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Clive Owen and Crowe, absolutely - DARN

Posted by Harmonia (A) on December 15, 2008 at 23:11:26

In Reply to: Denzell Washington, Russel Crowe, Clive Owen, Dustin Hoffman posted by Road Warrior on December 15, 2008 at 19:27:23:

I typed a flippin' stream of consciouness book and left *Clive* out. That's what I get for trying to work and post at the same time.

Cliver Owen: I LOVE the guy - Bent, Croupier, Children of Men (my favorite film of 2006), Inside Man, Closer - I forgive Arthur and Elizabeth The Golden Age. He's the real deal. I love him more than Danile Day Lewis, who is next to divine. I don't necessarily believe him in period parts, where he never seems fully comfortable (odd for a British stage actor, but there ya go). I love Clive anyway.

Crowe - first saw him in the Aussie movies Romper Stomper and Proof, in the same year (1991?), and couldn't believe how differentand equally compelling the performances were. LA Confidential, The Insider - he shoulda won the Oscar for these roles. He carried Gladiator. He was good in a Beautiful Mind, although I don't like the film. He was a wonderful Jack Aubrey in Master & Commander. I dunno about his taste in roles though. And he ain't Mr. Sunshine. But he has the goods.

Dustin Hoffman, I'll grant you his importance if not his versatility. He's been in lots of important - and pivotal - movies, which you noted. Yet his tics drive me crazy sometimes - I can't watch Rainman to this day without squirming and twitching. And you left out Tootsie, which is Dusty at his most charming.

As for the generation gap...I understand what you mean. But for me, it's less a question of time passing (although there is at least a 10-15 year gap bewteen Brando and Hackman/Caine) than it is of aesthetics changing. There's a sea change in sensibility from the post war 1950s to the turbulent 60s and 70s.

Brando errupted onto the screen in 1951. Although he was in films for decades, and overlapped with all the people you named, Brando's most iconic and influential roles were in the early 50's. (His only truly great roles post 1950s were in The Godfathers, Last Tango In Paris and Apocalypse Now, in which his "performance" may not actually be a "performance" as normally defined). A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata (1952), On The Waterfront (1953), Julius Ceasar (1953) and The Wild One (1954) were all released before 1955.

Hackman and Duval, OTOH, gained their recognition in the new American wave of the late 1960s and 1970s. Their first great roles were in movies from maverick American directors like Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde 1967), Francis Ford Coppola, (The Godfather 1972, The Conversation 1974) and Robert Altman (Target 1968, MASH 1970) . These films were an entirely different sensibility from their counterparts from the fifties. Likewise, Michael Caine exploded in the mid-sixties onto the international scene in Alfie (1966), which was young, hip, cynical and irreverent. In between The Wild One and Bonnie & Clyde were The Beatles, swinging London, the Pill, the Kennedy and King assasinations, Viet Nam, civil rights marches, soldiers shooting at college students on campus, LSD, Jimi Hendrix and the French New Wave. From Brando's slicked back ducktail and leathers we had gone to freak flags flying and bell bottoms.

The old studio system was breaking down in the 1960s. Hollywood talent had been decimated by the McCarthy hearings. The youthquake was in full swing. The studios had hip, up and coming directors like Coppola, Penn, Altman, Mike Nichols, Peter Yates, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski and Alan Pakula helming projects. Robert Altman and William Friedkin (The Thin Blue Line, French Connection) had crossed over from TV to feature films. Peter Bogdonavich laid down his pen and made Targets and The Last Picture Show. Sidney Lumet was working within the studio system but breaking out. Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg gave Warner Brothers studio execs heart attacks with Performance (and the experience reportedly gave star James Fox a nervous breakdown). Kubrick was fed up with Hollywood and moved to England (permanently as it turned out).

In England...Richard Lester was making us dance and laugh with The Beatles in a Hard Days Night, as well as instructing us on The Knack And How To Get It; Ken Loach was shining a neo-realist light on the working class in Poor Cow and Kes; Antonioni was making a beautiful, mysterious film about swinging London in Blow Up; Joseph Losey fled red-baiting persecution in Hollywood to make the gripping and creepy The Servant and the wistful and twisted The Go Between; Tony Richardson was having a ball sending up 18th century toffs in Tom Jones; Lindsay Anderson was terrifying the establishment with If; Syndey Furie made a star of a sandy haired cockney actor named Michael Caine in The Ipcress File;

By the 1970s you had bad boys Martin Scorsese, Milos Forman, Terence Malick, George Lucas (yes, really, he was considered a weird kid in those days), Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino and John Boorman working in Hollywood. By the end of the decade John Carpenter and George Romero would be launched.

Brando paved the way for a lot of what came in the 60s and 70s. There are only 16 years between between Streetcar Named Desire and Bonnie & Clyde. (11 years between The Wild One and B&C.) But 1951/1954 and 1967 are a world apart. FWIW, a young Anthony Hopkins' first major role was as Richard The Lionheart in the 1968 Lion In Winter.

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Edits: 12/15/08

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