The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (258 page)

He died as he was filming
Plan 9 From Outer Space
(59, Edward D. Wood, Jr.), the perfect memorial for the undead.

Baz
(Bazmark Anthony)
Luhrmann
, b. New South Wales, Australia, 1962
1992:
Kids of the Cross
(TV);
Strictly Ballroom
. 1996:
Romeo + Juliet
. 2001:
Moulin Rouge
. 2008:
Australia
.

Opening the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, and unable to escape the publicity attendant on Nicole Kidman’s first picture since the split with Tom Cruise,
Moulin Rouge
got very mixed reviews. Yet can anyone deny that it was far and away the most imaginative mainstream film of the summer season that followed? The charges were monotonous: that the camerawork was so busy as to make one giddy; that the gay camp attitude was crushing; and even, hadn’t we seen it all before? Not me. I think it’s the most exhilarating movie musical since
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
, and just as important in showing a way ahead for that nearly abandoned genre. Moreover, who could miss the fond wave to Renoir’s
French Cancan
, with all that meant in terms of seeing the show as an allegory of life?

What’s more, who could fail to see the steady enrichment of Luhrmann’s talent and ambition?
Strictly Ballroom
was a pleasant film, but undisguisedly coy and cute.
Romeo + Juliet
was a very effective trick. That’s why
Moulin Rouge
(filmed in Australia with sets that reminded some people of Michael Powell) deserved credit for its complete theatrical world, for the bravura sweep that carries one song into another, and the wonderfully silhouetted treatment of all the players—not least Ms. Kidman herself, who seemed happier and less impeded than she had ever managed before.

It’s as hard to think where Luhrmann goes as it was to predict Terence Davies’s future after
The Long Day Closes
. But then look how well Davies turned out—except that most people missed the virtues of
The House of Mirth
. His eventual film seemed promising—a
Gone With the Wind
for Australia. Russell Crowe dropped out—Hugh Jackman took the saddle. Nicole Kidman remained. And
Australia
felt like forever with a very sketchy story. It had a war, but no Scarlett. It was a huge setback.

Paul Lukas
(1895–1971), b. Budapest, Hungary
Lukas was a student at the Actors’ Academy of Hungary and a leading player of the Hungarian stage and cinema when, in 1923, Max Reinhardt invited him to Vienna. As well as working in the theatre there, he made
Samson und Dalila
(23, Michael Curtiz) at UFA. He went back to the Budapest theatre and was spotted by Adolph Zukor, who gave him a contract with Paramount.

Ironically, having come to attention because of the enduring loyalties of Hungarians, Lukas was asked for most of his career to play stereotyped Hollywood foreigners, everything from caddish seducers to hissing Nazis. He began at Paramount with
Three Sinners
(28, Rowland V. Lee) and worked steadily without establishing himself as more than support:
The Woman from Moscow
(28, Ludwig Berger);
Two Lovers
(28, Fred Niblo);
Hot News
(28, Clarence Badger);
The Night Watch
(28, Alexander Korda);
Manhattan Cocktail
(28, Dorothy Arzner); and
The Shopworn Angel
(29, Richard Wallace). The studio’s efforts to promote Lukas as a romantic hero were not helped by his obstinate accent, and he gradually slipped into character roles:
Halfway to Heaven
(29, George Abbott);
The Wolf of Wall Street
(29, Lee);
Behind the Make-Up
(30, Robert Milton);
Slightly Scarlet
(30, Louis Gasnier and Edwin H. Knopf); and
Grumpy
(30, George Cukor and Cyril Gardner).

He briefly revived his leading status opposite Ruth Chatterton in
Anybody’s Woman
(30, Arzner),
The Right to Love
(31, Wallace), and
Unfaithful
(31, John Cromwell), but his most distinctive American role was as the gang boss in
City Streets
(31, Rouben Mamoulian). After
The Vice Squad
(31, Cromwell),
Strictly Dishonorable
(31, John M. Stahl),
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
(32, Wallace), and
Thunder Below
(32, Wallace), he left Paramount and freelanced:
A Passport to Hell
(32, Frank Lloyd);
Rockabye
(32, Cukor);
Grand Slam
(33, William Dieterle); and
The Kiss Before the Mirror
(33, James Whale). He now signed with Universal and, after
Captured!
(33, Roy del Ruth) and Profesor Bhaer (at RKO) in
Little Women
(33, Cukor), settled into playing lead parts in relatively cheap pictures at that studio:
By Candlelight
(33, Whale);
The Countess of Monte Cristo
(34, Karl Freund);
Glamour
(34, William Wyler); and, at RKO,
The Fountain
(34, Cromwell). He freelanced for the next few years:
The Casino Murder Case
(35, Lesley Fenton);
I Found Stella Parrish
(35, Mervyn Le Roy);
Dodsworth
(36, Wyler);
Ladies in Love
(36, Edward H. Griffith); and
Espionage
(37, Kurt Neumann), before leaving for England.

His work there was no more consistent, but he had the good fortune to play the villain in Hitchcock’s
The Lady Vanishes
(38), and this set him up as a suitable actor for the espionage movies Hollywood would shortly adopt: thus
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
(39, Anatole Litvak);
Strange Cargo
(40, Frank Borzage);
They Dare Not Love
(41, Whale); and most successfully,
Watch on the Rhine
(43, Vincent Sherman and Herman Shumlin). The anti-Nazi agent of Lillian Hellman’s play was a part Lukas had created on Broadway, and when the film was made he won the best actor Oscar; he was good in the film but it was an award worn on Hollywood’s war-conscious sleeve, which did little to improve Lukas’s prospects. He was now typecast as an anti-Nazi:
Hostages
(43, Frank Tuttle);
Uncertain Glory
(44, Raoul Walsh); and
Address Unknown
(44, William Cameron Menzies).

After the war, he slipped into smaller films: the wicked husband/brother in
Experiment Perilous
(44, Jacques Tourneur);
Deadline at Dawn
(46, Harold Clurman);
Temptation
(46, Irving Pichel);
Whispering City
(47, Fedor Ozep); and
Berlin Express
(48, Tourneur). Semiretirement dated from about this period and he subsequently limited himself to supporting or cameo parts in larger films:
Kim
(50, Victor Saville);
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(54, Richard Fleischer);
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
(61, Vincente Minnelli);
Tender Is the Night
(62, Henry King);
55 Days at Peking
(63, Nicholas Ray); and
Lord Jim
(65, Richard Brooks).

Sidney Lumet
, b. Philadelphia, 1924
1957:
Twelve Angry Men
. 1958:
Stage Struck
. 1959:
That Kind of Woman; The Fugitive Kind
. 1961:
A View From the Bridge
. 1962:
Long Day’s Journey into Night
. 1963:
Fail-Safe
. 1965:
The Pawnbroker; The Hill
. 1966:
The Group
. 1967:
The Deadly Affair
. 1968:
Bye Bye, Braverman; The Seagull
. 1969:
The Appointment; Blood Kin
. 1971:
The Anderson Tapes
. 1972:
The Offence; Child’s Play
. 1973:
Serpico; Lovin’ Molly
. 1974:
Murder on the Orient Express
. 1975:
Dog Day Afternoon
. 1976:
Network
. 1977:
Equus
. 1978:
The Wiz
. 1980:
Just Tell Me What You Want
. 1981:
Prince of the City
. 1982:
Death Trap; The Verdict
. 1983:
Daniel
. 1984:
Garbo Talks
. 1986:
Power; The Morning After
. 1988:
Running on Empty
. 1989:
Family Business
. 1990:
Q& A
. 1992:
A Stranger Among Us
. 1993:
Guilty as Sin
. 1997:
Night Falls on Manhattan; Critical Care
. 1999:
Gloria
. 2001:
100 Centre Street
(TV) (directed 10 episodes). 2004:
Strip Search
(TV). 2006:
Find Me Guilty
. 2007:
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
.

On the one hand, Lumet has made forty-three films. He has been nominated as best director four times. He has steady themes: the fragility of justice and the police and their corruption. He can deliver powerhouse performances from lead actors, and fine work from character actors. He is one of the stalwart figures of New York moviemaking. He abides by good scripts, when he gets them. Yet there is also the Lumet of such follies as
The Wiz, Power, Family Business, A Stranger Among Us
, and
Guilty as Sin
—all of which are 1978 and later. It is in his ostensible maturity that Lumet has been most wayward and inexplicable.

He was a child actor on the stage and in
One Third of a Nation
(39, Dudley Murphy). After an education at Columbia and the Actors Studio, he had his training in live TV drama. His debut,
Twelve Angry Men
, was an acclaimed picture in its day: it was a model for liberal reason and fellowship in the Eisenhower era; or maybe it was an alarming example of how easily any jury could be swayed. Perhaps, finally, it was just an exercise for group acting.

Lumet quickly became esteemed, even if he was out of his element with the romanticism of
Stage Struck
and
That Kind of Woman
. He did well by quality literary adaptations and gave due scope to Hepburn, Richardson, Robards, and Stockwell in what is a superb
Long Day’s Journey
. Though not well known today,
The Fugitive Kind
was faithful to Tennessee Williams, it kept Brando and Magnani in intriguing balance and used Boris Kaufman’s black and white poetically.

Solemnity set in where there had never been much humor. Lumet got a habit for big issues—
Fail-Safe, The Pawnbroker, The Hill
—and seemed torn between dullness and pathos. Still, in the seventies he made several good procedural thrillers
—The Anderson Tapes
(he was an early believer in an un-Bonded Sean Connery) and
Serpico
—and he was able to catch the wild, emotional panache of Pacino and John Cazale in the tragi-comic
Dog Day Afternoon. Network
plainly belonged to Paddy Chayefsky, but Lumet understood that and did nothing to impede the film. It was the closest he had come to a successful comedy. He was that rarity of the 1970s, a director happy to serve his material—yet seemingly not touched or changed by it.

Equus
was a bad film, but maybe it’s a bad play that reveals its flaws in close-up.
Prince of the City
is a very dogged, labyrinthine study of police corruption—and one that has twice defied wakefulness in this viewer. Was Lumet wary of humor because it needed energy? Whatever the answer, there’s a gloom in
Prince of the City
that feels dutiful or depressed.
The Verdict
looked and felt like an Oscar vehicle for Paul Newman. As with
Twelve Angry Men
, its supposed criticism of justice was only the mechanics for suspense.

Daniel
and
Running on Empty
are touching and stricken films, with good performances from such young actors as Amanda Plummer, River Phoenix, and Martha Plimpton. Time and again over the years (he has helped eighteen acting nominations), Lumet has shown us more than we expected in actors. That was true of Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges in
The Morning After
. But the films seemed set, sad, and one-paced.
Q & A
is one of Lumet’s best, with an extraordinary performance from Nick Nolte. But
A Stranger Among Us
(Melanie Griffith as an undercover cop in a Hasidic community) is as dotty a choice as any A-list director has ever made.

Lumet was seventy in 1994. How odd to think of him as a veteran, for he seems unformed still, and likely to do anything. It’s a distinguished career, I suppose, but it doesn’t begin to tell us who Sidney Lumet is. He is eighty-six now—and still working.

Of his recent films, only
Night Falls on Manhattan
was compelling—that old instinct for corruption in law and order. But Lumet had another recent credit: in 1995, he published
Making Movies
, a genuinely instructive and thoroughly planned book about managing a picture into being. But it was so clear, so logical, so sensible, it left one at a loss as to how Lumet had made so many pictures that are travesties, and a few—like
The Verdict
—that never lose their harsh taste. If only making movies was as straightforward as he makes it seem—if only the book was wilder, angrier, and more in love. Then a few more films might be great.

The Lumière Brothers:
Louis
(1864–1948), b. Besançon France;
Auguste
(1862–1954), b. Besançon, France
This book does not include people simply because of their part in the invention of cinematography: there is no Muybridge or Marey. But although the Lumières are credited with the patent and the first film shows that defined the theatrical potential of a whole series of inventions, they are discussed here because their first films are still moving. The rapid sequence of still images so that an effect of lifelike animation is achieved was only the means to the movement of feelings and ideas. The Lumières themselves were largely unaware of the effects they had produced, but those short films touch on many of the subtlest mysteries of the movies. Whether they would have liked it or not, they are the antecedents of the mainstream of French and American cinema, the first men to discover—albeit unwittingly—the fictional content of documentary, and the men who established that films reached out toward audiences and were in turn altered in the process of being watched.