The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (355 page)

Rivette’s work has not traveled much outside France—a measure of its lack of commercial success, and of his tranquil pursuit of his own themes, often at great length. In
Love on the Ground
, two actresses (Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin) are hired to enact and even finish a play, or a ritual. When it played in America, it found little understanding, but it needed to be read in the full context of Rivette’s work. However,
La Belle Noiseuse
stood on its own, no matter that it was rooted in the earlier films, with its astonishing variations on the theme of artist and model, life and imagination. This masterpiece, coming close to twenty years after
Céline and Julie
, confirmed Rivette as one of the great directors.

Then he took on a classic—Joan of Arc—in a six-hour movie, with the best actress available, Sandrine Bonnaire. It has been a while since a major director delivered masterpieces past the age of sixty. But Rivette has that promise. Without ever really establishing a commercial reputation, Rivette continues to follow his obsessions.
Va Savoir
—an elegant, if slightly studied, romantic comedy—opened the New York Film Festival of 2001 and found an audience in theatres. To my mind, it was less interesting than
Fragile
and a good deal less compelling than
Secret Defénse
(a well-plotted noir with Sandrine Bonnaire). But at last the feeling began to stir—that Rivette is one of the masters. A time will come when proper retrospective will prove his greatness, but at the cost of so many younger and flashier reputations. No one has done more to experiment with narrative and duration than Rivette.

Hal Roach
(1892–1992), b. Elmira, New York
In 1983 (when he was ninety-one), the Academy gave Hal Roach a special Oscar for his “unparalleled record of distinguished contributions to the motion picture art form.” A full nine years later, as Roach attended the awards ceremony once again, the host Billy Crystal referred to his one hundredth birthday. The assembly rose in applause. Roach stood and gave a speech—unheard by the masses, because there was no mike for him. Whereupon, Crystal observed, with quick grace, that the glitch was fitting—“Because Mr. Roach started his career in silent movies.”

What else was an enterprising twenty-two-year-old to do? He couldn’t wait forever, and he had put in those obligatory years as a gold-miner in Alaska, as a mule-skinner, and as a cowboy stuntman. So he went into production and became the generous, accommodating boss to Harold Lloyd, Our Gang, Charley Chase, Laurel and Hardy, to say nothing of Leo McCarey, George Marshall, and George Stevens when they were young.

In his early days, Roach did some directing, but he seems to have been happy to rise above that chore. He is credited with story and script for Lloyd’s
Safety Last
(23, Fred Newmeyer), and it is clear that Roach’s easygoing attitude helped put together the team that made Lloyd films work. While Roach was not especially assertive or colorful, he understood the efficacy of a friendly studio. Walter Kerr is one commentator who gives Roach special credit for this creative, family background. Nevertheless, Roach was slow to see how well Laurel and Hardy worked together. But genius in Hollywood should never overlook the good luck that rides out its blindness and its errors.

Of course, Roach was not just a silent-film maker. Laurel and Hardy made the transition to sound very well. In addition, in the thirties the Roach studio produced
Topper
(37, Norman Z. McLeod);
Captain Fury
(39, directed by Roach himself);
The Housekeeper’s Daughter
(39, Roach)—the debut of Victor Mature;
Of Mice and Men
(39, Lewis Milestone); and
One Million B.C
. (39), an everyday caveman story, with Mature and Carole Landis, directed by Roach, his son, and—so it is said—D. W. Griffith.

In truth, after the early forties, Roach turned a lot of the business over to his son, tried a television company (without success), and became a landmark. There is never anything like a new business for encouraging enterprise. Today, to run a movie company is to follow in the steps of tradition, to be hounded by dreams and traditions of success. Whereas, Roach picked up a new ball and just began to throw it.

Jason Robards Jr
. (1922–2000), b. Chicago
The son of an actor, Jason Robards Sr. (1896–1963), and himself closely associated with stage revivals of Eugene O’Neill, Robards must be seen as a surviving exponent of the grand manner. He is romantic, crusty, weather-beaten, and easily carried away on his own soulfulness; his earnest commitment as an actor does not prevent his blood from being filled with that sublime idealization of self that furnishes ham. He seemed to be searching for a part where he had only to stand around gloomily, growl, chuckle, and do his gnarled thing.

His divorced father settled in Hollywood and, from living there, the son formed an early aversion to acting that always fueled his grumbling pipe dream that it is a foolish thing he does—instead of the very thing he was made for. He served in the navy during the Second World War, and only then took up acting. In 1946 he entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Ten years later, he made a name as Hickey in O’Neill’s
The Iceman Cometh
. He also played the elder son in
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
, and Manley Halliday (based on Scott Fitzgerald) in the stage version of Budd Schulberg’s
The Disenchanted
. In 1959, for TV, he played Robert Jordan in
For Whom the Bell Tolls
—early on, he had a list of prestigious parts.

His movie debut was as a Hungarian freedom fighter in
The Journey
(59, Anatole Litvak). After that he was in
By Love Possessed
(61, John Sturges); Dick Diver in
Tender Is the Night
(61, Henry King); the son again in
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
(62, Sidney Lumet);
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
(66, Fielder Cook);
A Thousand Clowns
(66, Fred Coe);
Any Wednesday
(66, Robert Miller);
Divorce American Style
(67, Bud Yorkin); Old Man Clanton in
Hour of the Gun
(67, Sturges); Al Capone in
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
(67, Roger Corman);
The Night They Raided Minsky’s
(68, William Friedkin); Singer in
Isadora
(68, Karel Reisz);
Once Upon a Time in the West
(69, Sergio Leone);
Tora! Tora! Tora!
(70, Richard Fleischer); Brutus in
Julius Caesar
(70, Stuart Burge);
Fools
(70, Tom Gries); astounding in
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
(70, Sam Peckinpah);
Murders in the Rue Morgue
(71, Gordon Hessler); the father in
Johnny Got His Gun
(71, Dalton Trumbo);
The War Between Men and Women
(72, Melville Shavelson);
The Execution
(72, Reza S. Badiyi); Lew Wallace in
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
(73, Peckinpah); Ben Bradlee in
All the President’s Men
(76, Alan J. Pakula); Dashiell Hammett in
Julia
(77, Fred Zinnemann);
Comes a Horseman
(78, Pakula); and in
Hurricane
(79, Jan Troell).

He won supporting actor Oscars for
All the President’s Men
and
Julia
—tributes to the real people he played and to his easy histrionic stylization of them.

Robards played yet more “real” figures, covering them with his extending crust, like an alien force taking over natural life: a legendary Howard Hughes found in the desert in
Melvin and Howard
(80, Jonathan Demme); Leland Hayward for
Haywire
(80, Michael Tuchner);
F.D.R. The Last Year
(80, Anthony Page);
Sakharov
(84, Jack Gold); Clarence Darrow in
Inherit the Wind
(88, David Greene); and then there was the voice—if some voices lead us to say they have a weary, rasping, “lived in” quality, then Robards had a voice to accommodate all the streets and tenements of Brooklyn—which we are used to in everything from commercials to his portrayal of Ulysses S. Grant in
The Civil War
(89, Ken Burns).

But Robards played fictional beings, too, and few worked harder:
Raise the Titanic!
(80, Jerry Jameson);
Caboblanco
(80, J. Lee Thompson);
The Legend of the Lone Ranger
(81, William A. Fraker);
Max Dugan Returns
(83, Herbert Ross);
Something Wicked This Way Comes
(83, Jack Clayton);
The Day After
(83, Nicholas Meyer);
The Atlanta Child Murders
(85, John Erman); in the old Orson Welles role in
The Long Hot Summer
(85, Stuart Cooper);
Johnny Bull
(86, Claudia Weill); to Australia for
The Last Frontier
(86, Simon Wincer);
Square Dance
(87, Daniel Petrie); with Julie Harris in
The Christmas Wife
(88, David Jones);
Bright Lights, Big City
(88, James Bridges);
The Good Mother
(88, Leonard Nimoy);
Dream a Little Dream
(88, Marc Rocco);
Parenthood
(89, Ron Howard); with Rosanna Arquette as a clairvoyant team in
Black Rainbow
(89, Mike Hodges);
Reunion
(90, Jerry Schatzberg);
Quick Change
(90, Howard Franklin and Bill Murray);
The Perfect Tribute
(91, Jack Bender);
Chernobyl: The Final Warning
(91, Page);
An Inconvenient Woman
(91, Larry Elikann); and
Philadelphia
(93, Demme).

There were parts and films by then hardly worth trying without Robards. Yet he could move from agreeable hamminess to greatness with such ease. It was natural that so many actors should love him: as the King in
The Adventures of Huck Finn
(93, Stephen Sommers);
The Enemy Within
(94, Jonathan Darby);
The Paper
(94, Howard);
Little Big League
(94, Andrew Scheinman);
Crimson Tide
(95, Tony Scott);
My Antonia
(95, Joseph Sargent);
Journey
(95, Tom McLoughlin); as a Lear figure in
A Thousand Acres
(97, Jocelyn Moorhouse);
Heartwood
(98, Lanny Cotler);
The Real Macaw
(98, Mario Andreacchio);
Beloved
(98, Demme);
Enemy of the State
(98, Scott); remarkable on his deathbed in
Magnolia
(99, Paul Thomas Anderson);
Going Home
(00, Ian Barry).

Tim Robbins
, b. West Covina, California, 1958
1992:
Bob Roberts
. 1995:
Dead Man Walking
. 1999:
Cradle Will Rock
.

Robbins has a little boy’s face, and a wicked grin to go with it. He can easily seem like a dope, but watch out—he’s as agile and dangerous as Griffin Mill in
The Player
(92, Robert Altman). That serpentine narrative owed a good deal to our sense of Mill’s witty Machiavellian streak, and Robbins kept the comedy under expert control (thus, his Mill flattered Hollywood executives). He has real promise—if he can avoid disasters like
The Hudsucker Proxy
(94, Joel Coen).

He helped form the Actors’ Gang, a theatre group, in Los Angeles, and made his debut in
No Small Affair
(84, Jerry Schatzberg);
Fraternity Vacation
(85, James Frawley);
The Sure Thing
(85, Rob Reiner);
Howard the Duck
(86, Willard Huyck);
Top Gun
(86, Tony Scott); and
Five Corners
(88, Tony Bill).

But he won attention as the wild pitcher in
Bull Durham
(88, Ron Shelton), a project that led to his relationship with Susan Sarandon—they have had two children. He wandered a good deal as an actor:
Tapeheads
(88, Bill Fishman);
Erik the Viking
(89, Terry Jones);
Miss Firecracker
(89, Thomas Schlamme);
Cadillac Man
(90, Roger Donaldson); and
Jacob’s Ladder
(90, Adrian Lyne).

The Player
set him up, and in the following year he delivered a very funny, womanizing cop in
Short Cuts
(93, Altman), and also made his directorial debut
—Bob Roberts
, a remarkably consistent black comedy about American politics. It’s evident by now that Robbins stands up for liberal sentiments—which makes the balance and human depth of
Dead Man Walking
all the more admirable. For this is a fairly complex treatment of the matter, in which the parents are very carefully examined. By comparison,
Cradle Will Rock
is an enthusiastic tribute to famous heroes—but not much more.

As an actor, Robbins stays out of the mainstream, willing to help tough projects:
The Shawshank Redemption
(94, Frank Darabont);
Ready to Wear
(94, Altman);
I.Q
. (94, Fred Schepisi);
Nothing to Lose
(97, Steve Oedekerk); very frightening in
Arlington Road
(99, Mark Pellington);
Mission to Mars
(00, Brian De Palma);
High Fidelity
(00, Stephen Frears);
AntiTrust
(01, Peter Howitt);
Human Nature
(01, Michel Gondry);
The Truth About Charlie
(02, Jonathan Demme).

He gave a fine performance and won the supporting actor Oscar as the big man whose hunched nature signals early abuse in
Mystic River
(03, Clint Eastwood); and he was in
Code 46
(03, Michael Winterbottom).

With an Oscar, he moved toward independence and unconventional material: uncredited in
Anchorman: The Legend of Ryan Burgundy
(04, Adam McKay); very good as the injured oilrig worker in
The Secret Life of Words
(05, Isabel Coixet);
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
(06, Liam Lynch);
Catch a Fire
(06, Phillip Noyce);
Noise
(07, Henry Bean);
The Lucky Ones
(08, Neil Burger);
City of Ember
(09, Gil Kenan).