The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (70 page)

When he is acting, he thrusts a snarling intensity at the camera. But as a director, he is like a guy who begs us to hang around because these people are fascinating—and not just drunks. What may be most interesting in his work is the sociology of his middle America. He chooses basic, unenlightened, and unhappily successful people. They are a rarity in American film, rigorously shunned by most directors: they are bores.

Cassavetes was the son of a Greek immigrant who made and lost a fortune. He went from drama school to stock to TV. His film debut was briefly in
Taxi
(53, Gregory Ratoff), but it was only two solid years as a TV juvenile delinquent that got him proper film work. Then his lean nervousness was well used in
The Night Holds Terror
(55, Andrew Stone);
Crime in the Streets
(57, Don Siegel);
Edge of the City
(57, Martin Ritt);
Affair in Havana
(57, Laslo Benedek); and
Saddle the Wind
(58, Robert Parrish). After the innocent diversion of
Virgin Island
(58, Pat Jackson) and a TV series,
Johnny Staccato
, Cassavetes made
Shadows
in New York. It is a clumsy, callow film, struggling between the hope that improvisation will uncover truth and the imprint of Hollywood clichés. But worse than the film was the praise it received.
Shadows
was such a success that Paramount approached Cassavetes in 1961 to make cheap, quality pictures. It reveals his mixture of naïveté and cunning that he accepted the offer and made two films: the atrocious
Too Late Blues
and, for Stanley Kramer, the affecting but flawed
A Child Is Waiting
, in which Cassavetes seemed most pleased that he had gotten Hollywood to use actually handicapped children, along with that figurehead of worked-up emotion, Judy Garland.

Both films flopped and Cassavetes went back to acting. He may have intended just to gather funds, but
The Killers
(64, Siegel) was one of the best things he did. Hard cash was all that emerged from
The Dirty Dozen
(67, Robert Aldrich) and two Italian gangster films:
Machine Gun McCain
(68, Giuliano Montaldo) and
Roma come Chicago
(68, Alberto de Martino). He was excellent again as the husband in
Rosemary’s Baby
(68, Roman Polanski). By now, however, he was in funds and made two more of his “own” films:
Faces
and
Husbands
. The first benefits from the acting of his own wife, Gena Rowlands, and is the best organized of all his films. The latter has all his faults, not least the bizarre congruence of companionable self-indulgence in the three characters and in their self-sacrificing actors: Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, and Peter Falk. But
Minnie and Moskowitz
, played by Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, is more naturally entertaining; its comparison with movie glamour is less a protestation of faith in genuineness than a well-managed middlebrow joke.

Gena Rowlands was a virtuoso in
Woman Under the Influence
, but the grueling domestic scenes of that movie showed how far a camera confused the director’s adoration of pressurized performance. Rowlands is a test case of the Cassavetes approach. Was she a great actress, a prisoner in her husband’s films, or the chief recipient of Cassavetes’s assumption that performance was the heartfelt metaphor for life? He believed in an actor’s burrowing into a role as almost a behavioral credential. Gena Rowlands is so moving and pathetic in
Woman Under the Influence
, yet I’m not sure that her part actually deserves a movie. Or is a movie. Doesn’t it seem more like an endless actor’s improvisation? Then consider that Cassavetes wrote and contrived such things.
Gloria
feels not like life but a deliberate remaking of an old movie in rehearsal.
Opening Night
is pretentious, then confused, and finally lost.

No one could deny that Cassavetes died tragically early, and an unyielding outcast still. But was that something he demanded, or unconsciously designed? He was courageous, unruly, an enemy to Hollywood for many good reasons. Yet he was a tyrant, too, a man who had to be right. Still, it is going a long way to claim that he was as good a filmmaker as he wanted to be. I have argued with myself and with Raymond Carney (his most eloquent defender), but I cannot find what Carney sees in the films.
Love Streams
seems a wounded beast, clumsy, sentimental, overdone, yet evasive, too. But I would love to read a thorough, honest biography of the man that balanced his own work, his family story, and his unique, Satanic anguish. If only he could have played Elia Kazan in a biopic.

He acted in other films, too: with Peter Falk (his longtime actor) in
Mikey and Nicky
(76, Elaine May), a film that is surely affected by its actors and their history, and which is great or obscure, depending on your point of view; a sinister villain in
The Fury
(78, Brian De Palma);
Brass Target
(78, John Hough);
Flesh and Blood
(79, Jud Taylor) for TV;
Incubus
(81, Hough);
Whose Life Is It, Anyway?
(81, John Badham);
Tempest
(82, Paul Mazursky); and
Marvin and Tige
(83, Eric Weston).

Jean-Pierre Cassel
(Crochon) (1932–2007), b. Paris
Jean-Pierre Cassel was a beloved figure in French show business, and a very hard worker. He began as a dancer and never abandoned that love—he did an evening as Fred Astaire in Paris and he appeared on the London stage in
A Chorus Line
. Of course, he always had excellent English, which broadened his career, but he was also a deft player of comedy and romance, and his work with Philippe de Broca stands as an example of an art that really stems from the 1930s. It was said that he could make every actress feel lovelier and seem more amusing—but he lost his own heart to Françoise Dorleac and the inevitable
tristesse
when she died young.

He was a novice when Gene Kelly spotted him and put him in
The Happy Road
(57). Then after
Le Désordre de la Nuit
(58, Gilles Grangier) and
En Cas de Malheur
(58, Claude Autant Lara), he began his association with De Broca in
Les Jeux de l’Amour
(60). He was then cast as
Candide
(60, Norbert Carbonnaux) and did two more De Broca pictures—
Le Farceur
(61) and
L’Amant de Cinq Jours
(61), the latter with Jean Seberg and a big success. He is there uncredited in
Goodbye Again
(61, Anatole Litvak) and he did a
Figaro
on French television before
Le Gamberge
(62, Carbonnaux); the “Avarice” episode from
The Seven Deadly Sins
(62, Claude Chabrol); and the title part in
Le Caporal Épinglé
(62, Jean Renoir).

Much in demand, he did
Arsène Lupin Contre Arsène Lupin
(62, Edouard Molinaro);
Nothing Ever Happens
(63, Juan Antonio Bardem); the “La Sospirosa” episode of
Alta Infidelità
(64, Luciano Salce); in the segment “L’Homme Qui Vendit la Tour Eiffel” from
Les Plus Belles Escroqueries du Monde
(64, Chabrol); as D’Artagnan opposite José Ferrer in
Cyrano et d’Artagnan
(64, Abel Gance);
Un Monsieur de Compagnie
(64, de Broca);
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
(65, Ken Annakin);
Les Fêtes Galantes
(65, René Clair);
Is Paris Burning?
(66, René Clément);
Jeu de Massacre
(67, Alain Jessua);
Le Dolci Signore
(68, Luigi Zampa); with Bardot in
The Bear and the Doll
(70, Michel Deville); a French officer in
Oh! What a Lovely War
(69, Richard Attenborough); and superb as a Resistance fighter in
L’Armée des Ombres
(69, Jean-Pierre Melville).

You might have thought his youthful charm and vitality were everything, but he matured very well:
La Rupture
(70, Chabrol);
Malpertuis
(71, Harry Kumel);
Le Bateau sur l’Herbe
(71, Gerard Brach); as Sénéchal in
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(72, Luis Buñuel);
Il Magnate
(73, Giovanni Grimaldi);
Baxter!
(73, Lionel Jeffries); as Louis XIII in
The Three Musketeers
(73, Richard Lester);
Le Mouton Enragé
(74, Deville);
The Four Musketeers
(74, Lester);
Murder on the Orient Express
(74, Sidney Lumet);
The Lucky Touch
(75, Christopher Miles);
Les Oeufs Brouilles
(76, Joel Santoni);
Folies Bourgeoises
(76, Chabrol);
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
(78, Ted Kotcheff);
Les RendezVous d’Anna
(78, Chantal Akerman);
Grandison
(79, Joachim Kurz);
La Ville des Silences
(79, Jean Marboeuf).

He had an uncredited role in
Superman II
(80, Richard Donner); was the Rabbit in
Alicja
(82, Jacek Bromski and Jerzy Gruza);
La Guérilléra
(82, Pierre Kast);
The Trout
(82, Joseph Losey);
Vive la Sociale!
(83, Gerard Mordollat);
Sentimental Journey
(87, Peter Patzak); Louis XV in
Casanova
(87, Simon Langton);
Mangeclous
(88, Moshe Mizrahi);
Young Toscanini
(88, Franco Zeffirelli); and Cyrano in
The Return of the Musketeers
(89, Lester); Ledoux in
The Phantom of the Opera
(90, Tony Richardson);
Mister Frost
(90, Philip Sebton); Dr. Gachet in
Vincent & Theo
(90, Robert Altman); doing Highsmith in the French TV series
Chillers
(90, Nick Lewin).

Thereafter, most of his work veered from France to international TV, but he never relaxed and he nursed along the career of his son Vincent Cassel. He was Alex Sebastian on British TV in
Notorious
(92, Colin Bucksey); the father in
Warburg: A Man of Influence
(92, Mizrahi);
Pétain
(93, Marboeuf);
L’Enfer
(94, Chabrol);
Prêt-à-Porter
(94, Altman);
La Cérémonie
(95, Chabrol);
La Patinoire
(98, Jean-Philippe Toussaint);
Le Plus Beau Pays du Monde
(99, Marcel Bluwal);
Sade
(00, Benoît Jacquot); with his son in
Les Rivières Pourpres
(00, Mathieu Kassovitz);
The Wooden Camera
(03, Ntshaveni Wa Luruli);
Judas
(06, Nicolas Bary);
Call Me Agostino
(06, Christine Laurent);
Fair Play
(06, Lionel Ballio);
Mauvaise Foi
(06, Roschdy Zem);
J’Aurais Voulu Être un Danseur
(07, Alain Berliner); in a short,
Acteur
(07, Jocelyn Quivrin);
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(07, Julian Schnabel);
Asterix aux Jeux Olympiques
(08, Thomas Langmann and Frederic Forestier).

Finally, try this one, on film buffs: which actor worked for Gance, Clair, Renoir, Melville, Clément, and Chabrol?

Vincent Cassel
, b. Paris, 1966
It is very hard to think of a father-son pairing among actors where the basic atmospherics of character have shifted so much. Peter and Henry Fonda have the same wondering rhythms. Michael and Corin Redgrave abided by a common idea of what a gentleman was trying to be. You hardly needed to have it explained that Jeff and Beau Bridges were from Lloyd. The Cassels are something different. Making his debut around 1960, Jean-Pierre Cassel was handsome, smart, deft, graceful, an Astaire-like figure. But his son, born in 1966, is satanic, aggressive, punk, dangerous and redolent of a quite different type of cinema.

So Vincent Cassel was the child of Jean-Pierre and Sabine Litique, a journalist. They divorced when Vincent was fourteen. (Is it worth asking whether Vincent ever saw—or enjoyed—his father’s
L’Amant de Cinq Jours?
Yet, if we recall that Cassel was half in love with Jean Seberg during that film, and imagine their offspring—that could have been Vincent Cassel.) Vincent attracted early attention in
Metisse
(93, Mathieu Kassovitz), in which his father played a small role. But in
La Haine
(95, Kassovitz), Cassel was one of three characters living on the suburban streets of Paris inspired by the principle that hate breeds hatred. The same year, he was in
Jefferson in Paris
(95, James Ivory), followed by
L’Élève
(96, Olivier Schatzky), adapted from Henry James, and
L’Appartement
(96, Gilles Mimouni), his meeting with his future wife, Monica Bellucci. He was another street creature in
Dobermann
(97, Jan Kounen).

He played Anjou in
Elizabeth
(98, Shekhar Kapur) and Gilles de Rais in
The Messenger
(99, Luc Besson). And then
Guest House Paradiso
(99, Ade Edmondson);
Les Rivières Pourpres
(00, Kassovitz);
Brotherhood of the Wolf
(00, Christopher Gans). He did the voice of Monsieur Hood in
Shrek
. He was very alarming as the Russian thug (with Kassovitz as his pal) with Nicole Kidman in
Birthday Girl
(01, Jez Butterworth). In
Read My Lips
(01, Jacques Audiard), he was the man who works with a deaf girl. He did the voice of Diego in the French version of
Ice Age
, and then he and Bellucci were together again in the very controversial but arty violence of
Irréversible
(02, Gaspar Noe).

It was hard not to conclude that Cassel was courting his dark reputation—and even exploiting it. Did the rape victim in
Irréversible
have to be as exquisite as Bellucci? Did the crime have to seem a perverse marital bonding?