rock
(99, Tim Robbins);
Uninvited
(99, Carlo Gabriel Nero);
Girl, Interrupted
(99, James Mangold);
Toscano
(99, Dan Gordon);
Mirka
(99, Rachid Benhadj);
An Interesting State
(99, Lina Wertmuller);
If These Walls Could Talk 2
(00, Jane Anderson);
A Rumor of Angels
(00, Peter O’Fallon); as Raskolnikov’s mother in
Crime and Punishment
(00, Golan Menahem);
The Pledge
(01, Sean Penn); the matriarch in
Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story
(01, Brian Hanson);
The Assumption of the Virgin
(02, Walter Salles).

She was Clemmie Churchill in
The Gathering Storm
(02, Richard Loncraine);
The Locket
(02, Karen Arthur); Lady Melbourne in
Byron
(03, Julian Farino); the voice of “The Greater Dane” in
Good Boy!
(03, John Robert Hoffman);
The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
(04, Kayvan Mashayekh);
The White Countess
(05, Ivory);
The Thief Lord
(05, Richard Chew);
Venus
(06, Roger Michell);
The Riddle
(07, Brendan Foley);
Evening
(07, Lajos Koltai);
Atonement
(07, Joe Wright);
How About You?
(08, Anthony Byrne).

Sir Carol Reed
(1906–76), b. London
1935:
Midshipman Easy; It Happened in Paris
(codirected with Robert Wyler). 1936:
Laburnam Grove; Talk of the Devil
. 1937:
Who’s Your Lady Friend?; No Parking
. 1938:
Bank Holiday; Penny Paradise
. 1939:
Climbing High; A Girl Must Live; The Stars Look Down
. 1940:
Night Train to Munich; The Girl in the News
. 1941:
Kipps; A Letter From Home
. 1942:
The Young Mr. Pitt
. 1943:
The New Lot
(d). 1944:
The Way Ahead
. 1945:
The True Glory
(codirected with Garson Kanin). 1947:
Odd Man Out
. 1948:
The Fallen Idol
. 1949:
The Third Man
. 1951:
Outcast of the Islands
. 1953:
The Man Between
. 1955:
A Kid for Two Farthings
. 1956:
Trapeze
. 1958:
The Key
. 1960:
Our Man in Havana
. 1963:
The Running Man
. 1965:
The Agony and the Ecstasy
. 1968:
Oliver!
. 1970:
Flap/The Last Warrior
. 1971:
Follow Me
.

Reed began as an actor and then worked as stage manager for Edgar Wallace. At Ealing, he was an assistant to Basil Dean before moving on to his own pictures. In the late thirties and early forties, he made a number of modest films full of craft and good performances
—The Stars Look Down
(about Welsh miners),
Night Train to Munich
(nearly a sequel to Hitchcock’s
The Lady Vanishes
), and
Kipps
(which starred his first wife, Diana Wynyard)—but subservient to conventions and English expectations of tidy realism.
The Way Ahead
was an inspirational piece of wartime propaganda and togetherness—totally at odds with the mood of
The Third Man
, which was just a few years ahead.

It was in the first few years after the war that Reed revealed himself:
Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol
, and
The Third Man
were three winners in a row—with directing nominations for the latter two, and a knighthood in 1952.
Odd Man Out
was from a novel by F. L. Green, about an Irish rebel on the run. The movie begins with a sense of the real Belfast—harsh, Dickensian, and beautifully photographed by Robert Krasker—but as James Mason’s wounded hero grows weaker and more delirious, so fantasy and expressionism take over. It is one of the greatest Irish films ever made, and as well as Mason’s heartrending performance it has fine work from Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, Kathleen Ryan, Robert Beatty, F. J. McCormick, and Denis O’Dea.

The Fallen Idol
comes from a Graham Greene short story, made for Korda, a tragedy of how friendship between a boy and the butler in a large house destroys the butler’s life. The house is alive with intriguing, perilous spaces (Georges Périnal was the cameraman); the narrative traps are excruciating; and Ralph Richardson is noble yet doomed as the butler. The tone may be straight Greene—that drip of mortification, of agony vindicated—but Reed served it with understanding.