The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (378 page)

By the late 1940s, Scott was making a great many quickie Westerns. How did he rediscover the dignity of the form? In the first instance, he made six films for André de Toth that related violence and betrayal to moral dilemma:
Man in the Saddle
(51);
Carson City
(52);
Thunder Over the Plains
(53);
The Stranger Wore a Gun
(53);
Riding Shotgun
(54); and
The Bounty Hunter
(54).
Hangman’s Knot
(53, Roy Huggins),
Lawless Street
(55, Joseph H. Lewis), and
Ten Wanted Men
(55, Humberstone) were also above average, but it was the seven films Scott made with Boetticher that etched out his place in the history of the Western:
Seven Men from Now
(56);
The Tall T
(57);
Decision at Sundown
(57);
Buchanan Rides Alone
(58);
Ride Lonesome
(59);
Westbound
(59); and
Comanche Station
(60). Throughout this series, one feels that Scott’s middle-aged Westerner is as unsentimental and self-sufficient as the cinema has achieved. The man’s integrity never looks less than hard-earned and desperately sustained. Perhaps he sensed the value of these films, for he made only one more,
Ride the High Country
(62, Sam Peckinpah), which was itself a valediction.

Sir Ridley Scott
, b. South Shields, England, 1939
1977:
The Duellists
. 1979:
Alien
. 1982:
Blade Runner
. 1986:
Legend
. 1987:
Someone to Watch Over Me
. 1989:
Black Rain
. 1991:
Thelma and Louise
. 1992:
1492: Conquest of Paradise
. 1996:
White Squall
. 1997:
G.I. Jane
. 2000:
Gladiator
. 2001:
Hannibal; Black Hawk Down
. 2003:
Matchstick Men
. 2005:
Kingdom of Heaven
. 2006:
A Good Year
. 2007:
American Gangster
. 2010:
Robin Hood
. After being an art student and then a film student at London’s Royal College of Art, Ridley Scott directed some episodic television before ten years as a director of commercials—many of them prizewinners, and all of them forged at that eclectic place where high art is now channeled into pop idioms. Scott is a decorator, a borrower, and a synthesist; like a great machine he contains all striking images and can deliver and fuse them, so long as the product is impersonal. Even during his movie career, he has continued to do star ads (e.g., the Apple spot shown during the 1984 Super Bowl—Orwell’s vision turned into a glossy, hip joke). He and his brother, Tony, still have a company that produces commercials. I am bound to add that Tony has also directed feature films—but I feel no need to say more.

How easy it is to point to Ridley Scott as an example of the look and sensibility of advertising corrupting moviemaking. With
The Duellists
, he seemed to be composing endless endorsements for Napoleon brandy, Perigord truffle-burgers, and vacations in Sarlat. Yet those products had been replaced with the outline of a Conrad novella and what may still be the movies’ finest use of that unappeasable demon, Harvey Keitel. More than a decade later, it was hard to watch
Thelma and Louise
without remembering that Monument Valley has become the romantic testing ground of every automobile ad. (That abused location has gone from the clichés of one Ford to the homilies of another in forty years.) Still, I find it hard to be disapproving. The movies would be duller without Scott’s chronic eye for flash, sheen, and instant spectacle. He has no character: it is as difficult now after fifteen years and eight films to guess the kind of person he is as it was before he started. He is a decorator who often grows awkward or vague over story line. Little heed is paid to plausibility or linkage in a Scott film (Park Avenue socialites do fall for Brooklyn cops; Susan Sarandon does kill the would-be rapist; and no one pauses for second thoughts—no one notices how long it takes the police to catch up with the outlaws; that would take a spoilsport).

For all that, he is as blithe and versatile as Michael Curtiz, who always made hokum look as good as quality. Scott can find his imagery in 1800 or 1492, in the Dark Ages or the darker future of twenty-first century L.A. His two pieces of advance looking
—Alien
and
Blade Runner
—have been highly influential of high-tech design and future shock. Of course, they have also fed back into TV advertising. Both films illustrate the role of collaborators for Scott: they are vital, even if they come away weary of being misused. On
Alien
, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and designers H. R. Giger and Michael Seymour were plainly important: Walter Hill was also one of the producers.
Blade Runner
had a clever script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, to say nothing of the Philip K. Dick novel. Its team of designers included Lawrence Paull and Syd Mead—to say nothing of Kubrick’s outtakes from
The Shining
for the end.

Someone to Watch Over Me
is far richer than reputation suggests: the luxurious Manhattan apartment becomes a character in the story, a hideaway for love as well as a threatened nest, a place where objects and decor resonate as much as feeling. Yet Scott was as happy, inventive, and hollowed-out in Tokyo (for
Black Rain
) and in the wide-open spaces of
Thelma and Louise
.

Finally, from the bevy of luscious bystanding women in
The Duellists
, Scott has gone on to be a generous director of actresses. He saw the wan passion of Sean Young ahead of others; he made Daryl Hannah eerie and startling; he drew a rough strength from Lorraine Bracco that prevented
Someone
from toppling into the glossy pages of
Vogue
and
House and Garden
. And he freed Geena Davis so that we felt the character and the actress expanding in unison.

What was then most remarkable about Scott was the way he made himself into a top-line commercial director—this after several failures, like
White Squall
, which is an impressive picture, and the daft modishness of
G.I. Jane
(which would have made Michael Curtiz blush). But then Scott delivered three big hits in a row
—Gladiator, Hannibal
, and
Black Hawk Down
. I don’t think
Gladiator
is more than fun and effects, though I can see that Scott and Russell Crowe play the schoolboy stuff very straight. But
Hannibal
is something else: a satire on Lecterism, a love story, a tribute to recondite learning and swish manners—it was Scott’s first true comedy, and very welcome. Anyone capable of the ironies in
The Duellists
and
Hannibal
must have great determination and dedication in making conventional entertainments. But with six or seven pictures I’d happily see any night (
Black Hawk Down
is superb combat), Scott is that modern rarity—a natural crowd-pleaser.

Tony Scott
, b. Stockton-on-Tees, England, 1944
1983:
The Hunger
. 1986:
Top Gun
. 1987:
Beverly Hills Cop II
. 1990:
Revenge; Days of Thunder
. 1991:
The Last Boy Scout
. 1993:
True Romance
. 1995:
Crimson Tide
. 1996:
The Fan
. 1998:
Enemy of the State
. 2001:
Spy Game
. 2002:
The Hire: Beat the Devil
(s). 2004:
Man on Fire
. 2005:
Domino
. 2006:
Deja Vu
. 2009:
The Taking of Pelham 123
.

Tony is the younger brother of Ridley Scott, and by the most inane tests that now prevail the more successful of the two. There are those who find
True Romance
(based on a Quentin Tarantino script) a refreshing departure from Scott’s flashy implausibility. They have the advantage of me. Tony Scott has the visual sensibility of a maker of commercials, and an attitude to material and narrative that is absurd without ever taking off into the fanciful. He likely believes in the overheated nastiness of
The Hunger, Revenge
, and
The Fan
, just as he can believe in the presentation of women in his two Tom Cruise pictures (one film really—different forms of propulsion).
Crimson Tide
, with the high-class professionalism of Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, is his most watchable film, but even there nothing sustains belief except the confinement of the submarine.

He has worked a lot with Denzel Washington (alas), for the actor’s verity has succumbed to the director’s flash—most notably in
Deja Vu
, one of the worst films ever made, and irresistible. But
Pelham 123
was a sad remake of a modest classic.

Kristin Scott Thomas
, b. Redruth, England, 1960
Kristin Scott Thomas has the graven look of a fashion model from the 1950s—plus an education in London and Paris (she has done a good deal of work for French TV, too). From this point of view, she seemed ideally cast as the heartless Brenda Last in
A Handful of Dust
(88, Charles Sturridge), and then artfully enlarged as the wistful friend and onlooker in
Four Weddings and a Funeral
(94, Mike Newell). But granted the larger, yet vaguer, chances of a great love affair in
The English Patient
(97, Anthony Minghella), she seemed a little mummified before the script had actually reached that point. Still, the travesty of her Tina Brown-ish editor in
The Horse Whisperer
(98, Robert Redford) showed only that a graven face has little humor (or judgment). She has also appeared in
Under the Cherry Moon
(86, Prince);
The Tenth Man
(88, Jack Gold);
Bitter Moon
(92, Roman Polanski);
An Unforgettable Summer
(94, Lucien Pintile);
Angels and Insects
(95, Philip Haas);
Richard III
(95, Richard Loncraine);
Le Confessionale
(95, Robert Lepage);
Mission: Impossible
(97, Brian De Palma), in which her unflappable face was perfectly suited for ignoring the elephantine and nonsensical plot;
Up at the Villa
(99, Haas); unable to stir or be stirred by Harrison Ford in the woeful
Random Hearts
(99, Sydney Pollack). By now, she seems to be slipping away into a kind of gaunt, ladylike pose:
Play
(00, Minghella), adapted from Samuel Beckett;
Life as a House
(01, Irwin Winkler);
Gosford Park
(01, Robert Altman);
Petites Coupures
(03, Pascal Bonitzer);
Résistantes
(04, Eric Rochant);
The Three Ages of the Crime
(04, Elena C. Lario);
Arsène Lupin
(04, Jean-Paul Salomé).

She began working like a fury:
Man to Man
(05, Regis Wargnier);
Chromophobia
(05, Martha Fiennes);
Keeping Mum
(05, Niall Johnson);
Tell No One
(07, Guillaume Canet);
The Valet
(07, Francis Veber);
The Walker
(07, Paul Schrader); with great personal success in
I’ve Loved You So Long
(08, Philippe Claudel);
The Other Boleyn Girl
(08, Justin Chadwick);
Seuls Two
(08, Ramzy Bedia and Eric Judor);
Easy Virtue
(08, Stephen Elliott);
Largo Winch
(08, Jerome Salle);
Confessions of a Shopaholic
(09, P. J. Hogan).

Zachary Scott
(1914–65), b. Austin, Texas
With a narrow face and a trim mustache, Zachary Scott was a cad and a villain at the end of the war—above all, he was Dimitrios in
The Mask of Dimitrios
(44, Jean Negulesco) and Monte Beragon in
Mildred Pierce
(45, Michael Curtiz). (Who knew that he was a descendant of George Washington?) He was so good in that start, so funny and sardonic, that one had reason to hope for much more. But in fact, nothing was the same again. He died at fifty-one, from a brain tumor. He suffered depressive illness after a boating accident. His first wife went off with John Steinbeck. With his second, Ruth Ford, he did some Faulkner onstage (she had known Faulkner earlier). Twice again, he stepped beyond conventions and helped uncommon films get made—
The Southerner
(45, Jean Renoir) and
The Young One
(60, Luis Buñuel). It is an odd record, suggestive of an actor who might have done better decades later in the age of independent films.

So many of his other pictures are minor:
Danger Signal
(45, Robert Florey);
Her Kind of Man
(46, Frederick de Cordova);
Stallion Road
(47, James V. Kern);
The Unfaithful
(47, Vincent Sherman);
Cass Timberlane
(47, George Sidney); very striking as the central figure in
Ruthless
(48, Edgar G. Ulmer);
Whiplash
(48, Lewis Seiler);
Flaxy Martin
(49, Richard L. Bare);
South of St. Louis
(49, Ray Enright);
Flamingo Road
(49, Curtiz);
Guilty Bystander
(50, Joseph Lerner);
Shadow on the Wall
(50, Pat Jackson);
Colt .45
(50, Edwin L. Marin);
Born to Be Bad
(50, Nicholas Ray);
Pretty Baby
(50, Bretaigne Windust);
Lightning Strikes Twice
(51, King Vidor);
The Secret of Convict Lake
(51, Michael Gordon);
Stronghold
(51, Steve Sekely); with Claudette Colbert and Marilyn Monroe in
Let’s Make It Legal
(51, Richard Sale);
Wings of Danger
(52, Terence Fisher);
Appointment in Honduras
(53, Jacques Tourneur);
Shotgun
(55, Lesley Selander);
Flame of the Islands
(56, Edward Ludwig);
Bandido
(56, Richard Fleischer).