The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (229 page)

That said, minimalism can be a desperate attempt to hold on to real place, real time, and nature in the broadest sense against the infernal electronic possibilities for change. There is a great need for movies, or for film, that simply record real life and asks us to attend.

There are astonishing beauties in distance and duration, as Renoir, Mizoguchi, Dreyer, and so many great masters believed.

Harmony Korine had his first credit doing the script for
Kids
(95, Larry Clark). Some asked whether that drab, comatose scrutiny of grim life had or needed a script. But a script is not just a collection of pages. It can be an attitude to life, an element in casting, and an influence on the way of filming. Thus,
Gummo
came as no surprise (no matter how shocking or disturbing you might find it). It grew directly out of
Kids. Julien Donkey-Boy
is a very different kind of film—it has a plot and a looming psychic drama behind it. But it is made in a similar way, and it shows Korine developing.

Sight and Sound
noted a dilemma: Bertolucci had called
Gummo
the one revolutionary film of the late twentieth century, whereas Janet Maslin of the
New York Times
had said it might be the worst ever made.
Sight and Sound
was seeking resolution, but it seems to me truer to Korine and the real cause of minimalism that a film might be both—for what we’re on the edge of here is an explosive end to cinema, as a way of remaking its society.

Henry Koster
(Hermann Kosterlitz) (1905–88), b. Berlin
1932:
Das Abenteuer der Thea Roland
. 1933:
Das Hässliche Mädchen; Peter
. 1934:
Kleine Mutti
. 1936:
Marie Bashkirtzeff; Three Smart Girls
. 1937:
One Hundred Men and a Girl
. 1938:
The Rage of Paris
. 1939:
Three Smart Girls Grow Up; First Love
. 1940:
Spring Parade
. 1941:
It Started with Eve
. 1942:
Between Us Girls
. 1944:
Music for Millions
. 1946:
Two Sisters from Boston
. 1947:
The Unfinished Dance; The Bishop’s Wife
. 1949:
The Inspector General; Come to the Stable
. 1950:
Harvey; Wabash Avenue; My Blue Heaven
. 1951:
Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell; No Highway;
“The Cop and the Anthem,” episode from
O. Henry’s Full House
. 1952:
Stars and Stripes Forever; My Cousin Rachel
. 1953:
The Robe
. 1954:
Desirée
. 1955:
Good Morning, Miss Dove; A Man Called Peter; The Virgin Queen
. 1956:
D-Day the Sixth of June; The Power and the Prize
. 1957:
My Man Godfrey; Fraulein
. 1959:
The Naked Maja
. 1960:
The Story of Ruth
. 1961:
Flower Drum Song
. 1962:
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
. 1963:
Take Her, She’s Mine
. 1965:
Dear Brigitte; The Singing Nun
.

In 1926, Kosterlitz was making publicity films. Next year, he joined UFA as a writer, later working at Universal and Terra. His output was prolific but undistinguished, including several scripts filmed by Kurt Bernhardt
—Die Waise von Lowood
(26);
Kinderseelen Klagen an
(26);
Die Letzte Kompanie
(30);
Die Mann der den Mord Beging
(31). He began directing at Universal and in 1936 he left for America.

At Universal, he was chosen by Joe Pasternak (who had produced
Kleine Mutti
) to handle the studio’s new property, Deanna Durbin. Koster was equal to that task, directing her six times:
Three Smart Girls; One Hundred Men and a Girl
, which pairs Durbin with Leopold Stokowski;
Three Smart Girls Grow Up; First Love; Spring Parade;
and
It Started with Eve
, which costars Charles Laughton. After two films with June Allyson, and a dull Cary Grant movie
—The Bishop’s Wife
—Koster made the awful
Inspector General
(all Danny Kaye and no Gogol) and the charming
Harvey
and
No Highway
, which rely on James Stewart’s facile absentmindedness. Now at Fox, he was once more trusted: this time with CinemaScope.
The Robe
, however, is a cautious innovation, and it inaugurated a solemn decline.
Desirée
is inept;
The Virgin Queen
a throwback;
Good Morning, Miss Dove
treacle;
My Man Godfrey
an ill-advised remake with David Niven and Allyson falling far short of Powell and Lombard; and
The Naked Maja
sedately overdressed.

Grigori Kozintsev
(1905–73), b. Kiev, Russia
1924:
Pokhozhdeniya Oktyabriny/The Adventures of Oktyabrina
. 1925:
Mishki protiv Yudenicha/ Mishka against Yudenich
. 1926:
Chortovo Koleso/ The Devil’s Wheel; Shinel/The Cloak
. 1927:
Bratishka;
SVD/The Club of the Big Deed
. 1929:
Novyi Vavilon/The New Babylon
. 1931:
Odna/ Alone
. 1935:
Yunost Maksima/The Youth of Maxim
. 1937:
Vozvrashchenie Maksima/The Return of Maxim
. 1939:
Vyborgskaya Storona/The Vyborg Side
. 1945:
Prostye Lyudi/Plain People
(all these films codirected with Leonid Trauberg). 1947:
Pirogov
. 1953:
Bielinsky
. 1957:
Don Quixote
. 1964:
Hamlet
. 1971:
King Lear
.

With Leonid Trauberg and Sergei Yutkevich, Kozintsev was a founding member of the Factory of Eccentric Actors. After that, he became the regular collaborator of Leonid Trauberg in directing films. That partnership is best known for
The New Babylon
, a satire set in Paris during the 1871 Commune, and the Maxim films that trace the development of a party worker in the years 1913–20. They made the first postwar feature at Leninfilm,
Plain People
, but its release was held up for eleven years by the authorities. From that point, Kozintsev worked independently on a series of prestigious, literary transpositions. They are meticulous, literal films, inclined to make crude extensions of the original works toward Communist ideology. The acting is old-fashioned and Kozintsev labored to capture a visual equivalent of the density of Shakespeare’s verse. His
Lear
, especially, is pedestrian, but
Hamlet
is graced by the performance of Innokennty Smoktunovsky, while the overemphatic
Don Quixote
allows every indulgence to Nikolai Cherkassov. Unfortunately, he never escaped the Russian taste for academic beauty—the one solacing proof of art for creators controlled by bureaucrats. Thus, the lamentable prettiness of so much Soviet composition, obscuring the lack of purposeful structure.

Stanley Kramer
(1913–2001), b. New York
1955:
Not as a Stranger
. 1957:
The Pride and the Passion
. 1958:
The Defiant Ones
. 1959:
On the Beach
. 1960:
Inherit the Wind
. 1961:
Judgement at Nuremberg
. 1963:
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
. 1965:
Ship of Fools
. 1967:
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
. 1969:
The Secret of Santa Vittoria
. 1970:
R.P.M
. 1971:
Bless the Beasts and Children
. 1973:
Oklahoma Crude
. 1977:
The Domino Principle/The Domino Killings
. 1979:
The Runner Stumbles
.

In some quarters Kramer was a hero of the 1950s: an enterprising producer, cutting costs on “daring” or “topical” subjects, ultimately coming into his own as a director. But the test of direction revealed all the limitations of his entrepreneurial liberalism. His own films are middlebrow and overemphatic; at worst, they are among the most tedious and dispiriting productions the American cinema has to offer. Commercialism, of the most crass and confusing kind, has devitalized all his projects, just as his deliberate enlightenment seems to have wearied notable actors. He would answer that he makes films for the ordinary viewer and that
The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind
, and
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
might be subtle moderators of prejudice. Not a jot of evidence supports that hope. Very little encourages the thought that even vastly superior films could serve that purpose. Kramer is a hollow, pretentious man, too dull for art, too cautious for politics. There are few films as deeply depressing as
On the Beach
and
Judgement at Nuremberg
, because their visions of apocalypse are as numbstruck as a rabbit in headlights.

He was educated at New York University, and in 1933 he joined the research department at MGM, working subsequently as an editor and casting director. His first job as a producer was on Albert Lewin’s
The Moon and Sixpence
(42) and it was only in the late 1940s that he set up as an independent producer with Sam Katz, Carl Foreman, and George Glass as partners. After
So This Is New York
(48, Richard Fleischer), he made his name with a series of economy productions, by turns prestigious and socially realistic:
Home of the Brave
(49, Mark Robson);
Champion
(49, Robson);
The Men
(50, Fred Zinnemann);
Cyrano de Bergerac
(50, Michael Gordon); and
High Noon
(52, Zinnemann). The latter was later claimed to be an allegory about McCarthyism—which is a lot of allegory. The others have all dated badly, showing up the meretricious artistic conception.

To this point, Kramer had been commercially successful: that and his liberal respectability attracted Columbia, who signed him to produce thirty films in five years, all with low budgets and high profits. It was a disastrous contract in which Kramer claimed to be hindered by the studio’s meanness, but still launched some unlikely ventures. There is not a good film in the lot:
Death of a Salesman
(51, Laslo Benedek);
The Happy Time
(52, Fleischer);
The Sniper
(52, Edward Dmytryk);
My Six Convicts
(52, Hugo Fregonese);
The Four Poster
(52, Irving Reis);
Eight Iron Men
(52, Dmytryk);
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
(52, Roy Rowland);
The Wild One
(53, Benedek);
Member of the Wedding
(53, Zinnemann); and
The Juggler
(53, Dmytryk). The heavy losses incurred by most of these were covered by the one success,
The Caine Mutiny
(54, Dmytryk), but Columbia had had enough and bought up the contract.

Thus Kramer launched himself as producer/ director. Suffice it to say that
Not as a Stranger
is his best film,
The Pride and the Passion
the silliest. After that, ordeal sets in and shows no sign of faltering. The greatest oddity is that his reputation has survived such critical pasting and so many boxoffice failures. When he died he was on the front page of the
New York Times
, plus a full page inside—more than twice the space given to Bresson.

Norman Krasna
(1909–84), b. Queens, New York
1943:
Princess O’Rourke
. 1950:
The Big Hangover
. 1956:
The Ambassador’s Daughter
.

Krasna did a little bit of everything; never with distinction, but rarely without a feeling for comedy. Two of his own films—
Princess O’Rourke
and
The Ambassador’s Daughter
—are pleasant settings for Olivia de Havilland; while
The Big Hangover
was a routine Metro romance with the young Elizabeth Taylor.

From Columbia University, Krasna became a New York drama critic, and then attached himself to the publicity department at Warners—the way in pioneered by Hal Wallis (who produced
Princess O’Rourke
). From 1932, Krasna worked as a writer, on either originals or his own stage plays: the story of
Meet the Baron
(33, Walter Lang), with Herman Mankiewicz;
The Richest Girl in the World
(34, William A. Seiter); the uncharacteristic
Fury
(36, Fritz Lang), for which he provided the story outline;
The Big City
(37, Frank Borzage), a Spencer Tracy–Luise Rainer film that Krasna wrote the story for and produced; the story for
You and Me
(38, Lang); the very funny script for
Bachelor Mother
(39, Garson Kanin); story and script for Hitchcock’s underrated
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
(41); producer and writer of
The Devil and Miss Jones
(41, Sam Wood); the stories of
It Started with Eve
(41, Henry Koster) and
The Flame of New Orleans
(41, René Clair).

He concentrated on the theatre for most of the 1940s, though his play,
Dear Ruth
(47, William D. Russell), was filmed, and he returned to cinema with script work on
White Christmas
(54, Michael Curtiz);
Bundle of Joy
(57, Norman Taurog);
Indiscreet
(58, Stanley Donen), which he wrote from his own play;
Who Was That Lady?
(60, George Sidney), which he wrote and produced; the story for
Let’s Make Love
(60, George Cukor); the story for
My Geisha
(62, Jack Cardiff); and the script for
Sunday in New York
(65, Peter Tewkesbury). In addition, in 1950, Krasna formed a production company with Jerry Wald that lasted long enough to produce
The Lusty Men
(52, Nicholas Ray),
Clash by Night
(52, Lang), and
The Blue Veil
(52, Curtis Bernhardt).