The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (319 page)

She was the young Jane in
Jane Eyre
(96, Franco Zeffirelli); rising to the challenge of the Canadian prairie and an estranged father in
Fly Away Home
(96, Carroll Ballard); brilliant as Frankie in
The Member of the Wedding
(97, Fielder Cook) for TV; Queen Isabella in
Amistad
(97, Steven Spielberg); grown up in
Hurlyburly
(98, Anthony Drazan);
A Walk on the Moon
(99, Tony Goldwyn);
She’s All That
(99, Robert Iscove);
All the Rage
(99, James D. Stern).

She took the dual roles of Marie and Rogue in
X-Men
(00, Bryan Singer), and repeated them in
X2
(03, Singer) and
X-Men: The Last Stand
(06, Brett Ratner), catching the mood of comic-book flesh and feeling very well. Meanwhile, she has been Polexia Aphrodisia in
Almost Famous
(00, Cameron Crowe);
Finding Forrester
(00, Gus Van Sant);
Buffalo Soldiers
(01, Gregor Jordan); to Spain to make
Darkness
(02, Jaume Balaguero);
25th Hour
(02, Spike Lee); in love with Jeff Daniels (her father from
Fly Away Home
) in
The Squid and the Whale
(05, Noah Baumbach);
Blue State
(07, Marshall Lewy);
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
(07, Yves Simoneau);
Trick ’r Treat
(08, Michael Dougherty).

By then, she had graduated from Columbia and she did two very different things for TV: smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in
The Courageous Heart of Irene Sendler
(09, John Kent Harrison) and Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series
True Blood
—one of the most impressive performances on modern TV. She has also made
Margaret
(10, Kenneth Lonergan).

Sergei Paradjanov
(Sarkis Paradjanian) (1924–90), b. Tiflis, USSR
1951:
Moldovskaya Skazka/Moldavian Fairy Tale
(s). 1954:
Andriesh
(codirected with Y. Bzelian). 1958:
Pervyi Paren/The First Lad
. 1961:
Ukrainskaya Rapsodiya/Ukrainian Rhapsody
. 1963:
Tsvetok na Kamne/The Stone Flower
. 1964:
Dumka/The Ballad
. 1965:
Tini Zabutykh Predkiv/Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors
. 1972:
Sayat Nova/The Color of Pomegranates
. 1978:
Return to Life
(s). 1985:
Ambavi Suramis Tsikhitsa/The Legend of the Suram Fortress
(codirected with Dodo Abashidze). 1986:
Arabeskebi Pirosmanis Temaze/Arabesque on Themes from Pirsomani
. 1988:
Ashik Kerib
.

There are lives in film that make the commercial travails (and the domestic turmoil) of some Hollywood neurotics seem scarcely mentionable. An Armenian, Paradjanov was talented at music and painting as well as film, and in his least inhibited work one can feel the natural confluence of all three urges. To say nothing of the visionary originality.

He abandoned the idea of becoming a singer to study film, with Kuleshov as one of his teachers (in Moscow). After a few years of obedience to official attitudes, he announced himself with
Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors
, a dazzlingly beautiful evocation of village life in the nineteenth century. Though very well received overseas, the film was attacked by Soviet authorities for its decadence and excessive visual expression. Thereafter, Paradjanov was subject to mounting persecution. He was exiled to Armenia, he was prevented from working for several years, but still came through with the magnificent
Color of Pomegranates
, a celebration of color, form, and vitality as well as its central character, the rebel poet Arutiun Sayadian.

Paradjanov was now outlawed, and hounded, and in 1974 he was imprisoned for four years. Even when released, he was desperately poor and unable to work until the coming of
glasnost
. He died of cancer before he could complete
Confession
, his autobiographical film. But the 1991 documentary
Bobo
is a tribute to his life and work.
Swan Lake—The Zone
was another Paradjanov project, completed by his cameraman, Yuri Ilienko.

The contrast between Paradjanov’s abused life and the radiance of his vision is incomparable and exemplary. The stress on beauty in the nature of things is not exactly Western, or European—and Paradjanov heralded a kind of glorying in imagery that may speak for Georgia, Armenia, and the countries of what we call the Middle East. More even than Tarkovsky (who has a more Western eye), Paradjanov stands for the link between film and religious renewal and exultation over the fact of light and its harvest. When watching his work, we often feel an association with cultures that existed long before the coming of photography and movies. So it is an even greater shock to be reminded of the terrible difficulties under which this transcendent artist continued to affirm the miracles of light and appearance. In every film, there is dark first to remind us of so many calamitous possibilities. And then …

Sir Alan Parker
, b. Islington, London, 1944
1973:
Our Cissy
(s);
Footsteps
(s). 1974:
No Hard Feelings
(TV). 1975:
The Evacuees
(TV). 1976:
Bugsy Malone
. 1978:
Midnight Express
. 1980:
Fame
. 1982:
Shoot the Moon; The Wall/Pink Floyd—The Wall
. 1984:
Birdy
. 1986:
A Turnip Head’s Guide to the British Cinema
(TV). 1987:
Angel Heart
. 1989:
Mississippi Burning
. 1990:
Come See the Paradise
. 1991:
The Commitments
. 1994:
The Road to Wellville
. 1996:
Evita
. 1998:
Angela’s Ashes
. 2003:
The Life of David Gale
.

Parker’s choice of material is invariably interesting and bold—yet very few of his pictures stand up to repeated viewing. He grabs attention, but he has no sustained grip. And sometimes, as with grabbers, there is an undue stress on suspense and intimidation. Nevertheless, Parker is an intriguing case, a working-class Londoner—and proud of it—who has successfully sought international audiences. It is not that he is without craft or skill: he has an eye (trained in years of making TV commercials), and he rarely permits slack performances. Still, he seems in many ways like a good producer, full of new ideas, but too impatient or defensive to trust himself to depth.

There’s something in Parker’s face that seems interesting—not that a director’s appearance is generally relevant, even in an art attentive to external expression. Parker looks angry and wary, beaten down by the pain of the world. Time and again he films ordeals of a kind, yet isn’t there a sense of fatigue in his unquestioned melodramatic energy? No director has felt driven to spend more time fighting attacks against himself on the chance that he is being slighted. This leaves a feeling of hunched, guarded shoulders in Parker, a pressure that may prevent him from looking out, or in, in peace.

In the early seventies, with Alan Marshall, Parker had a very successful company that produced major TV commercials at the rate of one a week. Was that another inducement to the grab that lacks longer-term aims?

Bugsy Malone
was a frank attempt to do something so different it
would
get made as a feature film.
Midnight Express
was Parker’s greatest hit, so suspenseful that matters of race and morality slipped by.
Fame
seemed even at the time an idea for a TV series, accessible to incident, charm, musical numbers, and guest stars. It was as extreme a study of education as
The Wall
(a project made with cartoonist Gerald Scarfe—Parker is also a talented caricaturist).

Shoot the Moon
is well acted, and deeply anguished—but its final bout of violence seems just a way of ending the show.
Birdy
, from William Wharton, is precious.
Angel Heart
is cheerfully macabre, but too lip-smacking to believe in evil.
Mississippi Burning
is a wellmade, very old-fashioned political melodrama that seems unable to grasp the implications of its own dilemma.
Come See the Paradise
concerned Japanese-American internees in America during World War II, and was one of Parker’s least viable pictures. But
The Commitments
—a rare return to the United Kingdom (or Dublin)—showed an unusual fondness for people, place, and music. It was as close as Parker has come to optimism.

He remains the determined handler of big projects
—Evita
, a broad-stroke musical, allegedly concerned with politics;
Angela’s Ashes
, a bestselling book, supposedly about poverty. I still find those atmospheres capitalized and vulgarized, and thus the one film hardly sniffs out the real corruption of Argentinian politics, while the other never pauses to think that its own story might be a little on the tall side. But the legend of poverty and the cult of personality are two appealing shams that go beyond Parker’s plain thinking.

Eleanor Parker
, b. Cedarville, Ohio, 1922
Parker was an actress most celebrated for her wound-red hair and the ability to bring a rueful, shrewish feeling to “the other woman.” She grew bitter and harsh as the prisoner in
Caged
(50, John Cromwell); ravishing and resentful in
Scaramouche
(52, George Sidney); beautiful but hateful as the wheelchair wife in
The Man with the Golden Arm
(56, Otto Preminger); quite crazy in
Interrupted Melody
(55, Curtis Bernhardt); and was the hostile wife killed at the outset of
An American Dream
(66, Robert Gist).

She made her debut in
They Died With Their Boots On
(41, Raoul Walsh) and was put under contract by Warners. After supporting parts in
Mission to Moscow
(43, Michael Curtiz),
The Very Thought of You
(44, Delmer Daves), and
Pride of the Marines
(45, Daves), she came to the fore in
Never Say Goodbye
(46, James V. Kern) and as Mildred in
Of Human Bondage
(46, Edmund Goulding) and played in
The Voice of the Turtle
(47, Irving Rapper);
Escape Me Never
(47, Peter Godfrey);
The Woman in White
(48, Godfrey);
Chain Lightning
(50, Stuart Heisler);
Three Secrets
(50, Robert Wise); and
Valentino
(50, Lewis Allen).

She was good in
Detective Story
(51, William Wyler), but usually remained an adventurer’s lady:
Above and Beyond
(52, Melvin Frank and Norman Panama);
Escape from Fort Bravo
(53, John Sturges);
The Naked Jungle
(54, Byron Haskin);
Many Rivers to Cross
(55, Roy Rowland); and
The King and Four Queens
(56, Walsh). After
Lizzie
(57, Hugo Haas), she appeared as the adulterous wife in
The Seventh Sin
(57, Ronald Neame and Vincente Minnelli);
A Hole in the Head
(59, Frank Capra); and
Home from the Hill
(60, Minnelli). After that, her career declined, despite her part in
The Sound of Music
(65, Robert Wise);
Warning Shot
(66, Buzz Kulik);
Il Tigre
(67, Dino Risi);
How to Steal the World
(68, Sutton Roley);
Eye of the Cat
(69, David Lowell Rich);
She’s Dressed to Kill
(79, Gus Trikonis);
Sunburn
(79, Richard C. Sarafian);
Once Upon a Spy
(80, Ivan Nagy);
Madame X
(80, Robert Ellis Miller);
Dead on the Money
(91, Mark Cullingham).

She was nominated three times—for
Caged, Detective Story
, and
Interrupted Melody
.

Gordon Parks
(1912–2006), b. Fort Scott, Kansas
1969:
The Learning Tree
. 1971:
Shaft
. 1972:
Shaft’s Big Score
. 1974:
The Super Cops
. 1976:
Leadbelly
. 1985:
Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey
(TV).

Gordon Parks has been so many things: the youngest in a poor black farm family; piano player in a brothel; basketball player; a composer of music; the author of autobiographical books, including
The Learning Tree;
a master still photographer; a very urbane gentleman who has lived much of his adult life in Paris—
and
the confident director of the slick integration of black cool, movie violence, seventies music, and attitude in the two
Shaft
films. Sure, they they owe a lot to writer Ernest Tidyman and actor Richard Roundtree, but they are very well made, without a trace of superior irony or disdain. Nor do they show the overly classical composition of Parks’s still photography and the heartfelt mood of
The Learning Tree
. It’s easy to place Parks as just the first black director of mainstream films. But this is to miss the wit of
Shaft
and the passion in
Leadbelly
, as well as the great diversity of Parks’s life and culture. The achievement may not be as great, but he is an Ellingtonian figure, a renaissance person in whom we never forget the importance of charm, intelligence, and grace.

Robert Parrish
(1916–95), b. Columbus, Georgia
1951:
The Mob; Cry Danger
. 1952:
The San Francisco Story; Assignment Paris; My Pal Gus
. 1953:
Rough Shoot
. 1954:
The Purple Plain
. 1955:
Lucy Gallant
. 1957:
Fire Down Below
. 1958:
Saddle the Wind
. 1959:
The Wonderful Country
. 1963:
In the French Style
. 1965:
Up from the Beach
. 1967:
The Bobo
. 1968:
Duffy
. 1969:
Doppelganger
. 1971:
A Town Called Hell
. 1974:
The Marseilles Contract
. 1984:
Mississippi Blues
(d) (codirected with Bertrand Tavernier).