The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (370 page)

There was a moment in the career of Carlos Saura when he seemed like a great director. Nor do I want to back off in my admiration for the pictures he made during and just after the last days of Franco. From
The Hunt
in 1966 to
Elisa, Vida Mía
in 1977, Saura was fermenting under the pressure of a dictatorship that was beginning to weaken from age and weariness. Nevertheless, Saura was having to combat censorship, and having to lead his films into allegory, dreams, and symbol. The deviousness was very fruitful—and it may have encouraged his creative personality far more than liberty ever could. For his sense of family and national history is meditative, Freudian, and secretive.

He was a child of the Civil War and its aftermath—and the child’s view of warped authority is crucial to Saura’s hushed tone. Already a talented still photographer, he entered film school in Madrid. His first feature film,
Los Golfos
, was a study of street kids, far more affected by De Sica than by Buñuel. Indeed, Saura had not seen Buñuel films, and he only met the Spanish exile at Cannes when
Los Golfos
was shown there. But Buñuel of the sixties and early seventies was a considerable influence on Saura—for that is the era when Buñuel’s surrealism gained a greater enjoyment of movie style (as well as Carrière’s clever scripts).

Carefully, cautiously—for Saura is shy and oblique—his films became portraits of Spain in a dark mirror. The producer Elias Querejeta became a supporter. Saura formed a loyal crew, and by
Peppermint Frappé
he had met Geraldine Chaplin. They lived together for several years, and had a child, and Chaplin became the exquisite face in the shadows in so many Saura films. It was a great partnership for both of them, and it reached a peak with
Cría Cuervos
and
Elisa, Vida Mía
. In the first, Chaplin was playing with the little girl, Ana Torrent; and in the second she was the daughter to Fernando Rey. They are masterly films, dense, luminous, and very moving in their sense of a society and families trying to escape from the lies and deformities of the past. Yet the films also seem to believe in the chronic ways in which people cling to emotional imprisonment. In the end, Franco may have been only a way for Saura to discover depths of guilt and servitude that excited him more than freedom.

He has done fine films since then—
Dulces Horas
, a lovely mingling of fact, dreams, and hope, and
Antonieta
, which starred Isabelle Adjani. But Saura moved in an unexpected direction, to films about dance. With the dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades he made
Blood Wedding, Carmen
, and
El Amor Brujo
, which are feature-length dance dramas. They are exciting … and monotonous. The macho stare of Gades and the hammering of heels seem to me a poor exchange for the murmuring disquiet of earlier films and the harrowed smile of Geraldine Chaplin. It is as if, in the new Spain, Saura has felt compelled to give up dark worries for tourist movies.

Saura has gone a good deal further along this road.
Tango
is the record of a performance, reflections on Argentinian history, and the story of a love affair—which is a lot to sustain, even with Vittorio Storaro on camera. I see how these ideas might dawn, yet I long for the feeling of
Cría Cuervos. Goya
is a biopic of the painter’s last years, with Francisco Rabal, and without any story within its story, but terribly old-fashioned. Still, I look forward to the Buñuel project, a fantasy in which both Buñuel and Dalí are promised as characters.

Victor Saville
(1897–1979), b. Birmingham, England
1927:
The Arcadians; The Glad Eye
(codirected with Maurice Elvey);
Tesha
. 1929:
Kitty: Woman to Woman; Me and the Boys
. 1930:
The W Plan; A Warm Corner; The Sport of Kings
. 1931:
Sunshine Susie; Michael and Mary
. 1932:
Hindle Wakes; The Faithful Heart; Love on Wheels
. 1933:
The Good Companions; I Was a Spy; Friday the 13th
. 1934:
Evergreen; Evensong; The Iron Duke
. 1935:
Me and Marlborough; The Dictator
. 1936:
First a Girl; It’s Love Again
. 1937:
Storm in a Teacup; Dark Journey
. 1938:
South Riding
. 1943:
Forever and a Day
(codirected). 1945:
Tonight and Every Night
. 1946:
The Green Years
. 1947:
Green Dolphin Street; If Winter Comes
. 1949:
Conspirator
. 1950:
Kim
. 1951:
Calling Bulldog Drummond
. 1952:
24 Hours of a Woman’s Life
. 1954:
The Long Wait
. 1955:
The Silver Chalice
.

The most interesting point about Saville’s career is paradoxical: in the 1930s, in England, he showed versatility, gaiety, and humor, but once he had gone to Hollywood, in 1939, he singularly lapsed as a director. He makes a sharp contrast with Alfred Hitchcock, who graduated to America at about the same time and became a more profound artist in the process.

Several of Saville’s English movies
—The Good Companions, I Was a Spy, Evergreen, South Riding
, and
Hindle Wakes
—are still worthwhile, even if they show more craft and decorum than personality. In general, his British films escape national failings of tattiness and technical caution. His musicals and costume pieces often wear their glamour and theatricality with a naturalness that seems to aspire to Hollywood. Saville had been associated with MGM in Britain and he went to America as producer and director. But the films he made there himself are sadly enervating, suggesting that his British period may have been flavored by a certain sense of superiority to the medium and its genres that was exposed in America. The intensity of popular romance, adventure, and violence are all missed in, say,
If Winter Comes, Kim
, and
The Long Wait
, the latter a Spillane adaptation that never dreams of Aldrich’s creative criticism of Mike Hammer, and settles for maudlin cruelty. (However, we owe
Kiss Me Deadly
to Saville. He bought up the film rights to several Spillane books, and he has a credit as executive producer on the Aldrich film.) And although, in Britain, he had brought out the light prettiness of Jessie Matthews, that seems irrelevant compared with the way
Tonight and Every Night
—made between
Cover Girl
and
Gilda
—reflects Rita Hayworth’s surgent luster.

In other words, Saville is a man with more sense of production than eye for an image. His record as producer is creditable, especially in America. He had gone into pictures on the production side and formed an early partnership with Michael Balcon. He produced briefly before he began directing and then, most fruitfully, in the period 1937–43:
Hindle Wakes
(27, Maurice Elvey);
Roses of Picardy
(27, Elvey);
Action for Slander
(37, Tim Whelan);
The Citadel
(38, King Vidor);
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
(39, Sam Wood);
The Earl of Chicago
(40, Richard Thorpe);
Bitter Sweet
(40, W. S. Van Dyke);
The Mortal Storm
(40, Frank Borzage);
Smilin’ Through
(41, Borzage);
A Woman’s Face
(41, Cukor);
White Cargo
(42, Thorpe);
Keeper of the Flame
(42, Cukor);
Above Suspicion
(43, Thorpe); years later,
The Greengage Summer
(61, Lewis Gilbert). Of those, it seems that he took an important part on
The Mortal Storm
and
A Woman’s Face
, while
The Citadel
resembles his own provincial films. But
Smilin’ Through
smacks of a silly producer impeding the director. Whatever Saville’s contribution,
The Mortal Storm
and
Keeper of the Flame
are better than his own films and immutably the work of Borzage and Cukor.

Nancy Savoca
, b. New York, 1959
1989:
True Love
. 1991:
Dogfight
. 1993:
Household Saints
. 1999:
The 24 Hour Woman
. 2002:
Reno:
Rebel Without a Pause
(d). 2003:
Dirt
. 2010:
The Guest Room
.

A graduate of the film program at NYU, Nancy Savoca made three startlingly raw and authentic films in five years. But the interest following the third left me with high hopes not fulfilled by the schematic treatment of career and motherhood in
The 24 Hour Woman. True Love
(with Annabella Sciorra) is about an Italian wedding in the Bronx.
Dogfight
has some Marines off to Vietnam, with one of them (River Phoenix) forced to bring a plain girl (Lili Taylor) to a party.
Household Saints
traces the lives of three Italian-American women (Judith Molina, Tracey Ullman, Lili Taylor again). Savoca usually works with her husband, screenwriter Richard Guay. Her world, so far, is narrow, but there’s no question about her knowledge of it, or the force with which she depicts it. In recent years, something has happened to slow her.

John Sayles
, b. Schenectady, New York, 1950
1979:
The Return of the Secaucus Seven
. 1982:
Lianna
. 1983:
Baby, It’s You
. 1984:
The Brother from Another Planet
. 1987:
Matewan
. 1988:
Eight Men Out
. 1991:
City of Hope
. 1993:
Passion Fish
. 1994:
The Secret of Roan Inish
. 1996:
Lone Star
. 1997:
Men with Guns
. 1999:
Limbo
. 2002:
Sunshine State
. 2003:
Casa de los Babys
. 2004:
Silver City
. 2007:
Honeydripper
.

As befits a connoisseur of extended groups and variegated perspectives, John Sayles is himself a mass of men—not just the director of essentially independent films rooted in good talk, character study, and social reflection, but the writer of take-the-money-and-run screenplays; an odd, droll actor; a writer of fiction; a MacArthur Foundation fellow; and an altogether earnest, likeable, hardworking example to other independents. Indeed, for all his variety, there is an emphatic integrity to Sayles—it may be his greatest limit as an artist, as if he lacked the imagination for betrayal.

He has a degree in psychology from Williams College, and he had published two novels before he turned to film—
Pride of the Bimbos
(1975) and
Union Dues
(1977). Since then he has published a collection of stories,
The Anarchist’s Convention
(1979), and another novel,
Los Gusanos
(1991).

His first movie involvement was with Hollywood at its most raw. He wrote scripts for Roger Corman:
Piranha
(78, Joe Dante);
The Lady in Red
(79, Lewis Teague);
Alligator
(80, Dante);
The Howling
(81, Dante); and
The Challenge
(82, John Frankenheimer).

Famously,
The Return of the Secaucus Seven
was made for just $40,000—and well made. The actual moviemaking was less restricted than unconcerned. There was a face-saving basketball sequence to show willing craft. But Sayles at this stage was frankly unimpressed with cinema. He liked people, real truth, and actors—those virtues won an audience delighted at seeing themselves on screen.

Sayles never seemed to waver under the great attention that came with success. But it was less certain that he knew what to do with it.
Lianna
, a story about a lesbian affair, was stilted and pedestrian, and
Brother from Another Planet
was painfully awkward. But
Baby, It’s You
was full of old-fashioned charm and very cute acting from Rosanna Arquette and Vincent Spano.

Meanwhile, Sayles continued to write and act for others. He worked on the screenplay for
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
(83, Mirra Bank) from Grace Paley, and
The Clan of the Cave Bear
(86, Michael Chapman) from Jean Auel. As an actor, he was striking in
Hard Choices
(86, Rick King) and
Something Wild
(86, Jonathan Demme).

His most recent films show a developing assurance and a greater interest in filmmaking. They are all group stories. Though a fine discoverer of actors, and a devotee of large casts (male on the whole), Sayles abhors starriness.
Matewan
concerned a West Virginia miners’ strike in the 1920s, while
Eight Men Out
described the 1919 baseball scandal of the Chicago White Sox. The feeling for period and place was intense in both. The narrative handling of many characters was adroit—and a Sayles stock company was emerging in which David Strathairn was a notable figure. Still, both pictures left this viewer with a slight feeling of “so what?” Their targets were so predictable that the drama seemed overdetermined. There was a lack of surprise or passion, and some threat of the films seeming like executed scripts.

Can Sayles overcome this? Does he feel the need to? His films have improved, and he seems to be an eager learner.
City of Hope
was another crowded canvas, but with a contemporary setting, a mass of anecdote, a mix of races, and a genuine attempt to confront modern urban America. The talk was as good as ever, even if there remained some sense of Sayles as the impresario for a very good TV series (like
Shannon’s Deal
) rather than the shaper of great drama.

Lone Star
found many fans, and I admired the reaching out for historical and racial context. But I was stupefied by the succession of conversations between pairs of people, filmed in the same dull way. Made in Spanish,
Men with Guns
was more valiant than coherent. But
Limbo
was a film with the richness of a novel, and a genuine feeling for untidy people. Still, I can’t help feeling that the novel is Sayles’s true calling.