The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (41 page)

Kathryn Bigelow
, b. San Carlos, California, 1951
1984:
The Loveless
(codirected with Monty Montgomery). 1987:
Near Dark
. 1990:
Blue Steel
. 1991:
Point Break
. 1995:
Strange Days
. 2000:
The Weight of Water
. 2002:
K-19: The Widowmaker
. 2008:
The Hurt Locker
.

There was a moment around 1990 when, married to director James Cameron and honored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kathryn Bigelow was cool, chic, and in. You didn’t really need to know she’d been a painter before the movie bug hit; that past screamed tastefully out of movies like
The Loveless
(like lost love for Edward Hopper) and
Near Dark
, which is a pretty cute vampire film. But
Blue Steel
was a very bad story with terrible dialogue such that Jamie Lee Curtis and Ron Silver seemed trapped in its cold ambience. That was nothing compared with
Strange Days
, which is one of the loudest bad films ever made, and which acted like the panic brake on several careers.

Bigelow has been quoted as saying that “action cinema is pure cinema.” To which one must add that it may only expose the dangers of trying to do without character or good sense. Why does the cinema need to be so pure? Has anyone ever observed that state in its manufacture? Since
Strange Days
, she made two more films that struggled to get a proper release. So
The Hurt Locker
came as a revelation—the best film about Iraq and a great film on war.

Juliette Binoche
, b. Paris, 1964
Watching
Blue
(93, Krzysztof Kieslowski), you begin to wonder if there has ever been a more beautiful woman in movies than Binoche. You fancy that Kieslowski has succumbed to this thought, too. How many ways are there of watching her grave face? Are the cheeks carved by love’s gaze? Did that hair fall on her head like night? And the eyes … are they part of her life, or their own living creatures? And yet … if only this magnificent, melancholy, and nearly stunned woman had just a touch of … Debbie Reynolds?

Perhaps she
is
too solemn, though Phil Kaufman got a great smile and a better blush from her in
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(88). Moreover, she was a startling and often naked sexual explorer in
RendezVous
(85, André Téchiné). She was also to be seen to great advantage in
Hail Mary
(85, Jean-Luc Godard) and
Bad Blood
(86, Leos Carax). But the nearly complete resignation of
Blue
did seem like the next stage of an illness that fell on her in the grisly
Damage
(92, Louis Malle), where her passion was inseparable from anomie.

She is outstanding and especially pathetic in
Les Amants du Pont Neuf
(92, Carax). She has also done a
Wuthering Heights
(93, Peter Kosminsky), with Ralph Fiennes as her Heathcliff.

That was written just before Binoche became the art-house actress for a generation—the smiling face that ought to be on the Euro coin with which film business is done. Her performance in
Les Amants du Pont Neuf
proved typical: a woman going blind for art, and being pushed to extremes for love. I had asked for Debbie Reynolds in my coarse way, but in truth there was something of Garbo and Donna Reed already. I soon had the chance to see Binoche onstage in London—in Pirandello’s
Naked
. She was awesomely beautiful, but not quite there as an actress (a little like her Anna in
Damage
). I realized how uniquely the camera loved her.

Since then, she has done
The Horseman on the Roof
(95, Jean-Paul Rappeneau);
A Couch in New York
(96, Chantal Akerman); won the supporting actress Oscar as Hana in
The English Patient
(96, Anthony Minghella); Alice and Martin (98, Téchiné); played George Sand in
Les Enfants du Siècle
(99, Diane Kurys);
The Widow of Saint-Pierre
(00, Patrice Leconte);
Code Inconnu
(00, Michael Haneke); the mistress of
Chocolat
(00, Lasse Hallstrom);
Décalage Horaire
(02, Danièle Thompson);
Country of My Skull
(04, John Boorman);
Bee Season
(04, Scott McGehee and David Siegel).

In the new century, Binoche has become the great artistic adventurer—she does plays; she did dance—to dire reviews; she exists:
Mary
(05, Abel Ferrara);
Caché
(05, Haneke); very good as an East European in
Breaking and Entering
(06, Minghella); in the “Place des Victoires” episode from
Paris Je T’Aime
(06, Nobuhiro Suwa);
Dan in Real Life
(07, Peter Hedges);
Disengagement
(07, Amos Gitai);
Flight of the Red Balloon
(07, Hou Hsiao-Hsien);
Paris
(08, Cedric Klapisch);
L’Heure d’Ête
(08, Olivier Assayas);
Shirin
(08, Abbas Kiarostami);
Copie Conforme
(10, Kiarostami).

Jacqueline Bisset
, b. Weybridge, England, 1944
Bisset scholars treasure an early quickie exploitation picture in which the lady appeared nude. Miss Bisset scorns to discuss the item, and follows her trade of lolling around in a wet T-shirt or masquerading as Jackie O. The scale of exploitation shifts, and as it grows greedier so shame and discretion fall away, leaving naked professionalism. Bisset is beautiful; no one has yet denied it. But she retains the clammed-up haughtiness of the South Kensington bitch-deb that Roman Polanski teased in
Cul-de-Sac
(66). She has not managed to look less than grimly anxious, as if the nicely brought up girl never got over the horror of stripping to the buff. One longs to drug her or slow her jittery pulse; but how could you soften that humorless frown?

But she has worked hard:
The Knack
(65, Richard Lester);
Drop Dead, Darling
(66, Ken Hughes);
Two for the Road
(67, Stanley Donen);
Casino Royale
(67);
The Cape Town Affair
(67, Robert D. Webb);
The Sweet Ride
(67, Harvey Hart);
The Detective
(68, Gordon Douglas); her first chance, as relief to motor-car assault courses, in
Bullitt
(68, Peter Yates);
La Promesse
(68, Paul Feyder);
The First Time
(69, James Neilson);
Airport
(69, George Seaton);
The Grasshopper
(69, Jerry Paris);
The Mephisto Waltz
(70, Paul Wendkos);
Believe in Me
(71, Stuart Hagman);
Stand Up and Be Counted
(71, Jackie Cooper);
Secrets
(71, Philip Saville);
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
(72, John Huston); and
The Thief Who Came to Dinner
(72, Bud Yorkin).

Her part as the insecure actress in
Day for Night
(73, François Truffaut) used her kindly, and was far above the run of junk she had been used to. It probably helped to promote her to international stardom, but no one yet had trusted her with a complex part or much more than the duty of being photographed:
How to Destroy the Reputation of the Greatest Secret Agent
(73, Philippe de Broca);
Murder on the Orient Express
(74, Sidney Lumet);
The Spiral Staircase
(75, Peter Collinson);
St. Ives
(76, J. Lee Thompson);
The Deep
(77, Yates) as a dripping poster;
The Greek Tycoon
(78, Thompson); and
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
(78, Ted Kotcheff).

Since then, she has made
Inchon
(80, Terence Young);
When Time Ran Out
(80, James Goldstone);
Rich and Famous
(81, George Cukor), which she coproduced;
I Love You, I Love You Not
(82, Armenia Balducci);
Class
(83, Lewis John Carlino); as the wife in
Under the Volcano
(84, John Huston);
Forbidden
(85, Anthony Page), for TV; as
Anna Karenina
(85, Simon Langton), also on TV;
Choices
(86, David Lowell Rich);
High Season
(87, Clare Peploe);
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills
(89, Paul Bartel);
Wild Orchid
(90, Zalman King); and
The Maid
(90, Ian Toyton).

In some quarters, there has been a move to elevate Ms. Bisset to the level of Charlotte Rampling, or even Jeanne Moreau. Alas, the work points steadily in a different direction:
Rossini! Rossini!
(91, Mario Monicelli);
Les Marmottes
(93, Elie Choraqui);
Hoffman’s Hunger
(93, Leon de Winter);
Crimebroker
(93, Ian Barry); on TV in
Leave of Absence
(94, Tom McLoughlin);
La Cérémonie
(95, Claude Chabrol);
September
(96, Colin Bucksey);
Once You Meet a Stranger
(96, Tommy Lee Wallace);
End of Summer
(96, Linda Yellen);
Dangerous Beauty
(98, Marshall Herskovitz);
Joan of Arc
(99, Christian Duguay); as Mary in
Jesus
(99, Roger Young) for TV;
Les Gens Qui s’Aiment
(99, Jean Charles Tacchella);
Britannic
(00, Brian Trenchard-Smith);
Sex & Mrs. X
(00, Arthur Allan Seidelman); as Sarah in
In the Beginning
(00, Kevin Connor);
New Year’s Day
(00, Suri Krishnamma);
Joan of Arc: The Virgin Warrior
(00, Ronald F. Maxwell);
The Sleepy Time Gal
(01, Christopher Munch).

Approaching sixty, and still a looker, she was still romancing kids in
Dancing at the Harvest Moon
(02, Bobby Roth);
Fascination
(02, Klaus Menzel); still playing Jackie Kennedy, in
American
Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story
(03, Eric Laneuville);
Swing
(03, Martin Guigui);
The Fine Art of Love: Mine Ha-Ha
(05, John Irvin);
Domino
(05, Tony Scott);
Death in Love
(08, Boaz Yakin);
An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving
(08, Graeme Campbell).

Anita Björk
, b. Tällberg, Sweden, 1923
You have only to see
Miss Julie
(51, Alf Sjöberg), to understand that Anita Björk was one of the great screen actresses. Yet it seems like a part of Björk’s bad luck that that very intelligent rendering of Strindberg, with different time periods in the same frame, has fallen into neglect. Another famous piece of her bad luck was that after Hitchcock had seen her in
Miss Julie
and wanted her for
I Confess
(opposite Montgomery Clift), Warners decreed that she was insufficient box office—so use Anne Baxter instead. (They were also anxious because Björk arrived with a lover and an illegitimate child, so that they feared another Ingrid Bergman-like scandal.) Slip Björk’s pensive face into its images and
I Confess
becomes a subtler, more painful picture.

Still, the greatest mystery may be why Björk worked only once with Ingmar Bergman, in
Secrets of Women
(52). She was only one actress in a great generation, but one wonders if she had done something to offend the big man.

She made her debut in
The Road to Heaven
(42, Sjöberg), and she soon became a player with Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre. Her other films include
Kvinna utan Ansikte
(47, Gustaf Molander);
Kvartetten Som Sprängdes
(50, Molander); to Germany for the American film
Night People
(54, Nunnally Johnson), where she plays the traitor;
Sången om den Eldröda Blomman
(56, Molander);
Damen i Svart
(58, Arne Mattsson);
Körkarlen
(58, Mattsson);
Mannekäng i Rött
(58, Mattsson);
Square of Violence
(61, Leonardo Bercovici);
Loving Couples
(64, Mai Zetterling);
Adalen 31
(69, Bo Widerberg).

She returned as an old lady:
Arven
(79, Anja Breien);
Forfølgelsen
(81, Breien);
Amorosa
(86, Zetterling); as Queen Victoria in
The Best Intentions
(92, Bille August);
Sanna Ögonblick
(98, Lena Koppel and Anders Wahlgren); and as Selma Lagerlöf in
Bildmakarna
(00, Bergman).

Robert Blake
(Michael Vijencio Gubitosi), b. Nutley, New Jersey, 1933
How many people are there here? He was a kid in Western serials—notably the Red Ryder pictures. He was one of the most lustrous children of the 1940s, a kid with a nitrate smile. And he would become a kind of great actor—half Method, half himself—as well as a TV fixture, whether he was being a real little toughie or a rather self-pitying fellow mooning to Johnny Carson. He doesn’t work much now, but never forget that he was the best thing in David Lynch’s
Lost Highway
(97), a haunted face gazing out of the darkness.

As Mickey Gubitosi, then as Bobby Blake, the wide-eyed boy, he was in
I Love You Again
(40, W. S. Van Dyke II);
Andy Hardy’s Double Life
(42, George B. Seitz);
Slightly Dangerous
(43, Wesley Ruggles);
The Big Noise
(44, Malcolm St. Clair);
The Woman in the Window
(44, Fritz Lang);
Dakota
(45, Joseph Kane);
Pillow to Post
(45, Vincent Sherman);
The Horn Blows at Midnight
(45, Raoul Walsh); as the young John Garfield in
Humoresque
(47, Jean Negulesco);
The Return of Rin Tin Tin
(47, Max Nosseck); a Mexican kid in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
(47, John Huston);
The Black Rose
(50, Henry Hathaway);
Apache War Smoke
(52, Harold F. Kress);
Treasure of the Golden Condor
(53, Delmer Daves);
The Rack
(56, Arnold Laven).