The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (137 page)

The Fellini of the last fifteen years did nothing to change my mind.
And the Ship Sails On
and
Ginger and Fred
were especially fussy and disappointing. In recent years,
La Dolce Vita
has been rereleased, and it seemed very dated. Fellini had his fashion, to be sure, and he was a key figure in the bringing of foreign films to Britain and America. But I wonder how many fervent admirers he has today?

Emilio Fernández
(Romo) (1904–86), b. El Seco, Mexico
1941:
La Isla de la Pasión/Passion Island
. 1942:
Soy Puro Mexicano
. 1943:
Flor Sylvestre; María Candelaria
. 1944:
Las Abandonadas; Bugambilia
. 1945:
Pepita Jiménez
. 1946:
La Perla/The Pearl; Enamorada
. 1947:
Río Escondido/Hidden River
. 1948:
Malcovia; Salón México
. 1949:
Pueblerina; La Malquerida; Duelo en las Montañas
. 1950:
The Torch; Un Día de Vida; Víctimas del Pecado
. 1951:
La Bienamada; Acapulco; Islas Marías; Soave Patria; Siempre Tuya
. 1952:
Tu y el Mar; Cuando Levanta la Niebla
. 1953:
La Red/The Net; El Reportaje; El Rapto
. 1954:
La Rosa Blanca; La Rebelión de los Colgados; Nostros Dos
. 1955:
La Tierra del Fuego Se Apaga
. 1956:
Una Cita de Amor
. 1957:
El Impostor
. 1962:
Pueblito
. 1966:
Un Dorado de Pancho Villa/A Loyal Soldier of Pancho Villa
. 1968:
El Crepúscolo de un Dios
. 1973:
La Choca
. 1976:
Zona Roja
.

“El Indio,” as he was named (because of an Indian mother), was the supreme figure in Mexican film, and one of the most flamboyant of directors. (He was ready to take a gun to an ungenerous critic.) He fought in the Mexican revolutionary wars and was actually sentenced to a twenty-year jail term (murder was at issue), from which he escaped to California.

When he returned, he took up acting, and then directing. He specialized in romantic melodramas, vividly photographed by Gabriel Figueroa and featuring María Félix (Río
Escondido, Enamorada
), Dolores del Rio (
Flor Sylvestre, María Candelaria, Bugambilia
), and his wife, Columba Domínguez.

In later years, he turned to acting, and he is superb as Mapache, struggling to cling on to a rampant machine gun (and all our worst notions of Mexico) in
The Wild Bunch
(69, Sam Peckinpah), and as Paco in
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
(73, Peckinpah).

Abel Ferrara
, b. Bronx, New York, 1952
1979:
The Driller Killer
. 1981:
Ms. 45/Angel of Vengeance
. 1984:
Fear City
. 1987:
China Girl
. 1989:
King of New York
. 1990:
Cat Chaser
. 1992:
Bad Lieutenant
. 1993:
Dangerous Game
. 1994:
Body Snatchers; Snake Eyes
. 1995:
The Addiction
. 1996:
The Funeral
. 1997:
The Blackout
. “Love on the Train,” an episode from
Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground
(TV). 1998:
New Rose Hotel
. 2001:
R-Xmas
. 2005:
Mary
. 2007:
Go Go Tales
.

Ferrara seems determined to remain a fringe figure—and I’d guess he knows himself best. His closest to a hit, the very violent, very sexual
Bad Lieutenant
, did not lure him into anything like a mainstream career. (The recent
New Rose Hotel
—taken from a William Gibson story—is his fullest collapse into the ludicrous extreme that has always beckoned.) But the terminal self-abuse of
Bad Lieutenant
, plus the dedication of that mode’s master, Harvey Keitel, was certainly disturbing (as well as very clever—witness the inspired but invented baseball series in the background). It seems to me a little too self-aware, a little too desperate to be true. Whereas in other films Ferrara has been more fully immersed, so that one feels less urge to question the gloomy religiousness or the seething depression.
Ms. 45
, done for peanuts, is a deserved classic.
King of New York
is a genuine cult favorite, and an early sign of the mad grace in Christopher Walken.
The Addiction
is brilliant, with a great performance by Lili Taylor. But
The Funeral
is his best work—full of the comic, tragic reach of family, a
Sopranos
for the madhouse.

His most recent films have not been properly released, despite the fact that
Mary
—with Juliette Binoche as an actress who has just played Mary Magdalene—won many prizes at Venice.

José Ferrer
(José Vicente Ferrer De Oteroy Cintron) (1912–92), b. Santurce, Puerto Rico
Educated at Princeton, Ferrer intended to be an architect, but went into summer stock as a stage manager and actor. In New York, in 1944–45, he played Iago to Paul Robeson’s Othello. His first movie part was the Dauphin to Ingrid Bergman’s
Joan of Arc
(48, Victor Fleming). Thereafter, he was cast in flamboyant or foreign parts: the hypnotist, Korvo, in
Whirlpool
(49, Otto Preminger); the Peronist dictator in
Crisis
(50, Richard Brooks); and then as
Cyrano de Bergerac
(50, Michael Gordon), for which he received an Oscar. After
Anything Can Happen
(52, George Seaton), John Huston cut him down to size for Toulouse-Lautrec in
Moulin Rouge
(53), and he followed this with
Miss Sadie Thompson
(54, Curtis Bernhardt); as the defending officer in
The Caine Mutiny
(54, Edward Dmytryk); and as an assured Sigmund Romberg in
Deep in My Heart
(54, Stanley Donen). At this point, he became an actor-director:
The Shrike
(55);
Cockleshell
Heroes
(56);
The Great Man
(56);
I Accuse
(57)—as Dreyfus; and
The High Cost of Loving
(58). Unusual films, they never manage to be personal, but
The Shrike is
uncomfortable, and
The Great Man
knows just how wicked media life can be (but how it talks!).

After the colorless
Return to Peyton Place
(61) and a remade
State Fair
(62), Ferrer settled for acting, generally as a saturnine Hollywood wog: the Turkish officer in
Lawrence of Arabia
(62, David Lean);
Nine Hours to Rama
(62, Mark Robson);
Stop Train 349
(64, Rolf Haedrich); Herod Antipas in
The Greatest Story Ever Told
(65, George Stevens); the anti-Semite in
Ship of Fools
(65, Stanley Kramer);
Enter Laughing
(67, Carl Reiner); as Hassan Bey in
Cervantes
(67, Vincent Sherman);
Order to Kill
(73, José Moresso); a priest in
e’ Lollipop
(75, Ashley Lazarus);
The Sentinel
(76, Michael Winner);
Voyage of the Damned
(76, Stuart Rosenberg);
Zoltan … Hound of Dracula
(77, Albert Band);
The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
(77, Larry Cohen);
The Amazing Captain Nemo
(78, Alex March);
The Swarm
(78, Irwin Allen);
Fedora
(78, Billy Wilder); and
The 5th Musketeer
(79, Ken Annakin).

His last years made a very mixed bag:
The Big Brawl
(80, Robert Clouse), a Jackie Chan martial arts movie;
The Being
(80, Jackie Kong);
Berlin Tunnel 21
(81, Richard Michaels);
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
(82, Woody Allen);
To Be or Not to Be
(82, Alan Johnson);
Blood Feud
(83, Mike Newell);
Dune
(84, David Lynch);
The Evil That Men Do
(84, J. Lee Thompson);
Samson and Delilah
(84, Lee Philips) for TV;
Hitler’s SS: Portrait in Evil
(85, Jim Goddard);
Seduced
(85, Jerrold Freedman); and
The Sun and the Moon
(87, Kevin Conway).

He had been married to Uta Hagen, and then later to singer Rosemary Clooney.

Mel Ferrer
(Melchior Gaston Ferrer), (1917–2008), b. Elberon, New Jersey
Technically, Ferrer has five pictures to his credit as a director, even if one of them is the multiflavored
Vendetta
. But, like José Ferrer, he is an actor who has striven to direct, only to make films that seem not just without purpose, but unattended. It is an odd, dilettante involvement in films by a man who has promised more soulful intelligence than he has ever delivered.

Ferrer went to Princeton and worked in publishing while he was cultivating himself as a rep actor. His Broadway debut was as a dancer. After working as an actor and director for radio, he entered films in 1947—as an actor—in
Lost Boundaries
(Alfred Werker); and as the director of
The Girl of the Limberlost
. When
Vendetta
was eventually released in 1950, Ferrer was given the credit for the stew of himself, Howard Hughes, Max Ophuls, Preston Sturges, and Stuart Heisler—presumably on the principle of passing it off on the least vigorous. By then, Ferrer was shooting out in all directions: under contract to Selznick as actor and director; as a founder member of the La Jolla Playhouse; as a Broadway director; and as assistant to John Ford on
The Fugitive
(47). In 1950, at RKO, he directed Claudette Colbert and Robert Ryan in
The Secret Fury
and then settled for a period of acting:
Born to Be Bad
(50, Nicholas Ray);
The Brave Bulls
(51, Robert Rossen);
Scaramouche
(52, George Sidney);
Rancho Notorious
(52, Fritz Lang);
Lili
(53, Charles Walters);
Saadia
(53, Albert Lewin);
Knights of the Round Table
(54, Richard Thorpe);
Oh, Rosalinda!!
(55, Michael Powell); as Andrei in
War and Peace
(56, King Vidor); to France for
Elena et les Hommes
(56, Jean Renoir); as Robert Cohn in
The Sun Also Rises
(57, Henry King);
The Vintage
(57, Jeffrey Hayden); and
Mayerling
(57, Anatole Litvak) for TV.

In 1954, Ferrer had married Audrey Hepburn and in 1959 he directed her as Rima in
Green Mansions
, full of plastic studio jungle, Villa-Lobos music, and Katherine Dunham dancers, but implacably dull and managing to make Hepburn look less than exquisite. He and his wife moved to Europe in the 1960s and Ferrer continued his somewhat ineffectual flowering. As an actor, he gathered some eccentric parts:
Fraulein
(57, Henry Koster);
The World, the Flesh and the Devil
(59, Ranald MacDougall);
Et Mourir de Plaisir
(60, Roger Vadim);
The Hands of Orlac
(61, Edmond Greville); and
The Fall of the Roman Empire
(63, Anthony Mann). He went to Spain to produce and play the lead in
El Greco
(64, Luciano Salce); and in the same year he acted in
Sex and the Single Girl
(Richard Quine). In 1967 he produced, wrote, and directed
Cabriola
, and then produced his wife in
Wait Until Dark
(67, Terence Young).

Next year they were divorced, and Ferrer later suffered a heart attack. But in 1971, he produced and acted in
Time for Loving
(Christopher Miles); in 1972 he produced
Embassy
(Gordon Hessler); in 1974 he produced
W
(Richard Quine);
The Antichrist
(74, Alberto de Martino);
Brannigan
(75, Douglas Hickox);
Death Trap
(76, Tobe Hooper);
Zwischengleis
(78, Wolfgang Staudte);
The Amazing Captain Nemo
(78, Alex March); and
The Norsemen
(78, Charles B. Pierce).

After that, he had an “international” career, in films few people have seen: as an extraterrestrial in
The Visitor
(79, Michael J. Paradise);
Top of the Hill
(80, Walter Grauman) for TV;
The Fifth Floor
(80, Howard Avedis);
The Memory of Eva Ryker
(80, Grauman); a Spanish-Italian coproduction,
City of the Walking Dead
(80, Umberto Lenzi);
Fugitive Family
(80, Paul Krasny);
Lili Marleen
(81, Rainer Werner Fassbinder), as a man who helps Jews escape the Nazis;
One Shoe Makes It Murder
(82, William Hale);
Seduced
(85, Jerrold Freedman);
Outrage!
(86, Grauman); and
Peter the Great
(86, Marvin Chomsky and Lawrence Schiller). He had also played in TV’s
Falcon Crest
for a few years in the early eighties.

Marco Ferreri
(1928–97), b. Milan, Italy
1957:
El Pisito
. 1959:
Los Chicos
. 1960:
El Cochecito
. 1961: “L’Indelta Conjugale,” episode from
Le Italiene e l’Amore
. 1963:
Una Storia Moderna; L’Ape Regina
. 1964: “Il Professore,” episode from
Controsesso; La Donna Scimmia;
“L’Uomo dai Cinque Palloni,” episode from
Oggi, Domani e Dopo-Domani
. 1965:
Marcia Nuziale
. 1967:
L’Harem
. 1968:
L’Uomo dai Palloncini
. 1969:
Dillinger e Morto; Il Seme dell’ Uomo
. 1970:
L’Udienza
. 1972:
La Grande Bouffe/Blow-Out
. 1976:
L’Ultima Donna/The Last Woman
. 1978:
Ciao Maschio/Bye Bye Monkey
. 1979:
Chiedo Asilo
. 1981:
Storie di Ordinaria Follia/Tales of Ordinary Madness
. 1982:
Storia di Piera/The Story of Piera
. 1984:
Il Futuro e Donna
. 1986:
Te Amo/I Love You
. 1988:
Y’a bon les Blancs/Um Good, de White Folks
. 1990:
La Casa del Sorriso
. 1991:
La Carne
. 1993:
Diario di un Vizio
. 1996:
Nitrato d’Argento
.