The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (177 page)

But whereas
Short Cuts
and
Magnolia
—say—are profound and arresting studies in coincidence and adjacency,
Crash
is a monotonous series of safe cushion shots in which the film keeps nodding to itself in inane self-congratulation. The story of
Million Dollar Baby
, on the other hand, is one of the most daring if crude sucker punches in movie history—how far it was due to Haggis or to Eastwood is an open question. But it reminded us how far Haggis was actually a very conventional, if not old-fashioned, scenarist. If you were in any doubt on the matter, along came
In the Valley of Elah
, in which a very simple seed was wrapped around in self-serving mystery.

It may be that Haggis’s service in the cause of James Bond will prove his most characteristic work—thus, he is the author of
Casino Royale
and
Quantum of Solace
. He also wrote
The Last Kiss
, a decent Midwest remake of the large context of family, adapted from the Italian film by Gabriele Muccino. The surprise about Haggis is quite simply that so many people believed he was capable of upsetting conventions and surprising them. In retrospect,
Crash
looks like a movie where coincidence or chance meeting are actually your Get Out of Jail Free card—in short, a secret password. In that sense,
Crash
needed to be played as comedy, or farce, rather than earnest racial survey.

Philip Baker Hall
, b. Toledo, Ohio, 1931
No one looking could muster the conviction to deny it—Philip Baker Hall is over seventy. His official record as an actor only begins around 1970—after a late graduation from the University of Toledo—so there may have been several other attempts on life along the way that could help account for the most squeezed, rueful, weary face in films. Which is to say that Philip Baker Hall is not what we are accustomed to beholding in the bright lights. He looks like a guy on the subway, at the end of the diner counter, a face that knows its place is in the crowd—and several rows back. On the other hand, around 1999 it began to be difficult to find a movie for which he hadn’t been hired—if only to listen to the silly talk of others. Mr. Hall has a face that could reduce Bill Clinton to silence.

Of course, he first drew attention in 1984 playing Richard Nixon in
Secret Honor
, a one-man show written by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone as a stage play, but taken up by Robert Altman and turned into a film. It was a startling piece of work, and Mr. Hall was wild and wonderful, without ever seeming like Richard Nixon. It was an effective debut that had no apparent buyers. It was another decade before Paul Thomas Anderson rediscovered Hall and let him be Hall. You may be of the opinion, still, that Mr. Hall should not be in pictures (or as many). So be it. I find him a wonderfully sour presence, and exactly what we now deserve.

His record includes a great deal of television, most of it beyond recall, though he has been a judge on
The Practice
and a cop in the finale of
Seinfeld
. Similarly, there are many films or TV movies listed under his name, yet only a few that have been seen. This seems an ideal case for a week of Charlie Rose (just as Dick Cavett once explored Jed Harris) in which Mr. Hall could recount the wretched, hopeless, but alluring life of the player of small parts.

So, be alert to what is a much reduced list:
The Man with Bogart’s Face
(80, Robert Day);
Ghostbusters II
(89, Ivan Reitman);
Say Anything
(89, Cameron Crowe);
An Innocent Man
(89, Peter Yates);
How I Got into College
(89, Savage Steve Holland);
Live Wire
(92, Christian Duguay);
Cigarettes and Coffee
(93, Anderson);
Roswell
(94, Jeremy Kagan);
Kiss of Death
(95, Barbet Schroeder);
Eye for an Eye
(96, John Schlesinger).

His real breakthrough came in
Hard Eight
(96, Anderson), which was originally called “Sydney” after his character—a shabby casino resident, a lost father-figure, and a kind of exhausted angel;
The Rock
(96, Michael Bay);
Buddy
(97, Caroline Thompson);
Air Force One
(97, Wolfgang Petersen);
Boogie Nights
(97, Anderson);
Sour Grapes
(98, Larry David—the cocreator of
Seinfeld); The Truman Show
(98, Peter Weir);
Rush Hour
(98, Brett Ratner);
Enemy of the State
(98, Tony Scott); in the old John McIntire part in
Psycho
(98, Gus Van Sant);
The Cradle Will Rock
(99, Tim Robbins); as Don Hewitt in
The Insider
(99, Michael Mann); “Jimmy Gator,” at his best, in
Magnolia
(99, Anderson);
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(99, Anthony Minghella);
The Contender
(00, Rod Lurie); as Aristotle Onassis in the TV miniseries
Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
(00, David Burton Morris);
The Sum of All Fears
(02, Alden Robinson); as Everett Dirksen in
Path to War
(02, John Frankenheimer);
Die, Mommie, Die
(03, Mark Rucker);
Bruce Almighty
(03, Tom Shadyac);
Dogville
(03, Lars von Trier);
A House on a Hill
(04, Chuck Workman);
In Good Company
(04, Paul Weitz);
The Matador
(05, Richard Shepard);
The Amityville Horror
(05, Andrew Douglas);
Mrs. Harris
(05, Phyllis Nagy);
Zodiac
(07, David Fincher); as Larry David’s doctor on
Curb Your Enthusiasm
.

Robert Hamer
(1911–63), b. Kidderminster, England
1945: “The Haunted Mirror,” episode from
Dead of Night; Pink String and Sealing Wax
. 1947:
It
Always Rains on Sunday
. 1949:
Kind Hearts and Coronets; The Spider and the Fly
. 1951:
His Excellency
. 1952:
The Long Memory
. 1954:
Father Brown; To Paris with Love
. 1959:
The Scapegoat
. 1960:
School for Scoundrels
.

By far the best episode in
Dead of Night
is Hamer’s, concerning a mirror in which Ralph Michael sees the reflection of a much older room where a murder was committed. Also starring the admirable Googie Withers, the episode exploits the magical possibilities of mirrors and interiors and is swift and frightening. For several years Hamer lived up to that debut, even if he made black comedies rather than suspenseful subjects. He started as an editor in 1935 and worked on
Vessel of Wrath
(38, Erich Pommer),
Jamaica Inn
(39, Alfred Hitchcock), and
Ships with Wings
(41, Sergei Nolbandov).

Of his earlier films four are exceptional:
It Always Rains on Sunday
has an ambitious structure and a true feeling for the East End underworld;
Pink String and Sealing Wax
is a fond recreation of Victoriana with Googie Withers, again, as a Brighton poisoner;
The Spider and the Fly
is a gripping study of complicity and duplicity set in France at the beginning of the First World War;
Kind Hearts and Coronets
is an English classic, with an elaborate but lightly borne scheme of flashbacks. Its comedy is at the expense of English eccentricity, tied to the alien, amoral, but appealing hero figure played by Dennis Price. It also introduced Hamer to Alec Guinness, a pairing that was restored for
Father Brown, To Paris With Love
, and
The Scapegoat
.

Those later films are all disappointing, and one has the feeling that Hamer needed more discipline to concentrate his style. It should be added that Hamer’s career was blighted by alcoholism, and that he now looks like the most serious miscarriage of talent in the postwar British cinema. In the year he died, he was credited for additional dialogue on
Fifty-Five Days at Peking
(Nicholas Ray).

Guy Hamilton
, b. Paris, 1922
1952:
The Ringer
. 1953:
The Intruder
. 1954:
An Inspector Calls; The Colditz Story
. 1956:
Charley Moon
. 1957:
Manuela
. 1959:
The Devil’s Disciple; A Touch of Larceny
. 1962:
I Due Nemici/The Best of Enemies
. 1963:
The Party’s Over
(uncredited; Hamilton had his credit removed). 1964:
Man in the Middle; Goldfinger
. 1966:
Funeral in Berlin
. 1969:
The Battle of Britain
. 1971:
Diamonds Are Forever
. 1973:
Live and Let Die
. 1974:
The Man with the Golden Gun
. 1978:
Force 10 from Navarone
. 1980:
The Mirror Crack’d
. 1982:
Evil Under the Sun
. 1985:
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
. 1989:
Sauf Votre Respect
.

He spent his youth in France and, after a period at the Victorine studio in Nice, he came to England in 1940, joining British Paramount News. He served in the navy and after the war became an assistant director:
They Made Me a Fugitive
(47, Alberto Cavalcanti);
Mine Own Executioner
(47, Anthony Kimmins);
Anna Karenina
(48, Julien Duvivier);
The Fallen Idol
(48, Carol Reed);
The Third Man
(49, Reed);
Outcast of the Islands
(51, Reed); and
The African Queen
(52, John Huston).

Briefly, it seemed that Hamilton might have an urbane talent. Although a failure,
Manuela
was a more penetrating view of sexual attraction than the British cinema usually allowed, and
A Touch of Larceny
was moderately funny. But events have revealed Hamilton as no more than a fluctuating technician, sometimes capable of anonymous economy and a shallow, cynical wit—
Goldfinger, Funeral in Berlin
, and
Diamonds Are Forever
—but elsewhere, barely competent:
The Battle of Britain
and
The Devil’s Disciple
, which he took over at short notice from Alexander Mackendrick.

Christopher Hampton
, b. Fayal, Azores, 1946
1995:
Carrington
. 1996:
The Secret Agent
. 2003:
Imagining Argentina
.

As playwright, screenwriter, and director—and even as translator—Christopher Hampton has shown a steady interest in the nature and alchemy of the artistic process. Of course, to help support that judgment, one has to decide that in
Dangerous Liaisons
, Valmont and
Mme.
de Merteuil are artists of life, gamblers playing with living elements, not cold cards. It’s a sardonic and academic approach in some ways, and it signifies a well-read man with a taste for existential dangers. He is often, in making a play, gathering together the kinds of knowledge we may have about an historical situation. This is palpably so in his play
Tales from Hollywood
(about European exiles in the movie town around 1940), which is an inspired mingling of research and speculation.

Lest this sounds only academic, let’s say that
Carrington
is a very emotional film, far from the fusty air of Bloomsbury studies but made in the spirit of modern feminist vulnerability. It’s the work of someone ready and poised to take on more difficult films.

Unfortunately, neither it nor
The Secret Agent
(from Conrad) had any commercial success.

As a screenwriter, Hampton has done
A Doll’s House
(73, Patrick Garland);
Tales from the Vienna Woods
(81, Maximilian Schell);
Beyond the Limit
(83, John Mackenzie), adapted from Graham Greene’s
The Honorary Consul;
Anita Brookner’s
Hotel du Lac
(86, Giles Foster), adapted for British TV;
The Wolf at the Door
(87, Henning Carlsen), with Donald Sutherland as Gauguin;
The Good Father
(87, Mike Newell);
Dangerous Liaisons
(88, Stephen Frears);
Total
Eclipse
(95, Agnieszka Holland), about Rimbaud and Verlaine;
Mary Reilly
(96, Frears), a brilliant reworking of Stevenson’s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; The Quiet American
(02, Phillip Noyce);
Atonement
(07, Joe Wright);
Chéri
(09, Frears).

Tom Hanks
(Thomas J. Hanks), b. Concord, California, 1956
People like Tom Hanks. They find him amiable, decent, and nonthreatening. They excuse him from the complete horror of
Bonfire of the Vanities
(90, Brian De Palma); they indulge him in the considerably empty, wishful whimsy of
Sleepless in Seattle
(93, Nora Ephron). And that’s why he was cast, to disguise and carry, the “dangerous” subject of
Philadelphia
(93, Jonathan Demme). Why not admit that he is a good deal less than was required in all three pictures, and seemingly too deferential to impose himself on excessively cautious (or lacking) material. His lawyer in
Philadelphia
is a set of conceptual gestures, wrapped in harrowing makeup, and defiantly nongay. It is not Hanks’s fault that the movie needs courage, convictions, or some resolution of what it is about. Nor is he unmoving. But he carries the automatic sentiment of a dog in a film about people. He is a given; he is the makeup.

Hanks dropped out of Cal State, Sacramento, to act—and no one can dispute the decision. If he still seems reticent as an actor, there is no question about his comedic skills. He made his screen debut in the sitcom
Bosom Buddies
(80–82), and then broke into movies:
He Knows You’re Alone
(81, Armand Mastroianni); playing “Dungeons and Dragons” to the max for TV in
Mazes and Monsters
(82, Steven H. Stern);
Bachelor Party
(84, Neal Israel); making his own splash with Daryl Hannah’s mermaid in
Splash
(84, Ron Howard);
The Man With One Red Shoe
(85, Stan Dragoti); with his second wife, Rita Wilson, in
Volunteers
(85, Nicholas Meyer);
Every Time We Say Goodby
(86, Moshe Mizrahi); building a house with Shelley Long in
The Money Pit
(86, Richard Benjamin);
Nothing in Common
(86, Garry Marshall); and
Dragnet
(87, Tom Mankiewicz).