The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (222 page)

He was very frightening as the faithless Ben in
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
(74, Scorsese); he played Bugsy Siegel on TV in
The Virginia Hill Story
(74, Joel Schumacher);
That’s the Way of the World
(75, Sig Shore); as a helpless follower of the show business in
Buffalo Bill and the Indians
(76, Robert Altman); and
Mother, Jugs & Speed
(76, Peter Yates).

In
Taxi Driver
(76, Scorsese), Keitel was unforgettable, longhaired, and lyrical in his foul wooing of the child prostitute. His Sport was a brilliant conception, unerringly played. People would have raved about it, but for De Niro’s Travis Bickle, a role that once Keitel could (would) have had, and that surely he has never believed was less than he deserved. De Niro was better—but maybe he wouldn’t have been better without Keitel. For Harvey provoked Bobby, punched him, the way LaMotta helped define Ray Robinson’s greatness. De Niro had to be quicker, wilder, deeper, more vulnerable—yet they share the handicap of being instinctively enclosed or cut off.

Keitel could see that he faced De Niro for the rest of his life—there might be dreams of murder in our imaginary movie. Consciously, or subconsciously, he became a touch more willful, lonely, and dangerous. He could have gone into solitary. But he got better. Within two years of
Taxi Driver
, Keitel had delivered what may have been his two greatest performances.

Despite all the picture postcarding for the Dordogne, I can watch
The Duellists
(77, Ridley Scott) any time, just for Keitel. He had a look that was superbly of the period, going from a Lermontov-like flourish to a Napoleon on St. Helena. His grim soldier was driven through all the desponds of life by one absurd, magnificent duty. When Keitel faces the woeful Carradine after years of failure, it is a joy to see age, failure, and disappointment fall away as he recognizes that he’s “on” again.

Next year, he was the concert pianist/debt collector in
Fingers
(78, James Toback), as understanding of New York street idiom as he was of Toback’s psychosexual nightmare. His character shook with music, as if it were a fever. He zoomed in on women and danger with an unhindered, ecstatic self-destructiveness.
Fingers
is a great film, fearful and cleansing, and I don’t think even De Niro could have played it from the hunched, fatalistic viewpoint of Keitel.

Those were lead parts in films that did poor or no business. Keitel’s way ahead was that of a supporting actor, and we should note his willingness to go far beyond the mainstream in his choice of parts. This is a wild, eccentric list:
Welcome to L.A
. (77, Alan Rudolph);
Blue Collar
(78, Paul Schrader);
Eagle’s Wing
(79, Anthony Harvey);
Deathwatch
(80, Bertrand Tavernier);
Bad Timing
(80, Nicolas Roeg);
Saturn 3
(80, Stanley Donen);
The Border
(82, Tony Richardson); as Tom Paine in
La Nuit de Varennes
(82, Ettore Scola); as the terrorist in
Exposed
(83, Toback); as a sidekick to De Niro again in
Falling in Love
(84, Ulu Grosbard); to Italy for
Un Complicato Intrigo di Donne, Vicoli e Delitti
(85, Lina Wertmuller);
Off Beat
(86, Michael Dinner);
The Men’s Club
(86, Peter Medak);
Wise Guys
(86, Brian De Palma);
The Pick-Up Artist
(87, Toback);
The January Man
(89, Pat O’Connor); as Judas in
The Last Temptation of Christ
(88, Scorsese), a role that could not be denied him;
Two Evil Eyes
(90, George Romero and Dario Argento); in what had once been the Robert Evans role in
The Two Jakes
(90, Jack Nicholson).

Then, step by step, he made it back into the American limelight: as very similar, decent cops in
Mortal Thoughts
(91, Alan Rudolph) and
Thelma and Louise
(91, Scott); nominated for supporting actor as at least one authentic Jewish gangster, Mickey Cohen, in
Bugsy
(91, Barry Levinson); naked, crucified, constantly at the end of his tether as
Bad Lieutenant
(92, Abel Ferrara);
Sister Act
(92, Emile Ardolino);
Reservoir Dogs
(92, Quentin Tarantino);
Point of No Return
(93, John Badham);
Rising Sun
(93, Philip Kaufman); intuitive, half-tender, half-primitive, and naked again in
The Piano
(93, Jane Campion);
Dangerous Game
(93, Ferrara); and
The Young Americans
(93, Danny Cannon).

In recent years, Keitel’s rage has diminished a little—or is it that we are wearying of him? There’s no doubting his zeal or risk-taking instincts, but charm and naturalness are still not his:
Point of No Return
(93, John Badham);
Somebody to Love
(94, Alexandre Rockwell); as Winston Wolf in
Pulp Fiction
(94, Tarantino);
Imaginary Crimes
(94, Anthony Drazan);
Monkey Trouble
(94, Franco Amurri);
Smoke
(95, Wayne Wang);
Ulysses’ Gaze
(95, Theo Angelopoulos);
Clockers
(95, Spike Lee);
Blue in the Face
(95, Wang);
Get Shorty
(95, Barry Sonnenfeld);
From Dusk Till Dawn
(96, Robert Rodriguez);
Head Above Water
(96, Jim Wilson);
City of Industry
(97, John Irvin);
Cop Land
(97, James Mangold); as Houdini in
Fairy Tale
(97, Charles Sturridge);
Shadrach
(98, Susanna Styron);
Lulu on the Bridge
(98, Paul Auster);
Finding Graceland
(98, David Winkler);
Il Mio West
(98, Giovanni Veronesi);
Three Seasons
(99, Tony Bui);
Holy Smoke
(99, Campion);
Presence of Mind
(99, Antonio Aloy);
An Interesting State
(99, Wertmuller);
Fail Safe
(00, Stephen Frears);
U-571
(00, Jonathan Mostow);
Prince of Central Park
(00, John Leekley);
Little Nicky
(00, Steve Brill);
Ginostra
(00, Manuel Pradal);
Nailed
(01, Joel Silverman);
Taking Sides
(01, István Szabó);
The Grey Zone
(01, Tim Blake Nelson).

And now he’s returned to films hardly heard of:
Vipera
(01, Sergio Citti);
Nowhere
(02, Luis Sepúlveda);
Red Dragon
(02, Brett Ratner);
Beeper
(02, Jack Sholder);
Dreaming of Julia
(03, Juan Gerard);
Crime Spree
(03, Brad Mirman);
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(04, Mary McGuckian);
National Treasure
(04, Jon Turteltaub);
Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
(04, Arthur Allan Seidelman);
Be Cool
(05, F. Gary Gray);
A Crime
(05, Pradal);
The Shadow Dancer
(05, Mirman);
The Path to 9/11
(06, David L. Cunningham);
The Stone Merchant
(06, Renzo Martinelli);
One Last Dance
(07, Max Makowski);
My Sexiest Year
(07, Howard Himelstein);
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
(07, Turteltaub).

Gene Kelly
(Eugene Curran Kelly) (1912–96), b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Educated at Pennsylvania State University, Kelly had a variety of jobs before work as a dance instructor led him to the stage. He appeared in the New York productions of
Leave It to Me
and
Pal Joey
and entered films only when he was thirty.

His work in the cinema can be broken down into categories:

1. As a leading man in MGM musicals, dancing and singing with that pleasant note of strained voice: Busby Berkeley’s
For Me and My Gal
(42);
Thousands Cheer
(43),
Anchors Aweigh
(45), and
The Three Musketeers
(48)—all for George Sidney;
Du Barry Was a Lady
(43, Roy del Ruth); Charles Vidor’s
Cover Girl
(44)—at Columbia;
Living in a Big Way
(47, Gregory La Cava);
Summer Stock
(50, Charles Walters); and
Les Girls
(57, George Cukor).

2. As a straight actor: without success, in
The Cross of Lorraine
(43, Tay Garnett);
Pilot No. 5
(43, George Sidney);
Christmas Holiday
(44, Robert Siodmak);
Black Hand
(50, Richard Thorpe);
Marjorie Morningstar
(58, Irving Rapper);
Inherit the Wind
(60, Stanley Kramer); and
40 Carats
(73, Milton Katselas).

3. As a director: Kelly was credited as codirector on most of his films with Stanley Donen, although he seems only to have choreographed them. But he has established a career as an independent director—first on
Invitation to the Dance
(56) and
The Happy Road
(56), but subsequently on a variety of comedies, musicals, and even a Western:
The Tunnel of Love
(58);
Gigot
(63);
A Guide for the Married Man
(67);
Hello, Dolly!
(69); and
The Cheyenne Social Club
(70).

4. As a dancer and dance director: this is easily his most important and individual contribution. As a dancer, he is not the equal of Astaire. Kelly is balletic, Romantic, and sometimes mannered, a dancer who thinks and feels, whereas Astaire is a man who dances before he thinks. That said, Kelly has danced superbly and with terrific athletic authority on the screen: in the ballet from
The Pirate
(47, Vincente Minnelli); with Vera-Ellen doing “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” in
Words and Music
(48, Norman Taurog); in
On the Town
(49, Donen); in Donen’s
Singin’ in the Rain
(52); most ambitious in the extensive ballet dream in Minnelli’s
An American in Paris
(51); once more vigorous and exuberant for Minnelli in
Brigadoon
(54); and Donen’s
It’s Always Fair Weather
(55).

As a dancer, he was seen very briefly as one of the three teachers in Cukor’s
Let’s Make Love
(60), and most touchingly in Jacques Demy’s
The Young Girls of Rochefort
(67), a little like the ghost of his dancing past, now nervous of stretching his legs.

In 1951, Kelly was awarded a special Oscar for his contribution to dance in films and he is a major innovator in the history of the musical. More artistically adventurous than Astaire, it is proper that Kelly should be remembered for magnificent set pieces of choreography—enormously complex as in
An American in Paris
, and perfectly simple on Donen’s raining street set. (But Astaire’s
lack
of adventure is another aspect of his
natural
genius.) Kelly’s personality seems to me cold and aggressive. Whereas Astaire’s basic reticence makes an intriguing contrast with his virtuosity as a dancer, the recurring portentousness in Kelly the dancer—that corny slow turn he loved—seems stamped with the harsh, calculating cheerfulness that exults in ringing up the curtain in
Singin’ in the Rain
to expose Jean Hagen’s Bronx accent. Too often, Kelly’s teeth glared out at us, as the filling for a smile, and
The Pirate
is a nice, malicious portrait of brittle phoniness.

In later years, he appeared in
Xanadu
(80, Robert Greenwald) and
Reporters
(81, Raymond Depardon), and he introduced
That’s Dancing
(85, Jack Haley Jr.).

He and Donen were old friends who fell out at last—it’s a subject for a musical, maybe. Kelly was a notable left-wing social figure in Hollywood, in the 1940s, married to Betsy Blair. When they broke up, she asked for more understanding for Kelly—and he found he hadn’t got it. It was as if he came to life only when he danced.

Grace Kelly
(1928–82), b. Philadelphia
Grace Kelly was enough to make Hollywood believe in itself. From a wealthy family and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she was in and out of Hollywood in six years: beautiful, articulate, graceful, and deserving. Not that she was unduly striking in Hathaway’s
Fourteen Hours
(51), or as the Quaker wife in
High Noon
(52, Fred Zinnemann). And Ava Gardner made short work of her demureness in
Mogambo
(53, John Ford).

Who should play fairy godmother but Alfred Hitchcock? First he put her in a nightie and subjected her to Ray Milland’s smiling trap in
Dial M for Murder
(54); next he used her to tease a James Stewart encased in plaster in
Rear Window
(54); finally he gave her Cary Grant to play with on the prince’s very doorstep in
To Catch a Thief
(55). In all three, she was suggestive of high class (for Hitchcock is always a snob) and her regal claiming of Grant for a goodnight kiss in a Monte Carlo hotel, or her asking him to choose between breast or leg, are indelible. No wonder her future husband did what he could to keep the finished film under wraps. (There were plenty of rumors that the classy Kelly loved sex.) Hollywood was enchanted, and pushed an Oscar on her for the drab
Country Girl
(54, George Seaton). For the rest, she was tearful in
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
(55, Mark Robson), less bright than emeralds in
Green Fire
(55, Andrew Marton), and coyly schooled for higher things in Charles Vidor’s
The Swan
(56) and Charles Walters’s
High Society
(56), in which she sang sweetly in Crosby’s arms and gave an amateur impersonation of Katharine Hepburn.