Thoughts about acting

When I was a young boy I used to act in school. Not in plays necessarily but in comic sketches, and sometimes in what might be described as soap operas. Me and a classmate would come up with the idea and then ask a couple of other classmates if they wanted to participate, under our direction, such as it was. We put up a little show every Friday, or at least every second Friday, for years. The other year I was in a Swedish film, Ego (Lisa James-Larsson 2013) and I had two lines, as a travel agent, in a scene with the leading actress. It certainly was not method acting but I was pretending to be something I was not, or somebody other than myself. My question is this: was I acting then? Or does acting involve more, must for example emotions also be involved? There were emotions in my scene. I was laughing and my "character" took an interest in the well-being of the customer. I was pretending not only to be a travel agent but also a fictive person who cared about another fictive person. Is that want acting is all about? I often wonder about that, although rarely with reference to myself. But here are some other thoughts regarding acting which does not involve me.

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Sometimes after I have seen what I think is a marvellous performance I will see the actor again in an interview, or occasionally even on the tube, and being startled by the fact that they are exactly like they were in the film. What I thought was a great performance was only them being more or less themselves. This happens more frequently with local actors but one more famous example is Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola 1979). This is part of what makes acting and actors so intriguing. We might assume that a particular thing the actor is doing adds nuance and depth to a part and congratulate the actor for it, not knowing that this is not part of the act but a natural habit that the actor does all the time, whether on set or alone in the car. They might not even be aware of it. So it is something that is always there, and not unique for this particular performance for this particular part. But if what they do is something that is part of their natural behaviour it feels peculiar to regard it as great acting.

It is different with people like Kevin Costner for example. When I have seen interviews with him he comes across as rather stiff and dull. But in films he is not like that at all, he can be very likeable, or very scary, even an action hero, which is very far from how he appears in those interviews. Whereas Clint Eastwood, who directed Costner, and acted against him, in what might be their finest achievement, A Perfect World (1993), does not differ all that much from how he appears to be in private from how he appears in films. That would suggest that Costner is a much better actor, because he can believably transform himself into somebody whom is very different from who Costner is in person.

But there is more to it than that, because you must also come across as alive, present, believable, even if you are not a great actor you have to blend in with the film. In Crossroads (Tamra Davis 2002) three young women go on a road trip and they are played by Britney Spears, Zoë Saldana and Taryn Manning. Neither of them do their parts well, they all stumbled on their lines and come across as uncertain and unfocused. Whereas Eastwood come across as natural in his films Spears, even though she is playing a person close to herself, does not. It might be a question of being comfortable in front of the camera, which none of the three women succeed in being.

Here is when direction becomes vital. A recent article by Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian about Lauren Bacall and her performance in To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks 1944) did not once mention the name of the director. Bradshaw mentioned the studio, the writers and other actors but it was as if he thought that directors are irrelevant as for as actors and performances are concerned. This is not unique for Bradshaw but a more general tendency, to talk about direction and acting as distinct from each other. But they are of course the opposite of that; directing to a large extent specifically means working with the actors. In creating a good atmosphere, in getting the right performance and getting a good performance. If an actor performs badly the director is partly to blame. (I have seen episodes of Next Top Model where the young would-be models are criticised by the jury for their performance on a photo shot, but that is unfair because the models do not know anything, they only do exactly what the photographer tells them to, so if they do badly it is not their fault but the photographers.)

Another job for the director is to see to it that there is harmony between the various actors, that they do not go off in different directions. Some directors care more than others about such things. Some are content with letting the actors do their thing, others control and modulate them, just as they do with the design, the editing and the imagery. Ernst Lubitsch played all the parts himself beforehand to show his actors how they should do it. Two directors closely associated with MGM, George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli, had very different ideas of what kind of acting they wanted. For example, in Minnelli's films the energy of the actors is directed outwards whereas in Cukor's films it is directed inwards. Likewise, Akira Kurosawa's preferred style of acting is different from Yasujiro Ozu's and Hasse Ekman's is different from Ingmar Bergman's. This is an important aspect when considering the director as auteur, and it brings nuance to the often simplistic idea of a "studio style".

Hepburn and Holliday in Adam's Rib (George Cukor 1949)

Then there are different kinds of actors. There are those just playing a type and there are character actors, a term often misunderstood or at least used in different ways. A character actor sometimes refers to somebody who does not play a particular type, but varies from film to film. Sometimes it refers to an actor who plays eccentric characters, distinct or flamboyant. Walter Brennan was a character actor. Takashi Shimura played a tough samurai, a natural leader, in Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa 1954) but in his previous film for Kurosawa, Ikiru (1952), he played a meek old man, sick with cancer, and almost the antithesis of his part in Seven Samurai. But often it is not that easy to distinguish. Look at Toshiro Mifune or Al Pacino for example. They are often stylised and eccentric, but not always. They can be subdued too. Sometimes they play more generic roles, other times they create deep and rounded characters. But none of this necessarily mean that one is better than the other. Meryl Streep changes a lot from part to part, Judi Dench less so, but that does not mean Streep is automatically a better actress.

Al Pacino is by some regarded as the greatest actor for the last 40 years or so, other finds him too flamboyant and loud. Although there is no contradiction between the two of course, being loud and flamboyant does not mean that you are not a good actor. With Pacino, his low-key performances such as in Donnie Brasco (Mike Newell 1997) or Insomnia (Christopher Nolan 2002) are all the more impressive. And in Heat (Michael Mann 1995) where he alternates between low-key and overly expressive, depending upon the situation and what it requires (I mean what it requires of his character Vincent Hanna), he might have given his best performance. But it is hard to say what good acting is, other than perhaps to say "I know it when I see it." Sometimes when people say that they disliked a performance what they mean is that they dislike the actor, which is not the same thing. It is sometimes a question of what kind of acting style a person prefers. Some like extravagant actors like Jack Nicholson, others prefer the more low-key acting style of someone like Daniel Auteuil. But one might require as much skill and effort as the other. Acting is not just showing up, there is a lot of work and technique involved, regardless of acting style. There are of course also those who dislike actors and think that amateurs are much better, in some quest for as much realism as possible. But to consider realism as the main goal and purpose is to have a limited view of cinema, and art,

When I was growing up in Sweden, British TV was all the rage and people were saying "And the actors are so good!" It was an axiom that British TV series had the best actors. But it was rather peculiar because what was it actually based on? How were they better than actors in series from other countries? It was just something one said, rather than something one had actually experienced. And I feel that is often the case when the quality of acting and actors are discussed. It is hardly ever based on a real study and evaluation of the acting in question.

Two of my favourite performances happen to be British, Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter (David Lean 1945) and Michael Redgrave in The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith 1951), but I would have a hard time explaining why. Why in the sense "What makes them different from other performances, by themselves and by others". One reason though is the conflict between the reserve (and the stiff upper lip that is required) and their, Laura's in Brief Encounter and Andrew's in The Browning Version, struggle with it, and ultimate inability to adhere to it (they both have breakdowns, crying uncontrollably), It is great acting, but part of the power comes not from the actual acting but the societal context, which is not part of the performances but help make the performances what they are. Another favourite performance is Clu Gulager in The Killers (Don Siegel 1964). Siegel often encouraged his actors to be quirky and odd, or cool, and none succeeded more than Gulager. It is a rather mannered performance, and he is always fussing around with something, at one point doing push-ups during a scene. It is a great performance. But whether it is great acting is another question all together.

Peter O'Toole

I was surprised by how affected I was by the death of Peter O'Toole yesterday. But then he has been an important actor for me ever since I first saw The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci 1987) the year it came out. I was also delighted by his performance in King Ralph (David S. Ward 1991). I cannot vouch for the quality of that film today, but I can vouch for the quality of Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean 1962). Its quality and its importance to me. I watch it regularly, I quote from it often and once I even wrote a short story that, although set in the presence, intertwined the film and T.E. Lawrence with the main character in my story. I am always mesmerised by his eyes, voice, and steely presence. (I also think that it is not only a portrait of Lawrence but of David Lean as well.)

There is also the filmatisation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (Richard Brooks 1965), The Stunt Man (Richard Rush 1980), two appearances as Henry II (Becket (Peter Glenville 1964) and The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey 1968)), the enchanting How to Steal a Million (William Wyler 1965), with Audrey Hepburn, and much else, often playing kings, bishops and men of authority, but sometimes only being a voice and often letting himself go in silly farce.

Here he is in The Stuntman:



Here is a scene with Vanessa Redgrave from Venus (2006):



By above and beyond all else there is Lawrence. Where would I be today with him?

Actors never die, they just exit the stage.

Joan Fontaine

"Last year I dreamt I went to Manderley again" are the first words spoken in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), in one of the more enigmatic opening sequences in film history. The words are spoken in voice-over by a woman whose name will never be known in the film, even though she is the leading character. But the name of the woman who plays that character is well-known. Joan Fontaine, or, originally Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland. She was born in Japan to English parents and she died yesterday in California, and in her sleep, 96 years old. She is one of the greatest of actresses, particularly in a number of haunting films of the 1940s where she combined fragility and stubbornness. Hitchcock's first films made in Hollywood are to some extent still British, Rebecca and Suspicion (1941), and Fontaine stars in both of them, wonderful and distressed. She was also in Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson 1943) and the excellent Ivy (Sam Wood 1947), both also set in England. But great as they were, it is Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) that is the sublime high point of her career, one of the best films ever made, a perfect art work with director Max Ophüls and Fontaine a match made in heaven. (I wrote about it here.)

I have seen less of her later work, which was mostly on TV from the 1950s and onwards. Among the films I have seen are The Bigamist (Ida Lupino 1953), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang 1956) and Until They Sail (Robert Wise 1957), this time playing a New Zealand woman, one of four sisters during World War 2. The films are all good, but of these three I have a particularly weak spot for Until They Sail.

Here are two clips, the first is from Letter From an Unknown Woman, the second from Suspicion, although admittedly it has more of Hitchcock than Fontaine in it. She did win an Oscar for that part though, the only time anybody won an acting award from being directed by Hitch.





And here is the whole of The Bigamist:



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(Hitchcock's first really American film is the odd one out in his career, Mr and Mrs Smith (1942), the not very good screwball comedy.)

William Wyler

In an article in Theatre Arts from 1947, Hermine Rich Isaacs complains about the fact that since William Wyler's films "flourish neither the mark of an insistent personality, nor the aura of experiment, nor the cachet of conscious striving after artistic effect" he is being undeservedly neglected by archives and museums. Isaacs makes the claim though that Wyler is a true master, and just because he is not obviously artistic he should not be treated with this lack of interest (or lack of respect). Isaacs complaint is somewhat compromised by the fact that Wyler was perhaps the most celebrated filmmaker in the US at that time, but at the same time she has a point because with the exception of André Bazin, Wyler has been treated a bit off-handedly by the most influential of critics and scholars. In the post-war consensus he is sometimes seen as the opposite of the true glory of Hollywood and seen as boring, safe, dispassionate and audience-conscious as opposed to the likes of Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli. Andrew Sarris placed Wyler in the category Less Than Meets the Eye and it is noticeable that when people today talk about Bazin's writings they mention that he wrote about Orson Welles, Jean Renoir and the neorealist filmmakers. Less often is it said that Bazin idolised Wyler (and Anthony Mann), probably because Wyler feels less cool and cutting edge. Bazin's fullest exploration of Wyler comes in the essay "William Wyler: or the Jansenist of Directing", reprinted in Bazin at Work, and Bazin's enthusiasm is not surprising since the astonishing body of work of Wyler is enough to humble must critics. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is perhaps the most treasured but at least from 1936 he hardly ever failed, and even though the films were more uneven after the mid-50s there was still enough great scenes, great images and above all great acting to make up for any flaws that the later films might have had.

I have been reading interviews with Wyler and they have been very interesting. He talks a lot about auteurs, and he argues that somebody like Preston Sturges can rightfully be called one, but he says about himself that "I could hardly call myself an auteur - although I'm one of the few American directors who can pronounce the word correctly." At another point he says that he is not a composer but more of a conductor. What he means is that the films he makes have been written by others, such as Lillian Hellman, or Robert Sherwood, or Emily Brontë. But at the same time he also says, and others have said as much, that he only made the films he wanted to make, films he felt strongly about, that he was very much involved from pre-production to post-production, that he wanted final cut (and usually got it), that he always worked on the scripts (telling the writer what to take out and what to add) and that he added things in the films that was from his own life. In addition, after the Second World War he created his own independent production company, together with George Stevens and Frank Capra, called Liberty Films. So even if he did not want to call himself an auteur he still wanted, and had, the power to go his own way (with the exception of strict censorship rules). Isaacs interviewed Wyler and when asked what makes for a good film Wyler answers "A story, a passion and a craft." That is apparent in his films and although Oscar nominations and winnings are not necessarily a sign of greatness, Wyler was actually nominated for an Oscar for best direction 12 times (a third of all his feature films), and won three times, and three times he was nominated for the Grand Prix/Palme d'or in Cannes, and he won once.

Even though Wyler began as a maker of short westerns, as he came into his own in the mid-30s he was not a genre filmmaker. Primarily he was a witness to family disintegration and punishing social structures and conventions. Visually there are many striking things about Wyler's films, such as the use of deep focus and elaborate compositions, the excellent use of mirrors and staircases. When it comes to do interior compositions Wyler are among the very best, and mirrors are often at the centre of his compositions, like Bergman and Fassbinder. The films are often harsh and uncomfortable, there are a lot of cruelty in them, again like Bergman and Fassbinder. Not cruelty from Wyler towards the characters but cruelty between the characters. Fathers are cruel to their daughters, sons to their fathers, wives to their husbands, and so on, and it rarely ends well. Sometimes in death and despair, sometimes in sadness and regret, and often they are open-ended. Not even a romantic comedy like Roman Holiday (1953) ends in happiness, but in loneliness. Wyler had a deep understanding of suffering it would seem, and of seeing it. He is not the kind of filmmaker who would leave his characters unattended, he sees them all, and shares their pain. Watching Austin Sloper ridiculing and punishing his daughter Catherine in The Heiress is about as painful as it gets in cinema.

Quintessential Wyler, a staircase and a mirror. The Heiress.

And then there are the actors. Ralph Richardson and Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949), Walter Huston in Dodsworth (1936), John Barrymore in Counsellor-at-Law (1933), Laurence Olivier, Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Bette Davis in several films. He once said that actors hated him on set but loved him at the award ceremonies, because his punishing direction methods led to remarkable performances. He had a theory that in order to get at the truth of a character the actors have to go beyond acting. The method for getting there was to do retake after retake, to wear down the actors until the acting disappeared and the truth would be revealed, the essence of the character. The actors should not play, they should be. (This is why he was called "90-take Willie" and why he frequently went over budget and over time.) His style of shooting could also be difficult, not least his habit of instead of cross-cutting between actors he would keep them in the same shot, but one with the back against the camera. That meant that one of the two actors had only his/her voice and neck to act with, and could not use the face.

Here are a few favourite parts from his rich oeuvre:

First there is the character Birdie in The Little Foxes (1941), played by Patricia Collinge. She is a sad older woman, treated with contempt by those around her, if they even notice her. It is a heartbreaking character, and performance, and the key here is that Wyler sees her. She is often visible in shots, even if she plays no part, and goes unnoticed by the other characters. It is as if Wyler is the only one aware of the fact that she is there, and her loneliness and fragility is underscored not by focusing in her, but rather by not doing so. She is there, and she suffers, and that is enough. Wyler is good at that, seeing and capturing the emotional state of his characters, and being concerned about them.

Birdie in The Little Foxes.

The next example is related, and it is from the beginning of Mrs Miniver (1942). The station master is waiting for Mrs Miniver to step of the train, and when she does he says that he wants to show her a new rose he has created. She hesitates but then follows him. She looks at it, and smells it, and when she smells it we see a reflection of the station master in a round mirror. He captures his breath. It is as if he cannot believe his courage and luck, of having approached her, and then having her smell his rose. It is a tiny little thing, but it makes the scene almost disproportionally moving. And of course, we did not have a close-up of him; we were looking at her, smelling the rose. The mirror reflection is behind her.

In the same film, Mrs Miniver and her daughter-in-law Carol (played by Teresa Wright) are out driving when a German fighter plane attacks. Carol is hit, and they take cover in a house. Carol lies down on the floor while Mrs Miniver goes for help. There, in a long take with the camera far away from her body, Carol dies, quiet and alone on a wooden floor. There is no music, just the sound of her sobbing, until it stops. It is such a sad death scene because it is understated and she is all alone on the hard, cold floor.

The next example is from Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. When they first meet she is drunk, he is not, and he takes her to his small apartment. She spends the night there, in separate rooms. The next morning she wakes up and has forgotten where she is and how she got there. It is so good, because they are so natural and relaxed. The teasing, the rapport, the combination of amusement and tenderness makes the scene feel wonderfully alive and enchanting. Peck is often rather stiff, or gruff, but not here. And Hepburn is at her best, breezing through the scene.

The last example is the ending of The Children's Hour (1961). The film has some of Wyler's most impressive deep focus compositions and some excellent acting, with several really intense scenes, but it is not one of his best. The last ten minutes though are fantastic. Karen (Audrey Hepburn) is talking a walk and then, sensing something is wrong, turns and runs back to the home that she shares with Martha (Shirley MacLaine). The scene is first lyrical, relaxed and leisurely. But when she runs back it is a series of jump cuts of her face. When she comes back she finds Martha dead, having committed suicide. The cause of this is the malicious gossip in the small town about the two women, and the rumours that they are lesbians. (At least Martha is a lesbian whereas Karen's sexuality is more ambiguous.) The next scene is the funeral, which is short. Karen does not speak to anyone, she does not even look at them. She stands tall, and her contempt is in her body language. Her one-time boyfriend is there too, but she does not acknowledge him. She walks away from the funeral service, still without looking at anybody, just straight ahead. She will have no part of them, or their world. There is no heterosexual reunion between her and the man, instead she walks away alone under some trees, and then she looks up towards the tree tops and the sky. And then she smiles. It is as if she has come to terms with herself, and that she is now one with Martha.

The Children's Hour

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2014-06-13, I added some photos and corrected some grammatical errors.

Carole Lombard

Since it is Carole Lombard's birthday I'll take the opportunity to post some clips. She was one of the greatest of comediennes, even though she could do drama as well. She had a very interesting voice, and a slightly otherworldly allure. She was made for screwball comedy, perhaps because she was a bit of a screwball herself. It is a sad thing that she died as young as 33 (in a plane crash in the winter of 1942), but she had at least eight good years, when she became the highest paid female star in Hollywood. Her big break came in 1934 when she starred in the milestone masterpiece Twentieth Century. It was Howard Hawks's first screwball comedy (and one of my top ten favourite films), and it is pure anarchy from start to finish.

One of her more peculiar films is Swing High, Swing Low (1937). In it she plays a girl on a cruise ship who meets a man in Panama and stays there with him. So far it is a musical comedy, with the man (played by Fred MacMurray) being a trumpet player. When he gets a job in New York the tone of the film shifts dramatically. She gets more and more lonely in Panama while he is living a grand life in the big city, and forgets to write to her. Finally she follows him there, and telegraphs for him to meet her in the harbour. He isn't there. She goes to a hotel, and tries to locate him but nobody knows where he is. She gets the number to a woman whom he performs with and calls her. He answers, but doesn't recognise her voice. So she stands in the dark in the hotel room and whispers, panic stricken, to herself "What shall I do now?" It is a heartbreaking scene, beautifully shot and acted, as in a film by Max Ophüls, and it captures the full range of her talents.

That one was directed by Mitchell Leisen, and he also directed Lombard and MacMurray in Hands Across the Table (1935), another great film, and a tender love story. It might be Leisen's best. Great is also the biting satire Nothing Sacred (1937), scripted, like Twentieth Century, by Ben Hecht, and directed by William Wellman. Her greatest hit was perhaps My Man Godfrey (1936). She also did a comedy with Alfred Hitchcock, Mr and Mrs' Smith (1941), but I've never warmed to it for some reason. Then she made her final film, which was released after her death, To Be or Not To Be, Ernst Lubitsch's brave and magnificent satire of Nazism. It shows her in all her glory and, as in Twentieth Century, she plays a headstrong actress.

But now let's look at some clips. It was as usual tricky to find my favourite parts, so there's considerably less than I had hoped...

The first one is from To Be or Not To Be, an illicit scene between Lombard and Robert Stack. This one I love.



Here's a dance number between her and George Raft, from Bolero (1934). (The dance begins after about a minute.)



And here's the whole of Nothing Sacred, if you've got 80 minutes to spare.



And here's another one from To Be or Not To Be, a film in which nothing is what it seems to be.



2011-10-08 I noticed a few misplaced words and a missing title so I've updated it just a bit.

Virginia Mayo

One of the advantages of having your own blog is that you are free to write exactly what you want. At the moment I'm thinking about national cinema and its more recent cousin, transnational cinema (no, I don't understand what it means either) and my own contribution, a-national cinema. But that is all work-related, even though I will soon post something about that. But today I will be posting film clips with Virginia Mayo. She is one of my favourites, and I wish I had seen more of her films, but I have only so much time at hand. She was especially good when she was a bit rough, because she had a kind of raw sexuality and a fierce temper, and when the two are combined there's a lot of energy let loose. I think I especially like her when she was working with Raoul Walsh, as in Colorado Territory (1949) and White Heat (1949).

Let's begin with a clip from White Heat. James Cagney and Edmond O'Brien are the two men, and it is the last 20 seconds that is the highlight of the sequence.



Here's the trailer for Colorado Territory. Raoul Walsh is here remaking his earlier High Sierra (1941). That one had Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino and is set in the present day, a cross between film noir, gangster film and melodrama. Colorado Territory has all of that too, and a western setting. Joel McCrea and Mayo are playing the parts instead of Bogart and Lupino. It is actually interesting that she works so well with McCrea because they're each others opposites. He's calm and laidback, more comforting than sexy, but maybe that's why they're such a good pair.



She often did musicals even though she didn't sing. Her voice was always dubbed, which makes me reluctant to include a singing sequence, but this number is so good I have to show it. It is from A Song is Born (1948), which besides Mayo and Danny Kaye has a large number of great jazz musicians. Jeri Sullavan is the voice to Mayo's lips.



(It might be one of Hawks's lesser films, but then his benchmark is rather high.)

I'll end with something different, a scene from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Mayo plays the wife of a returning soldier, played by Dana Andrews. The war has led to the two of them no longer understanding each other, and the love has died, if it ever existed. We are beginning to see that in this clip (you'll have to click on the link yourselves). This is a film of frequent brilliance, and this sequence is not necessarily the most brilliant, but it'll do for now.

You've probably noticed that the clips I've shown are from a very short timespan. She was active from the early 40s and she did her last film as late as 1997 (The Man Next Door it was called and I haven't seen it and nor have I any particular wish to do so...) but already from the late 1950s she did mostly small parts in TV-series, including Santa Barbara and Remington Steele. Yes, those were the days when TV was often a retirement home for old actors/actresses.

Wendy Hiller

Wendy Hiller is without a doubt one of my favourite actresses, wonderful and wondrous, with a unique voice and a strong presence. She was witty and warm, a combination of sternness and naivety, or pretended naivety. From Eliza in Pygmalion (1938) to The Countess Alice (1993), when she was 81 years old, she own the screen (despite few leading roles) and perhaps no more so than in Powell and Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! (1945). Unfortunately it is hard to find good scenes with her on youtube but I managed to get these:

This is from Major Barbara (1941), an adaptation of yet another play by George Bernard Shaw:

This sequence from I Know Where I'm Going! is perhaps more an example of Michael Powell imagination and visionary style, but Hiller is in it too.

And as a special treat, here's the episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in which she plays the new teacher in European literature. It is not a great episode but it has some charm.

Steve McQueen

A friend once said that all men go through a Steve McQueen-phase. If it is just a phase, then that phase has been going on for quite some time for me, and I see no end yet. Even though he may have been a hard and perhaps unpleasant man in private, on screen he was fantastic, steely magnetism. His characters, to a large part consisting of self-sufficient loners who are not afraid of sacrificing themselves in a brutal and decaying world, appeals to me, some kind of romantic vision of how one should live. There was a time when I wished I was like that, and in a way I needed McQueen, as somebody to seek comfort and guidance from when the going got tough. Not anymore, but the romantic idea of that kind of life lingers on, and some quotes from his films have got a life of their own in my subconscious. There is some philosophy of life there, and it is fitting that he did his best work under the direction of Sam Peckinpah (two films from 1972, Junior Bonner and The Getaway) and Don Siegel (ten years earlier in Hell Is For Heroes).

His first real film was the very good boxing biopic Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956, Robert Wise), where he uncredited plays a knife-wielding hooligan. But it was 1960, when he made The Magnificent Seven, that he became really big and it lasted for 20 years until he died of cancer, only 50 years old. The Magnificent Seven was also the first time he worked with director John Sturges and other films he was great in include The Great Escape (1963, also by Sturges), The Sand Pebbles (1965, Robert Wise again) and Bullitt (1968, Peter Yates), and somewhat different in The Reivers (1966, Mark Rydell), a comedy based on William Faulkner's last novel (Roger Ebert wrote at the time that the adaptation felt closer to Mark Twain).

But even if I do not have the same need for McQueen anymore, every now and then I get the urge to see some of his films. Just to see him act. Or perhaps not act, but be. Here is a clip from Le Mans (1971), a great film, and this is one of those quotes I mentioned above:

Philosophy on film can take many different forms.

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Slightly amended 2013-12-09

Nora and Meryl

There are not that many directors working today who's new film I want to see the very minute it opens. But one of them is Nora Ephron, and last Saturday I saw her latest film Julie & Julia, which has now come to Scotland.

Admittedly, I haven't seen Lucky Numbers (2000), and not much particularly want to either, but Ephron has a certain style and tone which I find bewitching, and that includes Bewitched (2005), although very few people liked it. She's got a delicate touch, and she makes her characters and images glow. Never more so than Sleepless in Seattle (1993), which, more than a romantic comedy, is a film about grief and loss, which it handles intelligently and very moving. Michael (1996) and You've Got Mail (1998) are also very good. I honestly couldn't say if I prefer Lubitsch's earlier version (The Shop Around the Corner 1940) or Ephron's.

And now there's Julie & Julia, which tells the kind of story that is so ridiculous that it has to be based on a true story. Which it is. It's the story of Julia Child, the tall American woman who, after having worked as a spy during World War II (if you google her you'll get links to CIA), went to France with her diplomatic husband, took a cooking class and then wrote a book which changed the way Americans cook their food. And it's the story about Julie Powell, who in 2002 started a blog, writing about how she cooked herself through Julia Child's cook book. Now, to be honest, which of these two stories do you find most interesting? Me, I couldn't care less for Julie Powell's blogging. And even though Amy Adams is good in the role of Julie Powell, it's just not why I bought the ticket. I wanted to see Meryl Streep as Julia Child. And I was not disappointed. That part of the film was tender, witty, moving and delicious, and these days that has gone since I saw it, the feelings it awoke in me has stayed on.

It's in many ways a Nora Ephron film, just as it is a Meryl Streep film. The Ephron part is for instance the little gestures and hesitations that tells so much but are so quiet and brief, like when Julie Powell mumbles her delight and affection for her husband, or the first scene which implies that Julia Child can't have children. There's also the very Ephronian concept of the film, of a person's life, unbeknownst to him or her, touching someone else's, of having the main characters hardly or never meeting.

The Streep part is obviously her performance. It's a complete makeover yet again, so rich in body language and syntax it's uncanny, without ever going over the top. She becomes the person she's playing, and gives the role so much depth and nuance. It's brilliant.

Here's Stephanie Zacharek review in Salon. (Good as always.)

And here's the real Julia, guest at Letterman: