RIP Helma Sanders-Brahms

German director Helma Sanders-Brahms has passed away from cancer at the age of 73. While I have never seen any of her films, I have long been aware of her films’ tendencies to defy convention and push boundaries. Her works include Under the Pavement Lies the Strand (1975), a story about actors which won German Film Awards for its two stars, Grischa Huber and Heinrich Giskes; Germany, Pale Mother (1980), probably her best-remembered film, a World War II-era drama nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival; No Mercy, No Future (1981), a fictionalized portrait of a schizophrenic woman which is notable for its explicit sex and graphic, bloody violence; The Future of Emily (1985), a drama starring Brigitte Fossey and Hildegard Knef; and Beloved Clara (2008), a biopic about the composers Clara and Robert Schumann. Sanders-Brahms tackled many difficult subjects in her films and she will be remembered for her risk-taking, a commonality amongst the other adventurous European female filmmakers of the 1970s and 80s, such as Tatyana Lioznova, Lina Wertmüller, Agnès Varda (whose 86th birthday is today), Vera Chytilová, Márta Mészáros, Liliana Cavani, Kira Muratova, Larisa Shepitko, Margarethe von Trotta and Chantal Akerman. All of these women impacted the film world with their distinct narrative voices and styles. I’m sure that Sanders-Brahms’ contributions to world cinema and the cinema of female directors will not be forgotten.

Filmmaker Firsts: Richard Rush

#13: Psych-Out (1968) – dir. Richard Rush

Director Richard Rush is probably best remembered for his 1974 action-comedy Freebie and the Bean and the 1980 drama The Stunt Man, but he started out in the 1960s and early 70s with a series of psychedelically-minded flicks. Wait, you mean you haven’t heard of Hell Angels on Wheels (1967) or The Savage Seven (1968)? What about the more mainstream Of Love and Desire (1963) starring Merle Oberon or Getting Straight (1970) starring Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen? Well, no matter. Psych-Out might be a good starting point for getting to know the small but interesting output of Richard Rush. Besides, it can’t be all bad if Strawberry Alarm Clock makes an appearance.

Susan Strasberg plays a deaf woman who escapes from her institution (it’s never explained how) and wanders the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco in search of her brother. Why, you ask, is Strasberg’s character deaf? The film explains it, but I don’t think it was really a necessary plot element. The main point is that her character starts out not being a hippie and gradually sort of becomes one. Anyway, at least Strasberg has much more to do here than in her previous counterculture film, The Trip (1967).

Jack Nicholson is the hippie who helps Strasberg on her search, they develop romantic-type feelings for one another, etc. It’s pretty obvious that Nicholson’s ponytail is fake, but I think that’s part of the fun.

…he’s also the lead guitarist of a band. Gnarly.

Don’t tell me you don’t love Bruce Dern’s gloriously weird mop of hair (another fabulous wig). His character, the boringly named Steve Davis, prefers to go by the more exciting (or just more pretentious) moniker “The Seeker” on his high-as-a-kite quest for God. Dern’s not in the film for long, but it’s worth sticking around to see his unique brand of oddness. It’s always amusing to me that Dern often played these kinds of drugged-up nutcases since he’s famous for not dabbling in substances – not even coffee.

The other main character, a hippie guru who’s sweet on Susan Strasberg, is played by Dean Stockwell. Sporting long hair (of course – and I assume it’s another wig), bushy eyebrows (even more so than usual, in Stockwell’s case) and Native American-style clothing, this spiritually-inclined pill popper makes such wise remarks as “reality is a bad place” and “it’s all just one big plastic hassle.” Stockwell’s digs at commercialism and mass culture show up in the dialogue of The Trip and Easy Rider too, but Psych-Out is easily the most entertaining of the three. It must be all the long hair. Add to that the good cinematography by László Kovács (also the DP of Easy Rider) and you get an enjoyable little film. It’s not quite a classic, but it’s enjoyable all the same.

Filmmaker Firsts: Tim Robbins

#12: Bob Roberts (1992) – dir. Tim Robbins

This satire tells the story of a young “rebel” Republican whose run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat is marred by allegations, scandals and assassination attempts. As screenwriter, director, lead actor and singer/performer/writer of original music, Tim Robbins creates a folksinging politico who is reminiscent of Lee Atwater and George Wallace while singing Woody Guthrie-type ballads that lambast liberals.

Roberts’ main platform is that the 1960s are over and that radicals should be eliminated. Throughout the film there are references made to Bob Dylan, mocking the iconography of his career. Roberts is all things to all people: self-made Wall Street millionaire, champion of the common people and vehemently opposed to actual important issues like racism and women’s rights.

The campaign trail is headed by manager Lukas Hart III, played by Alan Rickman. While I enjoy Rickman in most anything, here he seems to be straining to play the role. As Vincent Canby wrote in his New York Times review: “Mr. Rickman is not a subtle actor. The minute he comes on the screen, he is so arrogant, shifty and Mephistophelean that it seems likely someone would have checked out his connections before it actually happens.” Rickman isn’t even in the film long enough to make much of an impression when he does show up.

Roberts has some nutty followers, including Jack Black in his big-screen debut. The film has a seemingly endless number of well-known actors and singers making appearances: Giancarlo Esposito, Ray Wise, Brian Murray, Harry Lennix, Kelly Willis, David Strathairn, James Spader, Pamela Reed, Helen Hunt, Peter Gallagher, Lynne Thigpen, Susan Sarandon, Fred Ward, Fisher Stevens, John Cusack, Bob Balaban, etc. It’s fun watching for those faces. I just wish there had been more of a focus on some of those characters since many of them are wasted in their too-brief scenes.

Of the film’s many supporting roles I think my favorite is Gore Vidal as the incumbent senator, Roberts’ Democrat opponent who is excellently named Brickley Paiste. Vidal is one of the film’s voices of reason, quite effective in his witty little jabs at the Bob Roberts character. Like other characters, Paiste has far too little screen time. In fact, the whole movie feels too short for the story it wants to tell. The ending feels abrupt, not bringing resolution to the narrative. I appreciate all the work that Tim Robbins put into his first directorial feature, but I suspect that his subsequent films, Dead Man Walking (1995) and Cradle Will Rock (1999), are better crafted.

Filmmaker Firsts: John Cassavetes

#11: Shadows (1959) – dir. John Cassavetes

After many months of listening to college friends and peers complain about how they were suffering through a class focused solely on the films of auteur John Cassavetes – who I knew only as the fascinating actor from The Dirty Dozen, Rosemary’s Baby, Mikey and Nicky and other works – I finally got the chance to see his directorial debut, Shadows, on the big screen.

I’m sure nobody who has seen Shadows could forget the images of Ben Carruthers making his way down New York streets with dark glasses and hunched shoulders, the perfect image of the Beat era. I keep hearing that Shadows is a film that puts its viewers to sleep – I’ve heard that from my colleagues and I heard it today from two twentysomething guys in the audience – but how can anyone be bored when the visuals of New York are so entrancing and the jazz score by Charles Mingus beats to a bebop thrum?

After a lunchtime hangout that feels inspired by Marty and may have also been an inspiration for Diner, Carruthers and some pals decide to go to the courtyard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What does Carruthers see when he looks at this huge, emotionless face? Is his interest in a sculpture of a woman only its nudity or is it also its dark-skinned appearance? Perhaps the face, like the faces we see in the shot of Goldoni and Anthony Ray lying in bed (the image at the top of the post), suggests that facial expressions – or masks of expressions – aren’t always the same as the soul of a person. To paraphrase what Carruthers says to his friends, you don’t need to have gone to college to understand art; you just need to feel it.

Carruthers and Lelia Goldoni play the light-skinned brother and sister of a darker-skinned black family. While Carruthers is moody and enigmatic, Goldoni shows a tender innocence that changes once she loses her virginity to one of the neighborhood boys (Anthony Ray, who would soon marry ex-stepmom Gloria Grahame in real life – a bizarre bit of trivia). Cassavetes gives Goldoni the chance to play around with different character types, switching to a hardened, snobby, teasing version of herself after her sexual encounter.

The relationship with Ray sours when he meets her brother and realizes Lelia isn’t white. Racial tensions are a huge part of why the film has made the cultural impact that it has. While the issues are very much a document of the specific time and setting, the film still feels fresh and relevant in the way that it views the relationships between men and women, including discussions of race, as well as Goldoni’s desires for autonomy in a male-dominated society.

In one scene, Goldoni wanders around Times Square and looks at movie posters, including some for the Brigitte Bardot film The Night Heaven Fell (1958). Although Goldoni later tells a suitor that she doesn’t like movies (always an amusing joke when said in movie dialogue), her interest in this scene is obvious. Shadows is cinéma vérité, but characters can still dream of high-budget glamour and the kind of sex symbols that don’t seem to exist off-screen.

The family dynamic is perhaps the most interesting thing. Seeing how these characters try to understand one another, how they involve themselves in each other’s lives… add to all of that the improvisational nature of the film and the result you get is mesmerizing. You can’t take your eyes off of these people, even though their lives are fairly ordinary and low-key. I can’t tell if liking Shadows will necessarily lead to liking Cassavetes’ later features, but I’m definitely glad that I saw it. It was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon, comfortably ensconced in an uncrowded lower-level theater at the Museum of Modern Art. There’s something quite nice – in a coming-full-circle kind of way – about the fact that Shadows is considered worthy of being preserved by a New York museum.

Remembering Gordon Willis

Gordon Willis (1931-2014), a legendary cinematographer with one of the most impressive résumés of the 1970s and 80s, passed away on May 18. He was the director of photography on all three installments of the Godfather trilogy, as well as on a number of other highly-regarded films like The Landlord, Klute, The Paper Chase, All the President’s Men and Comes a Horseman, but the five films listed below are among my favorites from his oeuvre. (I would also like to point out a post from December that highlights Willis’s great work in September 30, 1955.) Willis’s “unsurpassed mastery of light, shadow, color and motion,” which earned him an Honorary Academy Award in 2010, will not be forgotten by those who appreciate his contributions to cinema.

The Parallax View (1974, dir. Alan J. Pakula) – The tense opening scene of this paranoid thriller is set on the top of the Space Needle. Those panoramas of Seattle are terrific and the guerrilla-style camera movements following the turmoil after the assassination are balanced by the oddly calm shots taken from the roof.

Annie Hall (1977, dir. Woody Allen) – Willis is well-known for his work with Allen. Diane Keaton’s performance of “Seems Like Old Times” is probably my favorite scene in the film. The camera only has a couple of positions, but I think the stage lighting is perfect.

Manhattan (1979, dir. Woody Allen) – The memorable opening sequence of this ode to New York City is a true marriage of sound and image: the unmistakable strains of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” are matched by the crisp grey shots of the bustling streets and gleaming skyscrapers.

Pennies from Heaven (1981, dir. Herbert Ross) – Willis recreates the classic Astaire & Rogers “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” from Follow the Fleet (1936), rendered beautifully in black-and-white. Elsewhere in the film, the color photography is inspired by paintings of the 1930s, like Edward Hopper’s New York Movie (1939) in the first shot from that clip and Reginald Marsh’s Twenty Cent Movie (1936) in the last shot.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985, dir. Woody Allen) – In this poignant fantasy, Hollywood dreams blend with reality when a movie character steps off the screen and into the real life of an avid moviegoer. Jeff Daniels steps from the flat black-and-white planes of the film-within-the-film into the rich colors of Mia Farrow’s world, making this bittersweet comedy a lovely experience.

Play of the Week: The Iceman Cometh

The TV series “Play of the Week” aired a two-part, three-and-a-half-hour-long presentation of Eugene O’Neill’s play The Iceman Cometh in November 1960. Directed by Sidney Lumet, this production was called “one of the most electrifying evenings in the history of television drama” by the New York Herald Tribune. Jason Robards recreated the starring role of Hickey, which had given him his first triumph off-Broadway in 1956. It’s amazing to me that any of this could actually be shown on TV when it was; series like “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show” – programs not likely to mention alcoholism, prostitution or murder as episode topics – were among the most popular shows on the air.

Myron McCormick and Robert Redford give the two standout supporting performances in this drama. McCormick is probably best remembered for the films No Time for Sergeants (1958) and The Hustler (1961), but his excellent performance here should not be forgotten. Robert Redford, a 24-year-old whippersnapper, plays a tormented young man who knew McCormick during his (Redford’s) childhood. Although I used to think that Redford wasn’t much of an actor and that he was usually pretty boring (though, it must be said, he was always pretty), in the past year I have definitely become more of a fan of his. I think he’s actually quite good in this particular play, emoting far more than I expected.

The last act of the play belongs almost entirely to Jason Robards. His monologue dominates Act IV and his performance is probably considered a master class for the stage. I must admit I don’t know too much about Eugene O’Neill’s works other than the adaptations I have seen on film, but I appreciate great acting when I see it and that’s certainly what you get here. Too often I have thought of Robards only as the supporting player from the 70s, 80s and 90s, in which he often did little more than steal a few scenes. I did not realize just what a vibrant theatrical career he had, particularly as an interpreter of O’Neill. He comes alive in The Iceman Cometh, like I have seen few others do. If you get the chance to see this slice of history, please give it a try.

Adapting the Unadaptable: Nathanael West’s Hollywood

I recently read Nathanael West’s novel The Day of the Locust (1939) in a “20th Century American Fiction” class, so I knew I would have to see the 1975 film directed by John Schlesinger (Billy Liar, Darling, Far from the Madding Crowd, Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Marathon Man). After submitting my ten-page research paper on the involvement of mass culture in the novel a few days ago, I watched the film last night.

It is a story of “the people who had come to California to die,” a phrase never mentioned in the movie but which is apparent nonetheless. These citizens drift, devoid of identities, their faces all distorted masks, only brought to frenzied life when a celebrity is nearby. The “day of the locust” is the nadir (or zenith, depending how you look at it) of a culture mired in idol (really movie star) worship, when the all the ravenous civilians tear each other apart at the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Buccaneer.

John Barry’s score is beautiful and occasionally wistful, but Conrad L. Hall’s Oscar-nominated cinematography has a focus so soft that it’s almost blurry. (Douglas Slocombe did similar work the year before on another period piece, The Great Gatsby.) A golden haze is cast over everything, possibly to achieve an ironic tone – a pretty Hollywood glow to contrast with the hideous characters – but maybe actually because that was just the aesthetic quality of photography favored in the 70s.

William Atherton, who is billed below Donald Sutherland, Karen Black and Burgess Meredith, is quite good as the story’s protagonist, Tod Hackett. Atherton is so effective that I wish he had been given more chances to be a handsome young lead instead of always playing jerks and creeps in movies like Ghostbusters, Real Genius and the first two entries in the Die Hard franchise.

The film does not give us a sense of Tod’s imitative tendencies in art. Instead of having “original” ideas, his creative style is supposed to be a combination of Goya, Daumier, Dalí and whoever else inspires him. The movie makes Tod seem more special than he is by showing him as an artist with a unusually grotesque view of Hollywood’s inhabitants. Tod shouldn’t get so much credit. He’s not really supposed to be so likeable.

Karen Black is twenty years too old for the role of Faye Greener, but somehow that adds to the sense of the grotesque (the story’s main idea). Few actresses in the 70s could have gotten under the skin of the role quite like Black did. Faye is, to quote the literary critic Randall Reid, “the full dream goddess” and “the whore of everybody’s dreams,” which I suppose you get more of a sense from in Black’s performance than you might get from an actress who’s only 17 years old. There is something much sadder and more pathetic about a woman a few years away from 40 who is still trying to fulfill her fantasy of being a starlet. As with Atherton’s Tod, Black’s Faye is also too sympathetic. I consider this the fault of screenwriter Waldo Salt. Faye is not supposed to care for Tod like she seems to (if only a little) in the film. In the novel she only toys with him. The movie adds an extra dimension of humanity that Nathanael West did not write.

The ending scene is, as anyone who has read the novel would guess, deeply disturbing. I just wish the film actually ended as the novel does; the last line of the novel makes the scene even more terrifying than it already is. Tod’s prophetic “masterpiece” painting in the novel, called The Burning of Los Angeles, is never explicitly mentioned in the film, but the depictions of the hysterical mob and the allusions to Tod’s artwork (as well as the visual influence of James Ensor’s 1888 painting Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889) contribute to the harrowing nature of the scene. Human nature is horrifying when it goes wrong.

Schlesinger’s film sort of gets at West’s idea of Hollywood glamour as artifice covering up the ugliness underneath, but the very idea of a film adaptation being made of The Day of the Locust prevents such a film from ever completely working. You should read the novel, which is not that long, and be amazed by its assessment of Hollywood. Then you will understand why no film version could ever make sense, though you may be entertained.

Filmmaker Firsts: Sally Potter

#10: Orlando (1992) – dir. Sally Potter

In Sally Potter’s gender-bending adaptation of the novel by Virginia Woolf, Tilda Swinton plays the title character, a man whose tale begins in 1600 at Queen Elizabeth’s court. The viewer recognizes right away that the film is taking a slightly different approach to storytelling by having Swinton directly address the camera, a technique that is employed throughout the film. This acknowledgement of the audience and of the cinematic apparatus does not detract from the film, although it makes us more aware that we are watching a production created with actors, costumes, set designers and makeup artists. (Continue reading if you choose, but there are spoilers ahead…)

I don’t believe that the film could have starred anyone but Tilda Swinton. Like the character Orlando, Swinton has an androgynous quality to her, a combination of feminine and masculine in her appearance that she can use to transform herself into any kind of character. No matter the sex of her character, her eyes transfix you.

In one of the film’s more amusing touches, Quentin Crisp was cast as Queen Elizabeth. He’s not in the film for very long, but he’s quite good while he’s there. The most important aspect of the Elizabeth character is the bit of dialogue when she informs young Orlando that he is being allowed to take up residence in a great house (it helps to be a favorite of the queen!), but he must promise never to grow old.

Orlando’s story is not confined to the year 1600. True to Queen Elizabeth’s request, Orlando never ages a day, although his tale lasts for many centuries. In 1650, he is seen as a young lord in love with poetry yet unable to create any good examples of his own, making other poets scowl at his lack of talent. This artistic desire speaks to an inner longing for achievement and acceptance.

In 1700, Orlando is sent as an ambassador to a foreign nation. During this trip he meets a royal played by Lothaire Bluteau, a French-Canadian actor I know best for playing four different characters in standalone episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” over the past fifteen years. I wish Bluteau had had more screen time; he had a strange yet undeniable chemistry with Swinton, although they share little more than conversation, some intense stares and one brief, platonic hug.

It is during this stay abroad that Swinton’s character begins to undergo changes both mental and physical. (The hair you see is one of those 18th century wigs favored by men of nobility.) Perhaps it is the subtle influence of Bluteau’s “Khan”; certainly the war they both fight in for the independence of the foreign country affects Orlando’s understanding of what it means to be a man.

…and so, the next morning after a great battle, Orlando wakes up to find he has turned into a woman. This is totally believable as played by Swinton, who assures us as she stands naked before a mirror that she is the “same person, no difference at all. Just a different sex.” The body has changed but the inner spirit remains the same. The main difference is in how Orlando will react to being a woman in a man’s world.

Sandy Powell’s costumes now switch from the elegant menswear of 1600-1700 to the elaborate, flowing gowns of 1750. As Orlando floats through her English country house – the same house given to her 150 years earlier by Queen Elizabeth – her white dress forms a striking comparison with the sheets covering the furniture. They are all temporary sheaths for the beauty underneath.

Stifled by society and by the men who care more about her looks than about her opinions, Orlando escapes through a maze and ends up in 1850. The maze is a useful cinematic device, allowing Orlando to travel a hundred years by the time she is out on the other side.

While lying in the grass, inconsolable, a love interest literally drops into Orlando’s lap: Shelmerdine (Billy Zane), an American who falls off of his horse in a scene not unlike Jane’s first encounter with Rochester in Jane Eyre. In an entertaining reversal, instead of Orlando being a damsel in distress, it is the male character who is in trouble. Even more interesting, as soon as Shelmerdine lands on the ground, Orlando asks him quite boldly if he would like to marry her. It does not occur to Orlando to stick to Victorian social graces.

I can’t say that Billy Zane is much of an actor, but he has a certain cinematic presence that makes sense for this film. The length of his hair, his billowing shirt, something about his facial features (his eyes and perhaps his smile?) and even his character’s name (“Shelmerdine”) all display a prettiness that is somewhat feminine. After all, the blurring of the division between male and female is what the film is all about. The “female gaze” of both the Orlando and the film’s director (Sally Potter) objectify Shelmerdine in his scenes, the opposite of the usual male-female dynamic in movies.

Although their love cannot last – maybe it was only a passing attraction to begin with – the brief romance between Orlando and Shelmerdine results in a child. As was the case all throughout the film, the bloom of youth stays with Orlando as she lives through England’s wars in the twentieth century, pregnant the whole time until we see her once more in 1992, the year that the film was released.

At the end of the film, Orlando’s daughter is around ten years old and presumably the little girl will grow up like a regular human. (One wonders if she ever asks Mom why they are living in an Elizabethan-era estate.) In the modern era, Orlando’s wardrobe makes the point that in 1992 she can wear whatever she wants and her character will not be defined by sex, gender, relationships (or the lack thereof) or clothing. It seems that by the end of the film Orlando has finally found some peace; maybe now as a mother and as a writer (the above image shows her in her agent’s office after she has written the story of her existence, which is awaiting publication) she can find contentment and age like a mortal. I would not say that I loved Orlando, which is often disjointed and substitutes technical accomplishments for emotionality (although, as you know, I do love Tilda Swinton), but it is still a film well worth watching.

Filmmaker Firsts: Dennis Hopper

#9: Easy Rider (1969) – dir. Dennis Hopper

1969 was an important year for movies. Some really fascinating titles were in theaters: Midnight Cowboy; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Z; They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; The Wild Bunch; The Sterile Cuckoo; Last Summer. I must admit I had high hopes for Easy Rider, given that it features a number of actors whom I like. In the end, I was disappointed. Steppenwolf songs can only take you so far when the plot is threadbare and there is hardly any character development. Sure, some people glamorize the idea of biking across the country, but what about the film’s depiction of drugs? Sex? Violence? Capitalism? I guess it’s up to you to pick and choose which parts of the movie you want to take to heart.

Peter Fonda and an excellently mustachioed Dennis Hopper play the two main characters, headed from L.A. to New Orleans on their motorcycles. That’s it; that’s the plot. You’re mistaken if you think there’s much more going on than that. (The original screenplay was written by Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern.) Hopper tries to inject some symbolism into the proceedings, but it feels heavy-handed. I understand what the various symbols represent, but that doesn’t mean I have to like what they mean. (There’s a lot I could say about the ending, but I don’t want to spoil it. It’s the kind of thing you have to experience for yourself.)

Some of the cinematography by László Kovács is quite striking, like this shot, this somewhat similar shot, the lineup of Fonda, Nicholson and Hopper urinating by the side of the road and this shot of an Enco gas station, an image that reminds me of a different Hopper: the painter Edward Hopper, who created one of my favorite depictions of Americana, Gas (1940). Even more notable is the editing by Donn Cambern, who employs cross-cutting and jump cuts, both of which were probably unusual for American films made up until that point.

Jack Nicholson, who received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as lawyer George Hanson, brings a much-needed breath of fresh air to the film. That may sound kind of weird, given that Fonda and Hopper as the counterculture guys are supposed to be the cool, exciting types, but Nicholson’s performance is so much more interesting because of his combination of squareness, weirdness (he rants about UFOs and Venusians), the Southern accent and a penchant for alcohol. Nicholson kept me absorbed in the film, whereas if he had not been there, I would have grown tired of Fonda and Hopper much sooner.

If you stick around for the last half hour of the film, you’ll see Karen Black (she of the voluptuous leg) as a New Orleans prostitute who, during the film’s LSD-in-a-cemetery sequence, gets drunk and then freaks out on a bad trip, moaning about being a bad girl or something to that effect. Well, at least that should engage you for a few minutes. As I wrote earlier, Easy Rider benefits from its entertaining cast: Luke Askew, Toni Basil, Warren Finnerty, Luana Anders, Phil Spector and Robert Walker, Jr. also show up. Those individual faces, some more famous than others, have made more of an impression on me than the film’s overrated reputation does.

Happy Birthday, Albert Finney: A Look Back at an Exciting Career

Today the renowned English actor Albert Finney turns 78. A five-time Oscar nominee over the course of the last fifty years, he has been fortunate enough to have the glamour and acclaim of a star yet also the ability to be a character actor (sometimes helped by makeup), even while still a relatively young man. To celebrate this great day, let us recall five of his most memorable cinematic performances.

Tom Jones (1963, dir. Tony Richardson) – Based on Henry Fielding’s bawdy 18th-century tale, this delightful gem cemented Finney’s fame both at home in the UK and abroad. With a vigorous lust for women and a similar appetite for food and drink, Finney’s Tom must have been as fun to play as he is to watch.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974, dir. Sidney Lumet) – Finney shines in another tour de force as Agatha Christie’s most fêted detective, Hercule Poirot. Sporting an impressive mustache and speaking in a Belgian French accent, the character is a joy to behold as he solves one of the most complicated mysteries of any Christie whodunit.

The Dresser (1983, dir. Peter Yates) – As an ailing Shakespearean actor (only ever referred to as “Sir”) attempting to get through a stage production of King Lear during World War II’s London Blitz, Finney is magnificent. He is matched by Tom Courtenay, who plays Finney’s long-suffering assistant (and dresser), Norman.

Erin Brockovich (2000, dir. Steven Soderbergh) – While Soderbergh’s biopic is essentially Julia Roberts’ show (and she won a Best Actress Academy Award for her efforts), Finney steals all his scenes as Roberts’ boss, earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination as a result. (Finney received other Oscar nominations in the Best Actor category for Tom Jones, Murder on the Orient Express and The Dresser, as well as for the 1984 drama Under the Volcano.) Little comic touches and facial expressions prove that Finney doesn’t need to be young or look like a sex symbol in order to exhibit his acting talent. And, might I add, his American accent is terrific.

Big Fish (2003, dir. Tim Burton) – In one of Burton’s most heartfelt films, Finney plays a dying man intent on telling his life story, fantastical and silly as it often sounds, to his skeptical, grown-up son. As the film’s tagline says, it is “an adventure as big as life itself,” a journey in which Finney (or his younger self, played by Ewan McGregor) uses the magic of storytelling to open his son’s eyes to the beauty of life. It’s quite a touching story, especially in its depiction of the marriage between McGregor and Alison Lohman, the latter of whom becomes Jessica Lange (pictured) when portrayed as an older woman. As with my favorite Burton film, Edward Scissorhands (1990), Big Fish succeeds because you care about the characters. That comes not just from the strength of the writing but also from the strength of the acting.