The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (106 page)

Georges Delerue
(1925–92), b. Roubaix, France
I would far rather listen to Delerue’s scores for his French films than to the American music. Nevertheless, in his final years Delerue was nominated five times for best score: for
Anne of the Thousand Days
(69, Charles Jarrott), for
The Day of the Dolphin
(73, Mike Nichols), for
Julia
(77, Fred Zinnemann), for
Agnes of God
(85, Norman Jewison), and—his one winner—for
A Little Romance
(79, George Roy Hill). His music was naturally quiet, wistful, and atmospheric, and he had a knack for small chanson-like themes that grew over the course of a film. Those base motifs were especially vital to his work for François Truffaut. But in his early years, it is remarkable how many fine films Delerue worked on.

He studied with Darius Milhaud, and worked for theatre and TV (including the Comédie Française and the Théâtre Nationale Populaire) as well as films:
Un Amour de Poche
(57, Pierre Kast); a short film,
Les Marines
(57, François Reichenbach);
La Premiere Nuit
(58, Georges Franju);
L’Opéra-Mouffe
(58, Agnès Varda); just the waltz for
Hiroshima Mon Amour
(59, Alain Resnais);
Le Farceur
(60, Philippe de Broca); getting the style immediately for
Shoot the Piano Player
(60, Truffaut);
L’Amant de Cinq Jours
(61, de Broca);
Une Aussi Longue Absence
(61, Henri Colpi);
Jules et Jim
(62, Truffaut);
Cartouche
(62, de Broca);
Le Mépris
(63, Jean-Luc Godard);
La Peau Douce
(64, Truffaut);
The Pumpkin Eater
(64, Jack Clayton);
That Man from Rio
(64, de Broca);
Viva Maria
(65, Louis Malle);
King of Hearts
(66, de Broca);
A Man for All Seasons
(66, Zinnemann).

He was international by now:
Our Mother’s House
(67, Clayton);
Le Diable par la Queue
(69, de Broca);
Women in Love
(69, Ken Russell);
A Walk with Love and Death
(69, John Huston); perhaps his greatest score for
The Conformist
(71, Bernardo Bertolucci);
Two English Girls
(71, Truffaut);
The Day of the Jackal
(73, Zinnemann);
Day for Night
(73, Truffaut);
Calmos
(76, Bertrand Blier);
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
(78, Blier);
Love on the Run
(79, Truffaut);
The Woman Next Door
(81, Truffaut).

He wrote scores for
True Confessions
(81, Ulu Grosbard);
Rich and Famous
(81, George Cukor);
A Little Sex
(82, Bruce Paltrow);
Man, Woman and Child
(83, Dick Richards);
Confidentially Yours
(83, Truffaut);
Silkwood
(83, Nichols);
Salvador
(86, Oliver Stone);
Platoon
(86, Stone);
Crimes of the Heart
(86, Bruce Beresford);
A Man in Love
(87, Diane Kurys);
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
(87, Clayton);
Biloxi Blues
(88, Nichols);
A Summer Story
(88, Piers Haggard);
Memories of Me
(88, Henry Winkler);
Beaches
(88, Garry Marshall);
Heartbreak Hotel
(88, Chris Columbus);
Steel Magnolias
(90, Herbert Ross);
Joe Versus the Volcano
(90, John Patrick Shanley);
Black Rose
(91, Beresford);
Rich in Love
(92, Beresford);
Man Trouble
(92, Bob Rafelson).

Alain Delon
, b. Sceaux, France, 1935
At forty, the face that made Delon one of the most beautiful leading men in international cinema began to blur. It was that saintly grace, allied to the unmistakable aura of a modern young man, that had made Delon’s best films so interesting. This intrinsic contradiction was only heightened by the growing awareness that in real life he had something more than a nodding acquaintance with the French underworld. Inevitably, the shifting mixture of scandal and canonization was exploited in some bad gangster films—
Le Clan des Siciliens
(69, Henri Verneuil) and
Borsalino
(70, Jacques Deray), which he also produced, but Delon had appeared in two of Jean-Pierre Melville’s authentic reworkings of criminal mythology: as the schizophrenic in
Le Samourai
(67) and
Le Cercle Rouge
(70), in which he is a mysteriously lethal angel in trench coat and fedora. The mixture is a fascinating one. It draws on the dissolute Riviera opportunist in
Plein Soleil
(59, René Clément), which catches the chill perversity in Patricia Highsmith’s work rather more clearly than does
Strangers on a Train
(51, Alfred Hitchcock) and, in part, on the callow, leather-jacketed archetype—a café kid fed on
The Wild One
, Kenneth Anger, and Harley-Davidson brochures—in
Mélodie en Sous-Sol
(62, Verneuil) and
Girl on a Motorcycle
(68, Jack Cardiff). But there was always a note of Alyosha-like serenity in Delon that gave some substance to the operatic
Rocco and His Brothers
(60, Luchino Visconti).

Perhaps it is just a matter of physical presence with the sense to remain enigmatic, but time and again Delon holds pictures together and stares into the camera like a sleek cat. Nor should one forget his energetic tyro of the Rome stock exchange in
The Eclipse
(62, Michelangelo Antonioni), one of the most vigorous male characters in Antonioni’s work. Of course, he has made other, duller films:
Quand la Femme S’en Mêle
(57, Yves Allégret);
Sois Belle et Tais-Toi
(58, Marc Allégret);
Quelle Joie de Vivre
(61, Clément);
Le Diable et les Dix Commandements
(62, Julien Duvivier);
The Leopard
(63, Visconti);
La Tulipe Noire
(63, Christian-Jaque);
Les Felins
(63, Clément); and
L’Insoumis
(64, Alain Cavalier). There followed an unimpressive venture into English-speaking cinema:
The Yellow Rolls-Royce
(64, Anthony Asquith);
Once a Thief
(65, Ralph Nelson);
Lost Command
(66, Mark Robson); and
Texas Across the River
(66, Michael Gordon).

After that, he was torn between silly commercial ventures and more enterprising films: as Jacques Chaban-Delmas in
Is Paris Burning?
(66, Clément);
Les Aventuriers
(66, Robert Enrico); the “William Wilson” episode in
Histoires Extraordinaires
(68, Louis Malle);
Diaboliquement Vôtre
(67, Duvivier);
Adieu l’Ami
(68, Jean Herman);
La Piscine
(68, Jacques Deray);
Jeff
(69, Herman);
Madly
(71, Roger Kahane);
Red Sun
(71, Terence Young);
The Assassination of Trotsky
(72, Joseph Losey);
Scorpio
(72, Michael Winner);
Dirty Money
(72, Melville); and
The Doctor in the Nude
(72, Alain Jessua).

The success of
Borsalino
encouraged the businessman in Delon, and in the seventies he remained a major actor and a varied producer, his poker face less serene, but still suited to underworld tensions. He had a major achievement in
Mr. Klein
(76, Joseph Losey), in which his glamour was glassy with creeping anxiety and fragile identity. In addition, he produced and acted in
Deux Hommes dans la Ville
(73, Jose Giovanni);
Big Guns
(73, Duccio Tessari);
Borsalino & Co
. (74, Deray);
Flic Story
(75, Deray);
Le Gitan
(75, Giovanni); and
Le Gang
(76, Deray). He has also acted in
Les Granges Brûlées
(73, Jean Chapot);
La Race des “Seigneurs”
(74, Pierre Granier-Deferre);
Zorro
(75, Tessari); and
Attention! Les Enfants Regardent
(78, Serge Leroy).

Since then, he has been a French institution (as actor and a recurring figure in underworld gossip), often the producer of his films and on two occasions—
Pour le Peau d’un Flic
(81) and
Le Battant
(83)—the director. He has also appeared in
The Concorde—Airport ’79
(79, David Lowell Rich);
Trois Hommes a Abbattre
(80, Deray);
Teheran 1943
(81, Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov);
Le Choc
(82, Robin Davis); very beautiful as Charlus in
Swann in Love
(84, Volker Schlondorff);
Notre Histoire
(84, Bertrand Blier);
Parole de Flic
(85 Jose Pinheiro);
Le Passage
(86, René Manzor);
Dancing Machine
(90, Gilles Behat); and
Nouvelle Vague
(90, Jean-Luc Godard).

His work rate declined, but he was a presence still:
Dancing Machine
(90, Gilles Behat); the lead in
Le Retour de Casanova
(92, Edouard Niermans);
Un Crime
(93, Jacques Deray), which he wrote himself;
Le Jour et la Nuit
(97, Bernard-Henri Levy); with Belmondo in
Une Chance sur Deux
(98, Patrice Leconte); and in the TV series
Fabio Montale
(01, Jose Pinheiro);
Frank Riva
(03, Patrick Jamain);
Le Lion
(03, Pinheiro).

Dolores del Rio
(Lolita Dolores Asunsolo de Martinez) (1905–83), b. Durango, Mexico
If it can find nothing else, the cinema can always turn to florid human beauty—as David Selznick realized: “I want del Rio and McCrea in a South Sea romance,” he said. “Just give me three wonderful love scenes like you had in
The Big Parade
and
Bardelys the Magnificent
. I don’t care what story you use so long as we call it
Bird of Paradise
and del Rio jumps into a flaming volcano at the finish.”

And so King Vidor set sail for the Pacific to make the purest visual tribute to del Rio’s burning loveliness. This Lolita had been the child of wealthy parents, married at sixteen, when her Humbert appeared: the American film director Edwin Carewe. He whisked her away to Hollywood and directed her in J
oanna
(25),
High Steppes
(26), and
Pals First
(26). In time, she was better appreciated by other directors, principally Raoul Walsh who cast her as Charmaine, beguiling Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe in
What Price Glory?
(26), and then as the Spanish girl in
The Loves of Carmen
(27). Carewe directed her as the peasant girl in
Resurrection
(27) and she went on to make
The Gateway of the Moon
(28, John Griffith Wray);
The Trail of ’98
(28, Clarence Brown);
No Other Woman
(28, Lou Tellegen); and
The Red Dunce
(28, Walsh). With Carewe again, she made
Ramona
(28),
Revenge
(28), and
Evangeline
(29). Mrs. Carewe divorced her husband and del Rio’s Mexican husband died. But the Carewes were reunited and Dolores married the MGM art director, Cedric Gibbons.

She remained a leading player for another four years:
The Bad One
(30, George Fitzmaurice);
Bird of Paradise
(32);
Flying Down to Rio
(33, Thornton Freeland);
Wonder Bar
(34, Lloyd Bacon);
Madame Du Barry
(34, William Dieterle);
In Caliente
(35, Bacon); and
I Live for Love
(35, Busby Berkeley). She went to Britain to make
Accused
(36, Freeland) and made only second features—
Lancer Spy
(37, Gregory Ratoff);
International Settlement
(38, Eugene Forde); and
The Man from Dakota
(40, Leslie Fenton). After appearing in J
ourney into Fear
(42, Norman Foster)—she was beloved of Orson at the time—she went back to Mexico and flourished there. In 1947, she was the Magdalene figure in John Ford’s
The Fugitive
(47) and in the 1960s she had two notable supporting parts in American films:
Flaming Star
(60, Don Siegel) and
Cheyenne Autumn
(64, Ford). Those films, as well as her appearances in Mexican, Spanish, and Italian movies, show her beauty unabated, as in
Cinderella, Italian Style
(67, Francesco Rosi).

Benicio Del Toro
, b. Santurce, Puerto Rico, 1967
The supporting actor Oscar that went to Del Toro for his Mexican cop in
Traffic
(00, Steven Soderbergh) was generally hailed as a reward for authenticity. So what does it reveal to discover that the actor is Puerto Rican? In a way, of course, it shows that the old Anthony Quinn code of the supporting actor (that to be foreign is sufficient, and universal) is still in operation. Or was it that Benicio Del Toro simply did the actorly thing and spent long enough observing the frustration of honest cops along the border? The question is likely to receive more focus now: with an Oscar, Del Toro will find it less easy to bury himself in accent, obscure behavior, and mannerism (he is a champion where such things are concerned) and may have to find out whether he is the Robert Mitchum for a new America. It will be worth watching.

He was raised in Pennsylvania, and he then studied at the University of California, San Diego, and at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York. He began in movies with
Big Top Pee-wee
(88, Randall Kleiser) and
Licence to Kill
(89, John Glen), and he did his time as regulation Hispanic scum on TV in
Miami Vice
. But it wasn’t long before he attracted attention for his lazy grace, his deadpan humor, and his very bendable voice:
The Indian Runner
(91, Sean Penn);
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery
(92, Glen);
Fearless
(93, Peter Weir);
Money for Nothing
(93, Ramón Menéndez); the sidekick cop in
China Moon
(94, John Bailey);
Swimming with Sharks
(94, George Huang); as Fenster in
The Usual Suspects
(95, Bryan Singer);
Basquiat
(96, Julian Schnabel);
The Fan
(96, Tony Scott);
The Funeral
(96, Abel Ferrara);
Excess Baggage
(97, Marco Brambilla); as the Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(98, Terry Gilliam);
The Way of the Gun
(00, Christopher McQuarrie);
Snatch
(00, Guy Ritchie);
The Pledge
(00, Penn);
The Hunted
(03, William Friedkin); agonized in
21 Grams
(03, Alejandro González Iñárritu);
The Lost City
(04, Andy Garcia).