The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (89 page)

Mad City
suddenly suggested that the director had lost touch with the realities of politics and the media.

Kevin Costner
, b. Los Angeles, 1955
For a few years in the middle to late 1980s, it was possible for trend-hungry journalists to hail Costner as
our
Gary Cooper—as if we had lost the original, or lived in an age that could sustain such stars anew. With four films—
The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham
, and
Field of Dreams
—Costner had made himself, suddenly, the star that nearly every would-be bankable script was sent to. He was reasonably handsome, passably virile, unequivocally ordinary—and his pictures made money. In the years since, he had only scooped up Oscars with
Dances With Wolves
(90, Costner) and done his best to test the limits of his own reliability.

He had immense power. Who else could have had
JFK
(91, Oliver Stone) made on the same lavish scale? Still, his limits were all too apparent: he made not the least concession to period for
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
(91, Kevin Reynolds); his narrative in
Dances With Wolves
harped on the untrained flatness and modernity of his voice;
Revenge
(90, Tony Scott) was a disaster he could not avert; and in
The Bodyguard
(92, Mick Jackson) he seemed stranded between being a secret service fussbudget and doing homage to Steve McQueen. He can be very uninteresting, and in
The Bodyguard
he showed an embarrassment with love (not to mention sex) that reminded me of
No Way Out
(87, Roger Donaldson), where he seemed alarmed by the reckless but very open Sean Young.

Costner had been around for years before he made it: he was nineteen for a few moments in
Sizzle Beach
(Richard Brander—made in 1974 and given a video release in 86);
Shadows Run Black
(81, Howard Heard);
Night Shift
(82, Ron Howard);
Chasing Dreams
(82, Sean Roche); a B picture lead in
Stacy’s Knights
(83, Jim Wilson); and
Table for Five
(83, Robert Lieberman).

He was famously cut as the dead Alex from
The Big Chill
(83, Lawrence Kasdan); he had a small role in
Testament
(83, Lynne Littman); and the lead in
The Gunrunner
(84, Nardo Castillo), another film that went unseen until 1989 video salvation.
American Flyer
(85, John Badham) was actually the first film to identify his common decency, and
Fandango
(85, Reynolds) was another helpful step forward. Then Kasdan used him and kept him in
Silverado
(85). But his first unmistakable hit was playing backup to everyone else, as Eliot Ness in
The Untouchables
(87, Brian De Palma), and really understanding the clerical tenor of the role.

In
No Way Out
, there was no way of acting that inside-out trickster—plot shock was everything, or nothing. But he was very good in
Bull Durham
(88, Ron Shelton), and as good as he has ever been in
Field of Dreams
(89, Phil Alden Robinson).

Dances With Wolves
can easily be attacked. Yet the movie works, and—to these eyes—it has all the intelligence of a David Lean epic. As for Costner’s Jim Garrison in
JFK
, it is as specious and threadbare as the whole film, and exposed by our one glimpse of the real Garrison, who evidently was somewhere between Buster Keaton and one of America’s great con men. Humor is not yet Costner’s strength.

What a nice, ironic intro that remark makes for Kevin Costner’s last decade. For what has emerged is the most blatant example in screen history of an actor following his own fantasies—at enormous cost sometimes, without any offsetting humor, but doggedly, like some lone scout mapping the far northwest. It is dazzling, alarming and a warning to all in the last gasp of the age of film. And if anyone could ever have been close enough to Costner, observing, surviving and staying cool, it might make a fabulous book. For he is not like others—he has resolved not to be.

In hindsight, there were clues in
A Perfect World
(93, Clint Eastwood)—it was so slow and lugubrious for a Clint picture, and there was this mystical thing between Kevin and the kid, a kind of frontier philosophy was evolving and Clint seemed too bewildered to interfere. Then, with Costner producing, he was
Wyatt Earp
(94, Kasdan)—probably the longest, slowest, dullest film about Earp ever (there is competition), and that vague air of the whole thing being a political program.
The War
(94, Jon Avnet) was another curiosity, with Kevin speaking wisely to children, and seeming to take over the project.

This was as nothing compared with
Waterworld
(95, Reynolds—though apparently with Costner doing his bit) in which the daft, reactionary loner creed emerged in one of the more ravishingly absurd films of the nineties (there was competition). Whereupon looking just like your favorite puppy, Kevin did
Tin Cup
(96, Shelton), a lovely, fatuous dream for every Sunday golfer, in which Kevin does his Zen of the game act.

We hadn’t seen anything yet:
The Postman
(97), which he produced and directed, was his noble disaster in which the lone mail carrier may save the world from apocalypse. I have to admit that the film had a dire fascination—it was enough to make one get up, abandon one’s miserable life and follow St. Kevin into the lands of the heathen, if you could discern them (there was competition).

Then, o my brothers, he was Billy Chapel, the great old pitcher with a dead arm and a lost love—could he throw
For Love of the Game
(99, Sam Raimi)? He was a ringside fan to the shameless pugilism of
Play It to the Bone
(99, Shelton). And then he was Kenny O’Donnell helping the Pres save the world in
Thirteen Days
(00, Donaldson).

But Kevin likes Elvis, too, so he did
3000 Miles to Graceland
(01, Demian Lichtenstein). And let’s not forget
Dragonfly
(02, Tom Shadyac), tempting as that would be. He then acted in and directed a very good Western,
Open Range
(03).

He seems older and calmer now:
The Upside of Anger
(05, Mike Binder);
Rumor Has It …
(05, Rob Reiner);
The Guardian
(06, Andrew Davis); as the hired killer-holic in the crazy
Mr. Brooks
(07, Bruce A. Evans), which he also coproduced;
Swing Vote
(08, Joshua Michael Stern).

Marion Cotillard
, b. Paris, 1975
The contest among the ladies in
Nine
(09, Rob Marshall) is no small affair. Penélope Cruz is amazingly athletic/raunchy, and she knows it. But from the moment Marion Cotillard opens her mouth as the wife, the battle is over. No one else knows how to sing with such drama—no one else around today seems to understand the terrific conviction of a Piaf or a Garland. So it’s obvious and natural that the wife in
Nine
is so much more her own woman than the wife in 8½ (Anouk Aimée). Cotillard plays the one woman (save for Judi Dench) who really handles Guido Contini. If you reach the conclusion that Guido is a mannered, self-pitying, askance-gazing jerk, then the wife is the heart of the film. And
Nine
was Marion Cotillard’s second major American movie in 2009—she was, you may or may not remember, Dillinger’s doll, Billie Frechette, in
Public Enemies
(09, Michael Mann).

Marion Cotillard was the daughter of an actor and mime artist, and her first work was in some of his plays. She made her movie debut in
L’Histoire du Garçon Qui Voulait Qu’on l’Embrasse
(94, Philippe Harel);
My Sex Life … Or How I Got into an Argument
(96, Arnaud Desplechin);
La Belle Verte
(96, Coline Serreau);
Taxi
(98, Gerard Pires);
La Guerre dans le Haut Pays
(99, Francis Reusser);
Furia
(99, Alexandre Aja);
Du Bleu Jusqu’en Amérique
(99, Sarah Levy);
Taxi 2
(00, Gerard Krawczyk);
Lisa
(01, Pierre Grimblat), where she was the young Jeanne Moreau;
Les Jolies Choses
(01, Gilles Paquet-Brenner), where she sang a little.

She was in
Une Affaire Privée
(02, Guillaume Niclee);
Taxi 3
(03, Krawczyk);
Love Me If You Dare
(03, Yann Samuell), playing with Guillaume Canet, her companion. Her first English-speaking film was
Big Fish
(03, Tim Burton);
Innocence
(04, Lucile Hadzi);
A Very Long Engagement
(04, Jean-Pierre Jeunet), for which she won the supporting actress César;
Cavalcade
(05, Steve Suissa);
Edy
(05, Stephan Guerin Tillie);
Ma Vie en l’Air
(05, Remi Bezancon);
Mary
(05, Abel Ferrara);
Burnt Out
(05, Fabienne Godet);
La Boîte Noire
(05, Richard Berry).

She was a French star by now:
Toi et Moi
(06, Julie Lopes-Curval);
Dikkenek
(06, Olivier Van Hoofstadt);
Fair Play
(06, Lionel Bailliu);
A Good Year
(06, Ridley Scott). Then in 2007, doing some of her own singing, but lip-synching a lot more, she played Edith Piaf in
La Môme
, also known as
La Vie en Rose
(07, Olivier Dahan). She won the César, the Golden Globe, and the Oscar (an astonishing coup) for best actress and rose to the status of an international actress.
Nine
may be the best part she’ll ever get—which is a way of wondering how long she can stay at the top.

Joseph Cotten
(1905–94), b. Petersburg, Virginia
Cotten was already a star of the stage when drawn to Hollywood by Orson Welles. Since 1930, he had appeared on Broadway in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
, with Katharine Hepburn in
The Philadelphia Story
, and in
Accent on Youth
. His association with Welles began through the Mercury Theater and Federal Theater Productions. It was perhaps Welles’s slyness to cast Cotten—whose first job in the theatre had been as a reviewer—as the dramatic critic of the
Inquirer
and the most skeptical admirer of
Citizen Kane
(41). Ever after, Cotten hardly seemed the master of his own career. In
The Magnificent Ambersons
(42) he was again utterly convincing as the turned away suitor, not quite up to the proud Ambersons. Cotten also appeared in
Lydia
(41, Julien Duvivier) and both acted in and wrote that Mercury charade
Journey into Fear
(43, Norman Foster). From Welles’s influence he passed into the not quite as embracing hands of David Selznick. Despite Cot-ten’s disturbingly good performance as the murderous uncle in Hitchcock’s
Shadow of a Doubt
(43), Selznick carelessly loaned him out or employed him as orthodox romantic leads for Jennifer Jones: thus, the policeman in
Gaslight
(44, George Cukor);
Since You Went Away
(44, John Cromwell);
I’ll Be Seeing You
(44) and
Love Letters
(45) both for Dieterle; the pale, good brother in
Duel in the Sun
(46, King Vidor);
The Farmer’s Daughter
(47, H. C. Potter); and the wistful, morbid painter in
Portrait of Jennie
(49, Dieterle). His talents were briefly revived as the truculent groom-husband in Hitchcock’s
Under Capricorn
(49) and, again teased by Welles, as Holly Martins, the gullible American in Vienna, in Carol Reed’s
The Third Man
(49). After
September Affair
(50, Dieterle),
Two Flags West
(50, Robert Wise), and
Peking Express
(52, Dieterle), he settled increasingly for portrayals of henpecked middle age, as Monroe’s wizened husband in
Niagara
(53, Henry Hathaway), in
Beyond the Forest
(49, Vidor), and
The Steel Trap
(52, Andrew L. Stone). He was more vigorous in
Untamed Frontier
(52, Hugo Fregonese);
Blueprint for Murder
(53, Stone);
Special Delivery
(55, John Brahm);
The Bottom of the Bottle
(56, Hathaway);
The Killer Is Loose
(56, Budd Boetticher); and
The Halliday Brand
(57, Joseph H. Lewis). But he began to take smaller parts in big pictures, like
Hush, Hush … Sweet Charlotte
(64, Robert Aldrich) and
Petulia
(68, Dick Lester); as boozed Southern colonels in Italian Westerns; as a surgeon unbelievingly pursued by Vincent Price in
The Abominable Dr. Phibes
(71, Robert Fuest); the victim in
Soylent Green
(73, Richard Fleischer) and in
A Delicate Balance
(75, Tony Richardson); good in
The Lindbergh Kidnapping
Case (76, Buzz Kulik);
Airport ’77
(77, Jerry Jameson);
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
(77, Aldrich);
Caravans
(78, James Fargo);
L’Isola degli Uomini Pesce
(79, Sergio Martino);
Guyana: Crime of the Century
(79, René Cardona Jr.);
The House Where Evil Dwells
(79, Kevin Connor);
The Concorde Affair
(79, Ruggero Deodato);
The Hearse
(80, George Bowen); “Reverend Doctor” at the Harvard graduation in
Heaven’s Gate
(80, Michael Cimino);
The Survivor
(81, David Hemmings).

Cotten was never quite the romantic star Selznick took him for. His grace and attentiveness were also detached and dreamy, and Hitchcock saw how easily the crinkled face might be made morose. His best performances are in parts outside Hollywood conventions. Cotten was known as a practical joker, and he probably enjoyed testing Welles’s guess at his future in
Kane
, where Leland is seen as both a youthful idealist and an old man left plotting with his memories and scrounging cigars. But he answered Welles’s call, in 1958, to appear uncredited as the drunken coroner in
Touch of Evil
.