The Eye
Page 21
1918–2007
INGMAR BERGMAN
Few filmmakers are held in the same esteem as Ingmar Bergman, whose work probes the despair and startling hope of humanity. Born in Sweden in 1918 to a clergyman father, Bergman first got a taste for the theatrical from a childhood toy: a paper lantern, which allowed him to stage tableaux with scenery, lighting effects and his own puppet productions.¶ He joined Svensk Filmindustri in the script department in the ’40s and eventually became a director of Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theater. Directing his first feature in 1945, Bergman made his critical breakthrough with Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal, a bleak meditation on mortality. The latter also cemented Bergman’s fixation on matters of existentialism, religion and moral quandary, all of which came to define his oeuvre.¶ Bergman’s personal relationships and observations were fodder for his work, and his most famous films, such as Persona, Wild Strawberries and Through a Glass Darkly, made their mark with nuanced accounting of the interior lives of men and women—and striking visuals by his longtime cinematographer Sven Nykvist. After completing what he considered his magnum opus, Fanny and Alexander, the director spent the remainder of his life on Fårö, an isolated island in the Baltic Sea, working on various projects for film, stage and television.*
1915–1985
ORSON WELLES
“Over the top!” “Larger than life!” The adjectives used to describe Orson Welles lean toward excess, and that’s the way the actor, filmmaker and theater director would have wanted it. Welles, whose early claim to fame was his notable—and controversial—Shakespearean performances, defined early American cinema with Citizen Kane, which he directed, starred in and innovated with the use of flashback and deep focus. He also gained much notoriety for hoodwinking the American public with his radio play War of the Worlds, which convincingly reported on a Martian invasion touching down in New Jersey. With an imposing height, a domineering attitude and an insatiable appetite for fine food, wine and cigars, Welles’ “boy wonder” reputation (he completed Kane at the age of 25) preceded him and infused his approach with a healthy dose of ego and risk-taking. While he struggled with collaborations, budgets and feedback from critics, the Kenosha, Wisconsin–born artist created some of the most innovative theatrical productions of the era—including modern restagings of Julius Caesar set in Fascist Italy and Macbeth with an all African-American cast. Many of his critical flops at the time, such as the noir Touch of Evil and the Falstaff adaptation Chimes at Midnight, are now considered masterworks.*
1889–1963
JEAN COCTEAU
The consummate modernist, Jean Cocteau cultivated a cult of personality, earning him the nickname “The Frivolous Prince” and putting him in a league of artists (like Dalí and Warhol) in which his personhood was inextricable from his work. He was, on the surface, the original Paris intellectual, dabbling across mediums: plays, poetry, music, film, painting and drawing—and creating his own self-mythology in the process. Cocteau published his first book of poetry, La Lamp d’Aladin, at the age of 19, and while he didn’t consider himself a film director, per se, his adaptations of La Belle et la Bête and Orphée left a definitive mark and became hugely influential to generations of filmmakers. But while his prodigious artistic output certified his place in history, his aura of faded bohemian glamour and dandyism—such as his crippling longtime opium addiction, tragic love affairs and avant-garde social circle that included the likes of Marcel Proust, Pablo Picasso, Kenneth Anger and Marlene Dietrich—made him a symbol of pre–World War II Parisian excess. In 1963, Cocteau died of a heart attack just hours after the announcement that his friend the singer Édith Piaf had died the day before, a curiously timed swan song for their creative epoch.*
1897–1991
FRANK CAPRA
Director Frank Capra deftly crafted an American cinematic archetype—the idealistic, patriotic, hardworking “good guy” standing up for what’s right, all in pursuit of the American Dream. Many of the characters that appeared in his films, including It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace and It’s a Wonderful Life, portrayed by leading men like James Stewart and Gary Cooper, had a similar optimistic sensibility that feels intrinsically close to Capra’s personal history.¶ Born in Palermo, Sicily, Capra immigrated to the United States with his family, landing in Los Angeles in 1903. He worked to pull himself up by any opportunity—wedging his foot in the door of Hollywood during the silent era of the ’20s and rising through the ranks at Columbia Pictures, where his films turned the small production company into a major studio. His autobiography, cheekily, is titled The Name Above The Title, after all. Critics have described some of his films as merely sentimental, but the director’s dedication to comedy and “message” films, in which a lesson is learned, were representative of his personal ideals. And his dedication to the autonomy of the craft—Capra fought for his agency as producer, writer and director—was an early example of what would later be heralded as the “auteur.” *
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According to Kubrick’s assistant for over 30 years, Anthony Frewin, the director created an early “social network” for readers across America to review novels and screenplays, in the hopes of finding Kubrick’s next big story. It was a task he obsessed over.
1928–1999
STANLEY KUBRICK
The films of Stanley Kubrick exhibit a contained fanaticism. They exude an aura of austerity and are painstakingly controlled, precise and clinical—what comes through in the widescreen scale of epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut is pure obsession. Kubrick’s hands guided each step of his productions, from writing, to lighting, to editing, to the psychology of his actors, to the final cut of the trailer.¶ Born in the Bronx, Kubrick moved to an estate in Hertfordshire, England, with his family after the success of Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas. His reclusive and press-shy nature (and phobia of flying) restricted his travel, so actors came to him. His professional relationships were often contentious—he was known to reshoot a scene up to 100 times—and the notoriously brutal production schedule of his adaptation of The Shining drove actress Shelley Duvall to the brink. Kubrick’s attraction to humanity’s darker appetites for sex and violence and a bleak, caustic sense of humor are landmarks of films including the nuclear war satire Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Yet he’s also been celebrated for his sheer innovation in visuals, technology and cinematography. Think of 2001’s sweeping retro-future space vistas, the strategic deployment of the Steadicam in The Shining or the painterly quality of the visuals of Barry Lyndon, in which scenes illuminated by natural light were captured with Zeiss lenses originally created for NASA. One wonders what he would have done if he had been able to complete his long-in-the-works science fiction project A.I. Artificial Intelligence, adapted from a short story by Brian Aldiss. (Kubrick acquired its rights in the ’70s, and after a stagnant development period, passed off directing duties to Steven Spielberg in the mid-’90s.) Kubrick died suddenly of a heart attack in 1999, shortly after finishing the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut.*
1925–present
PETER BROOK
In Peter Brook’s book Tip of the Tongue, published in 2017, he writes, “Every form of theatre has something in common with a visit to the doctor. On the way out, one should always feel better than on the way in.” Brook’s work as a producer and director created a seismic shift in the theater establishment in England, where he shaped, irreversibly, how the classics were presented. The London native brought then-provocative works by Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre to the English stage, and set the burgeoning Royal Shakespeare Company on its course when he joined the group in the ’60s, staging productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and King Lear in new contexts, swapping out the romantic Shakespearean trappings for stark sets and physical performances. Breathing new life into the staid, fusty texts, Broo
k brought Shakespearean craft from a thing of the past to a radical new frontier. Especially of note was Brook’s interest in the French dramatist Antonin Artaud.¶ Moreover, Brook created the Theater of Cruelty Workshop in 1963 as a way for the Royal Shakespeare Company to flex its avant-garde muscles; one result of that was the production of Peter Weiss’ two-act play Marat/Sade, which was applauded for its gritty realism and elevated Brook to international renown. However, he withdrew from the commercial theater world in the early ’70s in an effort to interrogate the conceptual dynamics of the stage; the result was the International Center of Theatre Research, which served as a boot camp and training ground for ideas and toured around the world. One notable production for Iran’s Shiraz festival was Orghast, in which the actors spoke in an invented language. The group also traveled to Africa and to Native American reservations in the United States to study different cultural performances. The director’s creative output wasn’t just limited to the stage either. He brought his vision to film adaptations of King Lear, Marcel Proust’s Swann in Love and William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the latter of which has been immortalized in the Criterion Collection.*
In 1959, Brook directed Rex Harrison in The Hurluberlu by Jean Anouilh, marking the third collaboration between director and playwright. Now 93, the director’s first lesson in the theater came early: “If you are lucky enough to do something that really seems to touch people,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle, “it’s your responsibility to go on playing it as long as there are people who call for it.”
1948–present
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Baryshnikov took on the world of dance with the finesse and precision of his classical ballet technique, but he earned a reputation for his appetite for experimentation. Baryshnikov was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1948, while it was still under the purview of the Soviet Union, and earned accolades dancing for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg). He defected to the West in 1974 to break free from the restraint of the de rigueur Soviet discipline and find creative freedom. Soon, he found himself taking direction from some of the most influential, boundary-breaking choreographers of the era, including Alvin Ailey and Twyla Tharp. Baryshnikov found a home at the American Ballet Theater, and later the New York City Ballet, where he danced under the tutelage of Jerome Robbins and fellow Russian titan George Balanchine. He assumed the artistic director position at the American Ballet Theater in the ’80s and established a forward-thinking program, reworking and restaging classical ballets with star turns from dance innovators like Martha Graham, before starting the White Oak Dance Project, a modern dance group. Baryshnikov also moved into other disciplines over the course of his life, including acting in theater (he won a Tony nomination for his role in an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis), film and TV.*
1933–present
QUINCY JONES
Quincy Jones arranged the first song to be played on the moon (“Fly Me to the Moon,” sung by Frank Sinatra and played, fortuitously, by the astronaut Buzz Aldrin on a portable cassette player). And that’s the sort of stratospheric level of success that has been reached by this composer, musician and producer. His achievements come in quantity and quality as he churned out a prodigious volume of guaranteed hits across genres. He has co-produced some of the bestselling pop albums (Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Off the Wall and Bad) and cross-pollinated pop, soul, jazz and hip-hop. He has racked up 28 Grammy Awards and is among the rare echelon of individuals who have “EGOT”-ed, receiving an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. Jones found music through his teenage friend Ray Charles and started working as an arranger, linking up with Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and eventually Sinatra. His record label, Qwest, consisted of a lineup that included boundary-pushing British acts like Joy Division and New Order. And Jones has been perpetually involved in various pop- culture projects, from high to low, executive producing the ’90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and launching Vibe magazine, which became the decade’s leading voice on hip-hop. The mogul moves fast.*
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Long considered the “Mother of Modern Dance,” Graham frequently created her own costumes as well. “Dance is theater and larger than life,” she said in a 1989 interview. “Makeup and costume, correctly chosen, define movement in a different way.”
1894–1991
martha graham
There was ballet, and then there was Martha Graham. As a young dancer, she encountered an abstract work by Wassily Kandinsky, a streak of red imposed on a blue background, and thought, “I will dance like that.” What her contemporary Pablo Picasso did for painting, Graham did for dance—she brought the medium into a modernist context. Her treatment of the body was powerful, abstract, raw and deeply expressive. The action of breath, for example, and the idea of “tension” and “release,” the “spiral” movement of the torso and the axis of the spine all grounded the physicality of her approach. She established the Martha Graham Studio in the 1920s, and her choreography broke boundaries not just for its radical technique but also for its subject matter, including psychological, sexual and sociopolitical themes. For a series of performances influenced by Greek mythology, strong feminine figures such as Medea and Jocasta became heroines tapping into their power and struggle against outside forces. ¶ Graham also used the stage as a space for multidisciplinary collaborations with giants from other fields. She and sculptor Isamu Noguchi embarked on a long-term partnership crafting stage sets. For Frontier in 1935, they transposed an austere western landscape to the stage; for Night Journey, the production retelling Oedipus Rex from Jocasta’s perspective, Noguchi devised a stark, almost menacing marriage bed. She also worked with designers like Halston, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan on wardrobe. Graham choreographed her performances to include herself until she officially retired from the stage in 1969 at 75, but she inspired a league of disciples to train in her tradition (she also taught several actors how to wield their bodies on stage and screen). Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp were deeply influenced by her, as were classical ballet dancers like Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who looked to expand their horizons with the modern approach.*
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In 1925, Graham accepted a teaching position at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. With full creative control over the dance program, she began to experiment more freely, exploring the falling, shaking and convulsive motions that would become her signature.
1926–2016
GEORGE MARTIN
Known for his modesty and unflashy personality, Sir George Martin signed a nearly overlooked music group and turned them into one of the most progressive pop acts in music history. He became one of the first music producers to become as famous as any act he was producing, at least to those behind the scenes. From 1962 until the group disbanded in 1970, Martin had a fruitful collaboration with The Beatles. His work gave rise to the profile of the music producer, paving the way for the likes of Rick Rubin. Born in London in 1926, Martin studied piano, oboe, composing and conducting. After serving in World War II, he joined Parlophone, a subsidiary of EMI Records, where his work leaned toward classical and comedy and included producing albums for Peter Sellers. Rock ’n’ roll wasn’t really a part of the conversation at Parlophone, and Martin had already turned down The Beatles once before. EMI pushed to sign them, and the producer was eventually won over by the group’s wit. Martin then became a strategic voice in the room; for example, he pushed them to swap out drummer Pete Best, replacing him with Ringo Starr. As the decade wore on and the group embraced the counterculture, dressing in psychedelic prints and growing their hair, Martin remained in his crisp suits and shirts. But he was able to keep up in terms of progressive sound, fostering The Beatles’ interest in experimentation. His out-there, abstract, kooky arrangements and productions for “A Day in the Life” on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was wholly innovative. Martin established his own record company, AI
R, in the early ’60s and also found much success with the British Invasion–style groups he produced along with the Beatles, like Gerry and the Pacemakers. Before he died in 2017, Martin made much work out of preserving the quality of the Beatles’ archive and overseeing the release of live performances and studio sessions.*
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Considered the ultimate behind-the-scenes contributor, Martin’s most notable appearance was the Bach-esque piano bridge on The Beatles’ “In My Life.” Often mistaken for a harpsichord, the producer’s unique experiment was actually done by adjusting tape speeds.
1930–present
JEAN-LUC GODARD
At the height of the French New Wave in the 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard faced the world through a pair of chic dark-lensed glasses, with a confidence that mirrored that of his films. Godard led a group of critics-turned- filmmakers, enamored with American Hollywood and gangster films of the 1930s and ’40s, who reworked their conventions for an entirely new type of cinema. Alongside his friends François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette (who all became influential directors of the era), Godard wrote for the film journal Cahiers du cinéma—and soon started making films. Breathless, a crime caper starring the American actress Jean Seberg and the rakish Jean-Paul Belmondo, was his breakout hit, and Godard’s signatures—dynamic camera work, jump cuts and designed titles, for example, became a stylish new visual language, along with his penchant for humor, irreverence and romance. His female stars became his romantic partners as well, including Anna Karina, who starred in a succession of his films in the ’60s. As the decade continued, and the counterculture blossomed, his films communicated his interest in politics, becoming more abstract. He has over 100 credits as a director. His 3-D feature, Goodbye to Language, premiered to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014.*