The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (4 page)

She was curiously indifferent to
Justine
(69, George Cukor). That normally most generous of directors called her “the great disaster … the only time I’ve ever had anything to do with somebody who didn’t try … indomitably refined.”

Well past forty, married to and divorced from Albert Finney, she appeared for Lelouch again in the forlorn
Second Chance
(76). Since then, she has been in
Salto Nel Vuoto
(80, Marco Bellocchio); as the wife in
Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man
(81, Bernardo Bertolucci);
Qu’est-ce Qui Fait Courir David?
(82, Elie Chouraqui);
Le Général de l’Armée Morte
(83, Luciano Tovoli); briefly in
Success Is the Best Revenge
(84, Jerzy Skolimowski); and increasingly as a touchstone for Lelouch
—A Man and a Woman 20 Years Later
(86) and
Il y a Des Jours … et Des Lunes
(90).

Beyond age, locked into beauty, she kept going:
Bethune: The Making of a Hero
(90, Phillip Borsos);
Voices in the Garden
(92, Pierre Boutron);
Rupture(s
) (93, Christina Citti);
Les Marmottes
(93, Chouraqui);
Ready to Wear
(94, Robert Altman);
Dis-moi Oui
(95, Alexandre Arcady); with Daniel Gélin in
Hommes, Femmes, Mode d’Emploi
(96, Lelouch); at sixty-five, as Bathsheba in a TV
Solomon
(97, Hans Hulscher);
Riches, Belles etc
. (98, Bunny Schpoliansky);
L.A. Without a Map
(98, Mika Kaurismaki);
Une pour Toutes
(99, Lelouch);
1999 Madeleine
(99, Laurent Bouhnik);
Victoire, ou la Douleur des Femmes
(00, Nadine Trintignant);
2000 Eve
(00, Bouhnik);
L’Île Bleue
(01, Trintignant);
Napoléon
(02, Yves Simoneau);
Festival in Cannes
(02, Henry Jaglom);
The Birch Tree Meadow
(03, Marceline Loridan Ivens);
De Particulier à Particulier
(06, Brice Cauvin).

Robert Aldrich
(1918–83), b. Cranston, Rhode Island
1953:
The Big Leaguer
. 1954:
World for Ransom; Apache; Vera Cruz
. 1955:
Kiss Me Deadly; The Big Knife
. 1956:
Autumn Leaves; Attack!
. 1957:
The Garment Center
(completed by and credited to Vincent Sherman). 1959:
The Angry Hills; Ten Seconds to Hell
. 1961:
The Last Sunset
. 1962:
Sodom and Gomorrah; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
. 1963:
4 for Texas
. 1964:
Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte
. 1965:
The Flight of the Phoenix
. 1967:
The Dirty Dozen
. 1968:
The Legend of Lylah Clare; The Killing of Sister George
. 1970:
Too Late the Hero
. 1971:
The Grissom Gang
. 1972:
Ulzana’s Raid
. 1973:
The Emperor of the North Pole/Emperor of the North
. 1974:
The Longest Yard/The Mean Machine
. 1975:
Hustle
. 1977:
Twilight’s Last Gleaming; The Choirboys
. 1979:
The Frisco Kid
. 1981:
All the Marbles
.

The decline in Aldrich, in the sixties especially, was a sad thing to behold. Distinct talent is no sure defense against the pressures of vulgarization and commerce, to say nothing of the talent’s urge toward sensationalism. In other words, the
politique des auteurs
—of which Aldrich was once a test case—is an uncertain basis for assessing careers, more revealing of the movie-mad, would-be auteurs who invented it than of real battlers like Aldrich. Aldrich had great hits in the sixties:
Baby Jane, The Dirty Dozen
, and
Sister George
were boxoffice payoffs for a man who had striven early to be his own producer. It was in exactly that period that a talent like Nicholas Ray vanished, unable to string projects together. But the contrast between, say,
Kiss Me Deadly
and
The Grissom Gang
, or
Attack!
and
The Dirty Dozen
, shows the woeful sacrifices that can come from keeping in work.

Kiss Me Deadly
is still one of the best, and most surprising, American films of the 1950s, a lucid transformation of pulp Spillane into a vicious, insolent allegory of violence, corruption, and forbidding futures in America. Did overbearing producers and more restrictive censorship push Aldrich into a disciplined and even ironic evocation of brutality? Did the cheerfulness of the fifties allow such glittering darkness to slip through? The greater freedom on
The Dirty Dozen
only exposed the lack of self-control in the director, and the ease with which opportunist cynicism filled in the bold outrage of the Eisenhower era in
Attack!
Yet no one could say
Dozen
is more realistic—it is nothing but a pretext for violent fantasies and a model for too many later films.

Then there was the visual slovenliness that had overtaken the feverish, trapped imagery of the fifties. Melodrama and hysteria were always there in Aldrich, but
Baby Jane, Sweet Charlotte
, and
Sister George
are horribly calculated, smirking exploitations of sub-Gothic emotional horror. They are humorless, overheated films, harsh to their actresses, and only rarely achieve a kind of hysterical poetry—the close of
Baby Jane
is an eerie moment that caught the madness in American emotionalism. But
The Dirty Dozen
succumbed to the complacent strength Lee Marvin was prone to. Compare Marvin in that and
Emperor of the North Pole
with the ravaged sensitivity of Jack Palance in
The Big Knife
and
Attack!
, and the subtle disowning of Ralph Meeker’s Hammer in
Kiss Me Deadly
. (Compare Aldrich’s Marvin with
The Killers
or
Point Blank.
) It seems odd now to recollect the distinguished apprenticeship Aldrich served as assistant director:
The Southerner
(45, Jean Renoir);
The Story of G.I. Joe
(45, William Wellman);
The Private Affairs of Bel-Ami
(47, Albert Lewin);
Body and Soul
(47, Robert Rossen);
Arch of Triumph
(48, Lewis Milestone);
Force of Evil
(48, Abraham Polonsky);
The White Tower
(50, Ted Tetzlaff);
The Prowler
(51, Joseph Losey);
M
(51, Losey);
Limelight
(52, Charles Chaplin). Did Aldrich’s first vitality grow out of the noir paranoia in Polonsky and Losey?

He tried to be his own man: the Associates and Aldrich was set up in 1955, and he had his own studio for a few years on the booty of
The Dirty Dozen
. But he had to sell it after a series of flops, and found himself back in the jungle again, suffering cuts from the interesting
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
, and ending his life on a run of coarse, disagreeable movies.
Hustle
, though, was closer to the old style and his feeling for pain, a bleak cop/prostitute picture that paired Burt Reynolds’s masochism with the lofty glamour of Catherine Deneuve.

Then there is
Ulzana’s Raid
—a sequel to
Apache
, one of the best films of the seventies, and a somber adjustment of the Western to the age of Vietnam. Burt Lancaster has become the weary scout helping the cavalry track down a rogue Apache in a movie that uses terrain and loyalty as interactive metaphors. From a fine Alan Sharp script,
Ulzana’s Raid
is austere and fatalistic. It is the one film in which Aldrich seems old, wise, and afraid. Suppose he had made only that and
Kiss Me Deadly
—he would loom as a master, magnificent in his sparing work. But he had to keep busy, and so his energy often went astray.

Marc Allégret
(1900–73), b. Basel, Switzerland
1927:
Voyage au Congo
(d). 1929:
Papoul
. 1930:
La Meilleure Bobonne; J’Ai Quelque Chose a Vous Dire; Le Blanc et le Noir
(codirected with Robert Florey). 1931:
Les Amants de Minuit
(codirected with Augusto Genina);
Mam’zelle Nitouche; Attaque Nocturne
. 1932:
Fanny; La Petite Chocolattère
. 1934:
Le Lac-aux-Dames; L’Hôtel du Libre-Echange; Sans Famille; Zou-Zou
. 1935:
Les Beaux Jours
. 1936:
Sous les Yeux d’Occident; Aventure à Paris; Les Amants Terribles
. 1937:
Gribouille
. 1938:
La Dame de Malacca; Entrée des Artistes; Orage
. 1939:
Le Corsaire
. 1941:
Parade en Sept Nuits
. 1942:
L’Arlésienne; Félicie Nanteuil
. 1943:
Les Petites du Quai aux Fleurs
. 1944:
Lunégarde; La Belle Aventure
. 1946:
Pétrus
. 1947:
Blanche Fury
. 1949:
The Naked Heart/Maria Chapdelaine
. 1951:
Blackmailed; Avec André Gide; La Demoiselle et Son Revenant
. 1952:
Jean Coton
. 1953:
Julietta
. 1954:
L’Amante di Paridi; Femmina
. 1955:
Futures Vedettes; L’Amant de Lady Chatterley
. 1956:
En Effeuillant la Marguerite/Mamzelle Striptease
. 1957:
L’Amour Est en Jeu
. 1958:
Sois Belle et Tais-Toi
. 1959:
Un Drôle de Dimanche; Les Affreux
. 1961: “Sophie,” an episode from
Les Parisiennes
. 1962:
Le Démon de Minuit
. 1963:
L’Abominable Homme des Douanes
. 1970:
Le Bal du Comte d’Orgel
.

The older brother of Yves Allégret and adopted nephew of André Gide, Marc Allégret had a long, pedestrian record, illustrating the way French cinema has sustained mediocre talents through warfare, the New Wave, and the pinched conditions of commercial cinema. Allégret’s first film was made in his capacity as secretary to Gide on a trip to Africa in 1925. According to Gide, on their return Allégret languished, “… or at least has not really worked; I fear that, for greater facility, he may give up the best in him.” A cryptic, poignant remark, followed by the confession that it was “for him, to win his attention, his esteem, that I wrote
Les Faux-Monnayeurs
.” No Allégret film is anywhere near as good as the novel he inspired. When Allégret’s appetite for work revived, he became assistant to Robert Florey, whose
Le Blanc et le Noir
he took over when Florey returned to Hollywood.

In 1947, Allégret went to England and directed three films there, including
Blackmailed
, with Dirk Bogarde and Mai Zetterling.
L’Amante di Paridi
was a Helen of Troy extravaganza with Hedy Lamarr as the lady. A more convincing beauty was shown by Brigitte Bardot in
Mamzelle Striptease
. It is a mark of Allégret’s own staidness that he cultivated Roger Vadim as an assistant for ten years without ever dreaming of the lewd freshness with which Vadim would film Bardot—a meeting first accomplished through Allégret’s own projects.

Yves Allégret
(1907–87), b. Paris
1936:
Vous N’Avez Rien à Déclarer?
(codirected with Leo Joannon). 1941:
Jeunes Timides; Tobie Est un Ange
(not released). 1942:
La Roue Tourne
(uncompleted). 1943:
La Boîte aux Rêves
. 1945:
Les Démons de l’Aube
. 1948:
Dédée d’Anvers; Une Si Jolie Petite Plage
. 1949:
Manèges
. 1950:
Les Miracles N’Ont Lieu Qu’une Fois
. 1951:
Nez de Cuir;
“La Luxure,” an episode from
Les Sept Péchés Capitaux
. 1952:
La Jeune Folle
. 1953:
Mam’zelle Nitouche; Les Orgueilleux
. 1954:
Oasis
. 1955:
La Meilleure Part
. 1957:
Méfiez-Vous Fillettes; Quand la Femme S’en Mêle
. 1958:
La Fille de Hambourg; L’Ambitieuse
. 1960:
Le Chien de Pique
. 1962:
Konga Yo
. 1963:
Germinal
. 1967:
Johnny Banco
. 1970:
L’Invasion
. 1975:
Orzowei
. 1976:
Mords Pas On T’Aime
.

The younger brother of Marc Allégret, Yves worked his way into directing quite slowly. He assisted his brother on
Mam’zelle Nitouche
(31) (which he remade in 1953 with Fernandel in the Raimu part) and
Le Lac-aux-Dames
(34). Yves also worked with Renoir on
La Chienne
(32) but spent most of the 1930s directing shorts or working as an art director. It was during the war that he began directing features, quickly establishing a Carné-like blend of naturalism and black poetry. The films were mannered, good looking, and well acted, especially those starring his wife, Simone Signoret—
La Boîte aux Rêves, Dédée d’Anvers
, and
Manèges
—but nothing prepares one for the achievement of
Une Si Jolie Petite Plage
, an indelible image of hell on earth, set in a wretched seaside town in winter, marvelously photographed by Henri Alekan and arguably Gérard Philipe’s finest study of romantic despair. The last scenes of that film are more chilling than any of Carné’s effects and immeasurably graver than the rest of Allégret.

Joan Allen
, b. Rochelle, Illinois, 1956
In person, Joan Allen is taller and prettier than you expect. On stage—especially in
Burn This
and
The Heidi Chronicles
—she has been a more expansive and compelling actress than film has admitted. And on the big screen, she is already one of our great supporting actresses, nearly automatically among the nominations, and a universal type whenever onlooking and long-suffering wives are involved. And, if you haven’t noticed, those are often the kind of wives that our movies seem to know best. Is this a modern reflection of the private lives of Hollywood executives, or a profound comment on American marriage? Whatever, it’s a limit that could be unfair to Ms. Allen—as witness the fact that Annette Bening got the “Joan Allen part” in
American Beauty
.