The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (448 page)

There is a moment in
Sunset Boulevard
where William Holden’s interior monologue—so many of Wilder’s films rely on narration—mentions the childlike handwriting of the Gloria Swanson character. We do not see that writing. It is a writer’s ploy, astonishingly unadapted to the medium. That is typical of Wilder. He outlines characters on paper—in dialogue, setting, and situation—rather than in revealed behavior. Very often in his films, the actual images are incidental to the “facts” of narration and dialogue. It follows that the films are frequently bare or fussy: because in the first instance he has given too meager a brief to the art department, and in the second too much. The house in
Sunset Boulevard
bulges with detail that is all referred to in the script but that is never more than a gesture at plausible atmosphere.
The Apartment
, however, is as plain as Wilder’s conception of Baxter.

As to his players, Wilder depends upon good readers of his mordant dialogue. Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson carry
Double Indemnity
very well and, if it is unusually complete amid Wilder’s work, that may be because of Raymond Chandler’s presence and the intrinsic tendency of the thriller form toward pessimism.
Some Like It Hot
is a dazzling verbal comedy, well played by Curtis and Lemmon. But compare it with the best screwball of the 1930s and see how necessary the stream of jokes is to conceal the indifference to character or meaning. It is ninety-odd minutes of jokes, based on one ingenious situation, without any attempt at dramatic progress or culmination. Yet, in hindsight, we can see how much that film did to unsettle gender confidence.

Time has only underlined Wilder’s merits and failings.
One, Two, Three
is another exercise in comedy fast enough to manage on puns, wisecracks, and double meanings alone.
Kiss Me, Stupid
is one more acid solution suddenly made alkaline. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau—in
The Fortune Cookie
—are exactly the sort of virtuoso technician actors that suit Wilder.
The Apartment
, really penetrating and touching in situation, is the clearest proof of Wilder’s lack of courage or persistence. It is as if on paper he could plan mayhem, but when presented with actors and sets his lack of human or cinematic coherence forces him into irresolution and the unforgivable asides that mock Swanson, Cooper in
Love in the Afternoon
, Monroe in
Some Like It Hot
, and Novak in
Kiss Me, Stupid
. There is a satiric instinct in Wilder, but one that he giggles over, nervous of its outrageousness. Thus in throwaways and background action we have his least watered-down admissions of human nastiness—as in
The Apartment
when Sheldrake talks of his son putting live flies in the nose cone of a toy rocket. Equally, Wilder’s contempt for women is an undertone, seldom brought out into the open.

Look at the films repeatedly and only a few things emerge—the dislike of people, the flinching from women, the show of smart skills, the compromise and the superiority, and the flair for riveting, grisly moments. When you think about it, the characters Wilder did best were self-betrayers, and how he loved to have them talk out their own ruin.

Along the way, in fifty years, Wilder had some great picture ideas, visions of men as pretty (and pretty-talking) reptiles, drunks, fantasists, and sexual wrecks. Of course, he was correct. But with that knowledge, if he’d had a pinch more courage and grace he could have been a great man—instead of just a scathing observer. As it is, too often I feel he’s dead, or lost, to the life of his films, a grinning corpse floating on top, preserved by sardonic fluids and voice-over.

Tom Wilkinson
, b. Leeds, England, 1948
Tom Wilkinson carries his Yorkshire phlegm and solidity nowadays in so many films, it is startling to discover that he does not play some—or all—of the dud coppers in
Red Riding
. Why not? Wilkinson is without a superior at playing the calm, supposedly decent middle-class persona who will develop strange cracks and stranger growths as the pressure builds. Indeed, as in
Michael Clayton
(07, Tony Gilroy), for which he got an Oscar nomination, he was the epitome of calm and order going astray, and of the secrets and lies lurking behind an amiable, common-sense approach. For TV, in 1999, he was the narrator in a new production of
David Copperfield
(Simon Curtis)—and very good, too—but he might have been Micawber.

Once upon a time—in the age that extends from Claude Rains to Cyril Cusack—one might have settled for Wilkinson as a reliable and deeply skilled supporting actor. But movies are changing. Method stardom often falls flat while supporting intricacy forces itself to the foreground. So Wilkinson is more than a character actor. He is an actor and he can carry films on his odd shoulders.

He did a lot of theatre and television, and he had a small part in
Wetherby
(85, David Hare), but his breakthrough came in 1997 in three very mixed roles: a gloomy professor in
Smilla’s Sense of Snow
(Bille August), one of the guys in
The Full Monty
(Peter Cattaneo), and the choleric Queensberry in
Wilde
(Brian Gilbert). He was given a chance as a romantic lead (with Minnie Driver) in
The Governess
(98, Sandra Goldbacher), and it didn’t take. But he built a career with
Oscar and Lucinda
(97, Gillian Armstrong);
Rush Hour
(98, Brett Ratner);
Shakespeare in Love
(98, John Madden);
Molokai: The Story of Father Damien
(99, Paul Cox);
Ride with the Devil
(99, Ang Lee).

He plainly enjoyed doing Cornwallis in
The Patriot
(00, Roland Emmerich) and he made a great advance in
In the Bedroom
(01, Todd Field), a classic Wilkinson vehicle in the way a settled man’s crust breaks apart. He was in
Black Knight
(01, Gil Junger); Sir Robert Vansittart in
The Gathering Storm
(02, Richard Loncraine); Chasuble in
The Importance of Being Earnest
(02, Oliver Parker);
Girl with a Pearl Earring
(03, Peter Webber);
Piccadilly Jim
(04, John McKay);
If Only
(04, Junger);
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(04, Michel Gondry);
Stage Beauty
(04, Richard Eyre);
A Good Woman
(04, Mike Barker).

Gradually he was dropping “English” parts for more international pictures:
Batman Begins
(05, Christopher Nolan);
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
(05, Scott Derrickson);
Separate Lies
(05, Julian Fellowes);
Ripley Under Ground
(05, Roger Spottiswoode);
The Last Kiss
(06, Tony Goldwyn);
Dedication
(07, Justin Theroux);
Cassandra’s Dream
(07, Woody Allen); superb as Ben Franklin in the series
John Adams
(08, Tom Hooper); then as James Baker in
Recount
(08, Jay Roach);
RocknRolla
(08, Guy Ritchie); as Fromm in
Valkyrie
(08, Bryan Singer);
Duplicity
(09, Gilroy).

Esther Williams
, b. Los Angeles, 1923
A freestyle swimming champion and attraction at the 1940 San Francisco World’s Fair Aquacade, she made her debut at MGM, in 1942, in
Andy Hardy Steps Out
. Granted the success of former skater Sonja Henie, it was inevitable and just that Esther Williams should prosper. For she was a pretty girl, in or out of a bathing suit. The studio contrived a pool at all unlikely moments and otherwise kept her in musicals:
Andy Hardy’s Double Life
(42, George B. Seitz);
A Guy Named Joe
(43, Victor Fleming);
Bathing Beauty
(44, George Sidney);
This Time for Keeps
(46, Richard Thorpe); grinning tight-teethed in the underwater ballet in
Ziegfeld Follies
(46, Vincente Minnelli);
Fiesta
(47, Thorpe);
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
(49, Busby Berkeley);
Neptune’s Daughter
(49, Edward Buzzell);
Pagan Love Song
(50, Robert Alton);
Duchess of Idaho
(50, Robert Z. Leonard);
Texas Carnival
(51, Charles Walters);
Skirts Ahoy!
(52, Sidney Lanfield);
Million Dollar Mermaid
(52, Mervyn Le Roy);
Dangerous When Wet
(53, Walters)—which starred her future husband, Fernando Lamas; and
Jupiter’s Darling
(55, Sidney). Only when she left the studio did two films—
The Unguarded Moment
(56, Harry Keller) and
Raw Wind in Eden
(58, Richard Wilson)—show that she was worthy of drier things. But after
The Big Show
(61, James B. Clark), she retired.

Olivia Williams
, b. London, 1968
Olivia Williams made her movie debut in Kevin Costner’s
The Postman
(1997), about a postapocalyptic world in which Kevin tries to keep the mails in delivery in the wild forsaken northwest. Ms. Williams was his girl, Abby, and because of the shortage of cosmetics she wasn’t meant to look beautiful, exactly. But she looked very good and she never let the film down.

She was far better as the schoolteacher in
Rushmore
(98, Wes Anderson) who wins the love of both Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray. And she was riveting as the wife to Bruce Willis in M. Night Shyamalan’s
The Sixth Sense
(1999), where her agonized glances began to tell the whole story—if we had eyes to see.

In fact, she was from Camden Town, the child of barristers and a graduate of Newnham College with a degree in English literature. Therefore it’s no surprise to find her playing Miss Stubbs in
An Education
(09, Lone Scherfig). She was exactly right as Stubbs, trying to look older and less attractive than she really is, and holding rather grimly to the idea that a girl has got to get a sensible education.

There’s a subtext to
An Education
, a way of saying watch out for that Carey Mulligan, she’s going to be really something, while the film has Olivia Williams and Emma Thompson watching her and knowing that kids like Carey have to watch out for themselves in acting, because one minute they’re twenty-two and being talked about and then they’re forty.

But Williams was a star in
The Heart of Me
(03, Thaddeus O’Sullivan), adapted from a Rosamond Lehmann novel, about a sister who marries Paul Bettany and then realizes that he’s interested in the other sister (Helena Bonham Carter). That made me believe we’ve probably only seen a fraction of what Ms. Williams can do. So now she’s the former prime minister’s wife in
The Ghost Writer
(10, Roman Polanski). She plays older here than she has ever done before, bitchier and more knowing, and she’s as good as the limits of the piece allow.

She’s done only a little stage, including a revival of John Osborne’s
The Hotel in Amsterdam
at the Donmar and
The Changeling
at the Barbican. You may recall her as a bridesmaid in
Friends
(1998), when Ross got married. She was also Jane Fairfax in
Emma
and more recently she was in Joss Whedon’s
Dollhouse
. But her triumph on the small screen, two years ago, was in
Miss Austen Regrets
(08, Jeremy Lovering), a searching study in a neglected romantic life. She had an uncredited cameo in
X-Men: The Last Stand;
she was Mrs. Darling in an Australian version of
Peter Pan
(03, P. J. Hogan), and moderately funny in Peter Cattaneo’s
Lucky Break
(01). And she was Ian Dury’s wife in the recent
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
, (10, Mat Whitecross) a part which really should have been made more of—if only because Andy Serkis gave himself such a meal in the lead part.

Robert Williams
(1897–1931), b. Morgantown, North Carolina
All you have to do with Robert Williams is just about all you
can
do—take a look at
Platinum Blonde
(31, Frank Capra), where he plays the reporter who insinuates himself into the rich folks’ scandal-ridden house and is so charming that he ends up marrying Jean Harlow. It’s not a great film, but it houses an astonishing performance in that Williams has a nerve and an ease that take your breath away. Some people link him to Clark Gable, but the deeper question I think is how far Cary Grant may have known Williams.

You’d never guess it from
Platinum Blonde
, but Williams was a country boy who simply insisted on going on stage. He had a key part in a big hit—
Abie’s Irish Rose
in 1922—and it was his success in Donald Ogden Stewart’s
Rebound
that carried him to Hollywood. So it was in 1931 that he made four pictures—
Rebound
(Edward H. Griffith),
The Common Law
(Paul L. Stein) and
Devotion
(Robert Milton), all of which are a lot harder to find these days than
Platinum Blonde
. He was about to do
Lady with a Past
(with Constance Bennett) when he complained of stomach pains. In a matter of days he was dead from complications after peritonitis.

At his death, Williams was already on his third marriage—which suggests a wildness that can be felt beneath his very cool manners in
Platinum Blonde
. It’s easy to say he was a loss, and far harder to guess where his odd insouciance might have taken him.

Robin Williams
, b. Chicago, 1952
There is a nervousness in Robin Williams that supplies the energy in his improvisations. One can see the ideas popping up behind his desperate eyes, and one may feel the overwhelming need for laughter, response, and being liked. He is an electric, brilliant talent, yet his own personality is couched in anxiety, if not guilt. As a result, he seldom has the confidence or patience to enter into a movie-long masquerade. Sometimes it seems that pretense offends or alarms him. Yet this is an uncannily intelligent face, if only something could still the man and ask him to … be a villain? I suggest that only because his nice guys are becoming dangerously sanctimonious and superficial. So, if the sincerity of being decent grates on him, try a little darkness.