The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (423 page)

Frank Tuttle
(1892–1963), b. New York
1922:
The Cradle Buster
. 1923:
Puritan Passions; Second Fiddle; Youthful Cheaters
. 1924:
Grit; Dangerous Money
. 1925:
A Kiss in the Dark; Miss Bluebeard; Lucky Devil; The Manicure Girl; Lovers in Quarantine
. 1926:
The American Venus; Kid Boots; Love ’Em and Leave ’Em; The Untamed Lady
. 1927:
Blind Alleys; One Woman to Another; The Spotlight; Time to Love
. 1928:
Easy Come, Easy Go; His Private Life; Love and Learn; Something Always Happens; Varsity
. 1929:
The Greene Murder Case; The Studio Murder Mystery; Sweetie
. 1930:
The Benson Murder Case; Her Wedding Night; Love Among the Millionaires; Men Are Like That; Only the Brave; Paramount on Parade
(codirected);
True to the Navy
. 1931:
No Limit; It Pays to Advertise
. 1932:
This Reckless Age; The Big Broadcast; This Is the Night
. 1933:
All the King’s Horses; Roman Scandals
. 1934:
Springtime for Henry; Here Is My Heart
. 1935:
Two for Tonight; The Glass Key
. 1936:
College Holiday
. 1937:
Waikiki Wedding
. 1938:
Dr. Rhythm
. 1939:
Paris Honeymoon; I Stole a Million; Charlie McCarthy, Detective
. 1942:
This Gun for Hire; Lucky Jordan
. 1943:
Hostages
. 1944:
The Hour Before the Dawn
. 1945:
The Great John L.; Don Juan Quilligan
. 1946:
Suspense; Swell Guy
. 1950:
Le Traqué
. 1951:
The Magic Face
. 1955:
Hell on Frisco Bay
. 1956:
A Cry in the Night
. 1958:
Island of Lost Women
.

Tuttle is a sign of the quality of Paramount in the 1920s. There is no reason to build him up as an important director: he was subservient to fashion; none of his films has survived as more than a typical studio product; he was not entrusted with Paramount’s most prestigious ventures. That is not to say that careful reviewing would not disclose a brisk, sophisticated eye for glamour. Louise Brooks has remarked that Tuttle played comedy straight.

He came from Yale and
Vanity Fair
into the movies in the early 1920s and worked his way into Paramount as a writer:
The Conquest of Canaan
(21, Roy William Neill); and then on his two outstanding Allan Dwan/Gloria Swanson comedies, redolent of the vivacious shopgirl as an ingenious fighter in her own romantic cause—
Manhandled
(24) and
Her Love Story
(24). Tuttle’s own films celebrated that Paramount heroine: four films with Bebe Daniels, including
The Manicure Girl
and
Miss Bluebeard;
Evelyn Brent in
Love ’Em and Leave ’Em;
Swanson in
The Untamed Lady;
several with Nancy Carroll, Florence Vidor, Louise Brooks, and Esther Ralston; and six with Clara Bow—
Grit; Kid Boots
(Eddie Cantor’s first film);
Her Wedding Night; Love Among the Millionaires; True to the Navy;
and
No Limit
.

In the 1930s, Tuttle was inexplicably switched from these shining ladies to male-oriented pictures, chiefly Bing Crosby musicals, of which he directed five. In addition, he went to Goldwyn to put Cantor through
Roman Scandals;
and at Paramount he directed Jack Benny in
College Holiday
and made the first film of Hammett’s
The Glass Key
, with George Raft. That glossy thriller harked back to two William Powell/Philo Vance films and looked forward to his most striking movie, made shortly before he left Paramount,
This Gun for Hire
, the first vision of the blond sheen of Ladd and Lake. Also worthwhile is
The Magic Face
, where Luther Adler plays a man who impersonates Hitler.

Tom Tykwer
, b. Wuppertal, Germany, 1965
1990:
Because
(s). 1992:
Epilog
(s). 1993:
Die Tödliche Maria
. 1997:
Winterschläfer
. 1998:
Lola Rennt / Run Lola Run
. 2000:
Der Krieger und die Kaiserin / The Princess and the Warrior
. 2002:
Heaven
. 2004:
True
. 2006: “Faubourg Saint-Denis,” an episode from
Paris Je T’Aime; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
. 2009:
The International;
“Feierlich Reist,” an episode from
Deutschland 09
.

Almost certainly, there were enthusiasts for
Run Lola Run
who are now looking for somewhere to hide. No matter that the girl of that film had an honored name, no matter that Franka Potente (the director’s girlfriend) gave her an odd vitality, there remained those who thought the whole picture was a crazed, gimmick-ridden exercise—and not the start to a new German wave. Potente was in
The Princess and the Warrior
, too, a demented film in which she was a nurse infatuated with a disturbed soldier. Not long after that, the actress and director broke up. But by then, Tykwer was launched as an “international” name, so that the world has had to suffer the inanities of
Perfume
and
The International
. Other than break his films up into as many short pieces as possible, with hectic musical accompaniment, Tykwer plainly has no idea what he is doing, or why.

U

Liv Ullmann
, b. Tokyo, 1939
1992:
Sofie
. 1995:
Kristin Lavransdatter
. 1996:
Enskilda Samtal
. 2000:
Trolösa/Faithless
.

There are circles and circles. I never saw more than a glimpse in a trailer of Liv Ullmann leading a band of children across the hillsides of Shangri-La in
Lost Horizon
(72, Charles Jarrott) singing “The World Is a Circle.” But I never went back for more. This was far from the idea of circularity and interchangeability in
Persona
(66, Ingmar Bergman). In that film, Ullmann plays Elizabeth Vogler, an actress made speechless on stage, who is taken to recuperate on an island by Nurse Alma, played by Bibi Andersson. Vogler/Ullmann makes barely a sound in the film. Though passive, she is dominating; her silence prompts Alma into a talkative breakdown. Silence became Bergman’s last retort to life and the tragic dilemma of playing yourself. Ullmann’s poignant face, staring often straight into the camera, carried the burden of the artist who feels unable to participate in life. Ullmann persuaded us that acting has left Elizabeth not a person but the changing effects of appearance. Thus the final dissolves of the two faces, showing the blending of activity and reflection.
Persona
is a magnificent recognition of meaninglessness, an artist/actress admitting that all her effort has been misled, that life is only a pretext for art. The clarity of this bleak message shows in the tragic sensibility of Ullmann’s face, isolated from the other action. There is no suggestion of her acting in
Persona
, only the extraordinary, indefinite emotions of a photographed face—one of the greatest images in world cinema.

Ullmann is Norwegian, brought up in Canada during the war. She began as an actress in Stavanger and Oslo. Her first films were made in Norway, but her first non-Scandinavian films were ill-chosen, and she was too deeply touched by Bergman’s attitudes (she had been his mistress), too prone to Elizabeth Vogler’s lacunae, to tolerate Shangri-Las:
Fjols til Fjells
(57, Edith Kalmar);
Tonny
(62, Nils R. Muller);
Kort ar Sommaren
(62, Bjarne Henning-Jonsen);
De Kalte ham Skarven
(64, Erik Folke Gustavson);
Ung Flukt
(66, Kalmar);
Hour of the Wolf
(68, Bergman);
The Shame
(68, Bergman)—outstanding as the active wife, dismayed by her husband’s lazy spite, a wonderful balance of feeling, remorse, and despair;
Passion
(70, Bergman);
An-Magritt
(69, Arne Skouen); as the anxious Swedish wife going to America in
Utvandrarna
(70, Jan Troell) and
Invandrarna
(70, Troell). After working on Fred Zinnemann’s aborted
Man’s Fate
, she made
Cold Sweat
(70, Terence Young);
Pope Joan
(72, Michael Anderson);
Cries and Whispers
(72, Bergman) and
Scenes from a Marriage
(73), Bergman’s work for TV, in which she confirmed her international reputation;
Nybyggarna
(73, Troell);
40 Carats
(73, Milton Katselas); and pursuing Garbo as Queen Christina in
The Abdication
(74, Anthony Harvey).

She was an international figure now, thanks to appearances on the American stage and publication of a blithe rumination on being a great actress,
Changing
. On screen, she was the psychiatrist in
Face to Face
(75, Bergman), the figure of civilian charity and regret in
A Bridge Too Far
(76, Richard Attenborough), and a cabaret artiste in
The Serpent’s Egg
(77, Bergman). She was in
Couleur Clair
(77, François Weyergans), and the willing figure of dowdy self-effacement and grievance in
Autumn Sonata
(78, Bergman).

She had a cameo in
Players
(79, Harvey) and then played the widow seduced by her husband’s lover in
Richard’s Things
(80, Harvey);
Jacobo Timerman: Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number
(83, Linda Yellen);
The Wild Duck
(83, Henri Safran);
The Bay Boy
(84, Daniel Petrie);
Dangerous Moves
(84, Richard Dembo);
Let’s Hope It’s a Girl
(85, Mario Monicelli);
Gaby—A True Story
(87, Luis Mondoki);
La Amiga
(88, Jeanine Meerapfel);
The Rose Garden
(89, Fons Rademakers), as the attorney who defends Maximilian Schell on charges of having been a Nazi; and
Mindwalk
(90, Bernt Capra).

She acts less now
—The Ox
(91, Sven Nykvist);
The Long Shadow
(92, Vilmos Zsigmond);
Drømspel
(94, Unni Straume);
Zorn
(94, Gunnar Hellstrom)—but she directs more.
Faithless
is far and away the best of what she has done. It was scripted by Bergman, but he left Ullmann to direct it. One can only say that she delivered something that was a vital extension to Bergman’s work, and a magnificent picture in its own right.

Edgar G. Ulmer
(1900–72), b. Vienna
1929:
Menschen am Sonntag
(codirected with Robert Siodmak). 1933:
Damaged Lives
. 1934:
The Black Cat; House of Doom
. 1936:
Green Fields
(codirected with Jacob Ben-Ami). 1938:
The Singing Blacksmith
. 1939:
Moon Over Harlem
. 1942:
Tomorrow We Live
. 1943:
My Son, the Hero; Girls in Chains; Isle of Forgotten Sins; Jive Junction
. 1944:
Bluebeard
. 1945:
Out of the Night/Strange Illusion
. 1946:
Club Havana; Detour; The Wife of Monte Cristo; Her Sister’s Secret; The Strange Woman
. 1947:
Carnegie Hall
. 1948:
Ruthless
. 1949:
I Pirati di Capri
. 1951:
St. Benny the Dip; The Man from Planet X
. 1952:
Babes in Bagdad
. 1954:
The Naked Dawn; Murder Is My Beat
. 1957:
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll
. 1959:
Hannibal
(codirected with Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia). 1960:
The Amazing Transparent Man; Beyond the Time Barrier
. 1961:
Antinea l’amante della Citta/Atlantis/The Lost Kingdom
. 1964:
Sette Contro la Morte/The Cavern
.

This list may include no more than a quarter of the output of one of the most fascinating talents in the worldwide labyrinth of sub-B pictures. Andrew Sarris once wrote that most of Ulmer’s films “are of interest only to unthinking audiences or specialists in
mise en scène
.” The contrast is at its most extraordinary in
The Naked Dawn
, a wretched Western plot made in a few days, but transformed by Ulmer’s camera style. His sense of movement, of changing composition in elaborately long takes, and his ability to record confined action with utter clarity, all show a debt to Murnau. But the talent is quite personal and, on the strength of that film alone, one must think of Ulmer as a rich talent who became hopelessly tangled in the depths of the movie industry. Douglas Sirk pointed out that Ulmer illustrated Hollywood’s cautious glee in confining any success to the form in which he was successful: thus, once Ulmer had made the most of quickies and cut-rate B pictures, he was confined forever.

He studied architecture at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Vienna and was originally a stage designer for Arthur Nikisch and Max Reinhardt. By 1920 he had moved into films in Berlin and he also worked in Vienna with Alexander Korda. But his most important early work was as designer and assistant director for F. W. Murnau:
The Last Laugh
(24);
Tartuff
(25); and
Faust
(26). He accompanied Murnau to America and worked with him on
Sunrise
(27),
Four Devils
(28),
City Girl
(30), and
Tabu
(31). Meanwhile, in 1929 he had collaborated with Robert Siodmak on
Menschen am Sonntag
.

He remained in the United States after Murnau’s death, working as a set designer in opera and with MGM. In 1933, he directed his first film and thus began a career with generally small, short-lived companies. In later years, he was forced overseas to find work and he directed in Mexico, Spain, Germany, and Italy. As a result, it is difficult to see even a fraction of his films, while it is likely that many have not survived. But, as well as
Naked Dawn
, these are remarkable:
The Black Cat
, a Universal adaptation of Poe with Karloff and Lugosi;
Isle of Forgotten Sins; The Strange Woman
, a Hedy Lamarr vehicle;
Ruthless
, with Zachary Scott carving his way to success;
The Man from Planet X
, an ingenious science-fiction exercise; and the consumptive look of John Carradine as
Bluebeard
.