The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (82 page)

Joel Coen
, b. St. Louis Park, Minnesota, 1955, and
Ethan Coen
, b. St. Louis Park, Minnesota, 1958
1984:
Blood Simple
. 1987:
Raising Arizona
. 1990:
Miller’s Crossing
. 1991:
Barton Fink
. 1994:
The Hudsucker Proxy
. 1996:
Fargo
. 1998:
The Big Lebowski
. 2000:
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
2001:
The Man Who Wasn’t There
. 2003:
Intolerable Cruelty
. 2004:
The Ladykillers
. 2007:
No Country for Old Men
. 2008:
Burn After Reading
. 2009:
A Serious Man
.

The Coen brothers grew up in Minneapolis, the sons of college professors. Joel studied film at N.Y.U., while Ethan did philosophy at Princeton. Joel is the director of the team, and he was an assistant editor on
The Evil Dead
(80, Sam Raimi) and
Fear No Evil
(81, Frank Laloggia). They write together, and Ethan operates as the producer. They helped write Raimi’s
Crimewave
(85), and Ethan did some TV writing for
Cagney and Lacey
.

My mind is not made up. In the summer of 1984, I was one of the selection panel that voted
Blood Simple
into the New York Film Festival—yet I think I liked it least among the group, for its skill and noirish expertise seemed without destination or purpose.
Raising Arizona
was, for me, close to unwatchable: unfunny, technologically impelled, showy, and not just empty but condescending.
Barton Fink
was showoff time again, a dash of Nathanael West, a pinch of sophomore surrealism, numb satire, another kid’s film—yet much more promising whenever John Goodman was onscreen, and fearsomely beautiful in the burning corridors, as if at last the Coens were on their way.

Still, not one of these films worked for me as a whole. Then there is
Miller’s Crossing
, the film that dismayed their followers. It is derivative again, of Hammett. Yet it had an emotional core that seemed to burn through the serpentine plot: here was a film about the difficulty, and nearly the shame, in admitting feeling. In Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, and John Turturro, the Coens had at last found people to believe in and be moved by. Was that an aberration? If so, was it theirs, or only mine?

Hudsucker Proxy
was a return to zero—or less. Sam Raimi helped in the writing, and Capra was a model for the story. But that left the plot ponderous
and
flimsy, and the people stooges to a dumb comic-book style. A travesty.

I am still unresolved. I liked
Fargo
nearly as much as its many fans, but then
Lebowski
—despite the camaraderie and Jeff Bridges’s lazy “Dude”—felt too cute by half, like a film watching itself, more intent on being droll than life. Is it just my shortcoming, or is there something in fraternal support that means they need never feel alone? I can’t shake the feeling of one dude showing the pictures to the other, and them chuckling together.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
was so arty and mannered and
The Ladykillers
was a serious flop.

After
The Ladykillers
there was a pause (during which they produced
Bad Santa
and
Romance & Cigarettes
). Why not? They returned with
No Country for Old Men
, not just a fine mystery story, but almost an elegy for the end of a certain genre.
No Country
has Coenish humor, but in the three central men—above all in Tommy Lee Jones’s state of mourning—there is a grasp of tragedy. It won Oscars for direction and Best Picture, and it gave the Coens a new status—if they elected to hold it.
Burn After Reading
was a great pleasure, but
A Serious Man
was a comedy worthy of Kafka. Three super films in a row.

Harry Cohn
(1891–1958), b. New York
You have to cut through the equatorial forest of outrageous stories concerning Harry Cohn to find a scoundrel helplessly in love with pictures. Of course, money, power, girls, and himself were all close rivals that had their day, during which the cause of art and the Bill of Rights took a battering. Hindsight makes it easy to romanticize the brutality of the man, and to regard it as the robust swagger of a pioneer so much more forthright and intuitive than a dozen David Begelmans. Cohn trampled on some people, habitually exploited his position, and took it for granted that a movie mogul had the right to use and humiliate because he owned people. But many dedicated professionals admired him, and few were not entertained by him.

Cohn’s record is very good; he makes Louis Mayer look like a dreamer. What he took upon himself was effectively the life and soul of a company producing and distributing films. And the most vivid portraits of a megalomaniac tycoon appear in pictures his own company made. There is a story of his very well attended funeral and the acid comment: “Give the people what they want and they’ll come to see it.” Cohn would have liked the barb: he had no scruples when it came to that recurring test of all show business—can you hold the audience? He claimed his ass itched whenever a movie went on for too long—which is like a witch doctor making a cult out of hunches. Still, his best movies do not dawdle, and Cohn died before an infestation of sores might have overtaken his sensitive rear.

He was the son of a German tailor and a Polish mother. In his youth he was a trolley conductor, a singer in vaudeville, and a song plugger. His older brother, Jack, was working for Carl Laemmle, and in 1913 Jack produced a sleazy exploitation movie,
Traffic in Souls
, that proved to be a huge earner, thanks in part to Harry’s efforts selling it. The Cohn brothers stayed with Laemmle, and met Joe Brandt. In 1920 the trio formed the CBC sales company, and in 1924 it assumed the name Columbia. The brothers were not friendly, and soon after the advent of sound there was a struggle for control. Brandt retired, Jack and Harry fought for mastery, and eventually—with a little help from his friends, it was alleged—Harry emerged as both president of the company and controller of West Coast production. Harry was the only mogul to have such sway, and he retained it until his death, confining Jack to the New York office and dealing with him through intermediaries. Part of Columbia’s unusual enterprise came from the extent of Harry’s power and the will and energy for acting on it that never deserted him.

For a long time, Columbia was regarded as the sordid underside of the business. Cohn made quickies, B pictures, and short subjects. His chief trade was program filling. But, gradually, in the mid-thirties, he felt drawn to better pictures. Frank Capra played a substantial part in this development. He started at Columbia on shorts, but nagged Cohn to let him try more ambitious pictures. Capra was the studio’s top director until 1939:
The Bitter Tea of General Yen
(32);
It Happened One Night
(34);
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
(36);
Lost Horizon
(37);
You Can’t Take It With You
(38); and
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(39). In the same years, Columbia made
Crime and Punishment
(35) and
The King Steps Out
(36), for Josef von Sternberg;
Twentieth Century
(34),
Only Angels Have Wings
(39), and
His Girl Friday
(41), for Howard Hawks; Leo McCarey’s
The Awful Truth
(37); and George Cukor’s
Holiday
(38). Cohn’s own taste must show in so much sophisticated comedy of manners.

He liked Rita Hayworth, too, and spent much of the forties promoting her and trying to deter her from ill-judged marriages. Cohn regarded her as his discovery and, as well as loaning her out, he put her in
Angels Over Broadway
(40, Ben Hecht and Lee Garmes); with Fred Astaire in
You’ll Never Get Rich
(41, Sidney Lanfield) and
You Were Never Lovelier
(42, William Seiter);
Cover Girl
(44, Charles Vidor); the trashy but very suggestive
Gilda
(46, Vidor);
Down to Earth
(47, Alexander Hall);
The Loves of Carmen
(48, Vidor);
Salome
(53, William Dieterle); and—thankfully
—The Lady from Shanghai
(48, Orson Welles), in which Everett Sloane may stand for Cohn in the reptile-pit of actress/director/owner that is alluded to in that romantically despairing film. Hayworth was never more than a very pretty girl for Cohn; it was Welles who discovered or invented the monster as a going-away present. Her Columbia films are a montage of pinups, but they show the earnest erotic respect of an older boss.

Cohn by now was at the height of his tyranny and flamboyance, and it is likely that he is a model for Broderick Crawford in
All the King’s Men
(49, Robert Rossen) and
Born Yesterday
(50, Cukor), and the basis of the tycoon in the play
The Big Knife
, written by his friend Clifford Odets. Around this time, Columbia produced Humphrey Bogart’s Santana films:
Knock on Any Door
(49, Nicholas Ray) and
In a Lonely Place
(50, Ray)—as well as Douglas Sirk’s
Shockproof
(48) and Joseph Losey’s
M
(50).

It was in the fifties that Columbia bloomed, partly in contrast to the shrinking nerve of the major studios and partly because Cohn grew in confidence as he tried more prestigious pictures. There was an association with Stanley Kramer that produced
Death of a Salesman
(51, Laslo Benedek);
The Wild One
(53, Benedek); and
The Caine Mutiny
(54, Edward Dmytryk). In addition, Cohn contributed Kim Novak to history and blocked her wish to marry Sammy Davis Jr. He had a major success and many Oscars with
From Here to Eternity
(53, Fred Zinnemann); he distributed Sam Spiegel’s films—
On the Waterfront
(54, Elia Kazan) and
The Bridge on the River Kwai
(57, David Lean). He produced two Fritz Lang films:
The Big Heat
(53) and
Human Desire
(54); two by Anthony Mann
—The Man from Laramie
(55) and
The Last Frontier
(56). He also launched Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon, and allowed Richard Quine to make his best pictures. There were
The Marrying Kind
(52, Cukor);
It Should Happen to You
(54, Cukor);
The Harder They Fall
(56, Mark Robson);
Picnic
(56, Joshua Logan);
3:10 to Yuma
(57, Delmer Daves);
Cowboy
(58, Daves);
Bitter Victory
(57, Ray);
Autumn Leaves
(57, Robert Aldrich);
Fire Down Below
(57, Robert Parrish);
Pal Joey
(57, George Sidney);
Pushover
(54, Quine);
Operation Mad Ball
(57, Quine);
Bell, Book and Candle
(58, Quine);
Verboten!
(58, Samuel Fuller);
The Crimson Kimono
(59, Fuller);
Bonjour Tristesse
(58, Otto Preminger); and
Anatomy of a Murder
(59, Preminger).

If one adds that Columbia was one of the first studios to recognize the opportunity of the TV market—Columbia Screen Gems—then Cohn deserves to be known as one of the few Hollywood moguls who understood his own business in the 1950s. We owe too many good films to him to be distracted by the legend of the foulmouthed slave-master.

Isabel Coixet
, b. Barcelona, 1960
1984:
Mira y Verás
. 1989:
Demasiado Viejo para Morir Joven
. 1996:
Cosas que Nunca Te Dije/Things I Never Told You
. 1998: XII Premios Goya (TV);
A los que Aman/Those Who Love
. 2003:
My Life Without Me
. 2004: episode “La Insoportable Levedal del Carrito de la Compra” from
¡Hay Motivo!;
Marlango (TV). 2005:
The Secret Life of Words
. 2006: episode “Bastille” from
Paris Je T’Aime
. 2007: episode “Cartas a Nora” from
Invisibles
. 2008:
Elegy
. 2009:
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
.

After studies at the University of Barcelona, Coixet began working in commercials. Since then, over the years, she has been able to use her Spanish base for several English-speaking movies of growing power and importance:
Things I Never Told You
, which starred Andrew McCarthy and Lili Taylor;
My Life Without Me
, in which Sarah Polley plays a young woman who discovers she is about to die and who sets out to do a number of life-affirming things; and
The Secret Life of Words
in which Polley plays an alienated young woman who goes to a North Sea oil rig to nurse a man suffering from burns and blindness (Tim Robbins).

The bond between Coixet and Polley is riveting, even if neither of their films is completely successful. Still, it is hard to resist the unfolding implications of
The Secret Life of Words
—and it is stirring to see how Polley herself has become a very good director.

More recently, Coixet has done a segment for
Paris Je T’Aime
, which included Miranda Richardson; the haunting
Elegy
—taken from Philip Roth and starring Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz; and
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
, about a fish market worker who becomes a hit woman.

Claudette Colbert
(Claudette Lily Chauchoin) (1903–96), b. Paris
At her best, she was sophisticated gaiety personified, a tender yet spirited comedienne, most stimulated by the chance to be provocative. She was less convincing in sultry or tearjerker parts, and she could turn smug or superficial in dull roles. She was also fixed in her ways, preferring to give her left face to the camera, a stickler for regular hours, and so demanding before
State of the Union
(“By five in the afternoon I am tired and my face shows it”) that Capra replaced her with Katharine Hepburn. Maybe Colbert knew a thankless part when she read it.