The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (452 page)

His admirers assert that Wiseman is always controversial, and thus provocative. Yet only
Titicut Follies
, his first film, really outraged anyone.
Primate
is his most personal film, mercifully rash and partial and an urgent essay, if absolutely conventional in its sentiments and thinking. Too many of the other films trail away into minutely observed inconsequentiality—as if film’s own process had become a bureaucratic structure.

It’s ironic that Wiseman himself is as conscious of his editing, even to the point of claiming, “The result is a sequence which is totally arbitrary in that it never existed in real life, but it works in film terms. All the material is manipulated so that the final film is totally fictional in form although it is based on real events.” As a rule, he shoots quick and edits slow, hoping that implicit points will be made in the organization of the material. On the other hand, he likes everyone to make what they will of the movies. There is something pusillanimous in this restrained conflict of motives; and something bland and lulling in the neutrality. No wonder so much of his work has found its outlet on American Public Broadcasting, a comfortable and pious institution for sedate liberalism that runs parallel to, but seldom crosses, the huge force of demonic America. If only Wiseman were crazier, or less depressively guarded.

Googie
(Georgette)
Withers
, b. Karachi, India, 1917
Ms. Withers is included not just because her basic information contains a trick question—for Karachi is now in Pakistan—nor even as a reminder that someone calling herself “Googie Withers” once mounted a career. She is here because she is magnificent in two films by Robert Hamer: as the straightfaced poisoner in
Pink String and Sealing Wax
(45) and as the married woman given a glimpse of romantic escape in
It Always Rains on Sunday
(47). Those are major films, and they depend on the restrained emotion of Miss Withers. “Her beauty had an erotic quality,” wrote Michael Powell, “strange and provocative.” Powell also liked her laugh, and the way she refused to change her name to enhance her career.

She was the daughter of an Eighth Army officer and a Dutch woman, sent back to England to be educated. She appeared often on stage, and with her Australian husband, John McCallum (he is the former lover in
It Always Rains
). They returned to Australia together in the late fifties. Her work includes:
The Girl in the Crowd
(34, Michael Powell);
The Love Test
(34, Powell);
Windfall
(35, George King);
Her Last Affaire
(35, Powell);
All at Sea
(35, Anthony Kimmins);
Dark World
(35, Bernard Vorhaus);
Crown v. Stevens
(36, Powell);
King of Hearts
(36, John Mills);
She Knew What She Wanted
(36, Thomas Bentley);
Accused
(36, Thornton Freeland);
Crime over London
(36, Alfred Zeisler);
Pearls Bring Tears
(37, H. Manning Haynes);
Paradise for Two
(37, Freeland);
Paid in Error
(38, Maclean Rogers);
If I Were Boss
(38, Rogers);
Kate Plus Ten
(38, Reginald Denham);
Strange Boarders
(38, Herbert Mason);
Convict 99
(38, Marcel Varnel);
The Lady Vanishes
(38, Alfred Hitchcock);
You’re the Doctor
(38, Roy Lockwood).

Murder in Soho
(39, Norman Lee);
Trouble Brewing
(39, Kimmins);
The Gang’s All Here
(39, Freeland);
She Couldn’t Say No
(39, Graham Cutts);
Bulldog Sees It Through
(40, Harold Huth);
Business Honeymoon
(40, Arthur Words);
Jeannie
(41, Harold French);
Back Room Boy
(41, Mason); as the Dutch woman in
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
(42, Powell);
The Silvery Fleet
(42, Vernon Sewell);
On Approval
(44, Clive Brook);
They Came to a City
(44, Basil Dearden),
Dead of Night
(45, Alberto Cavalcanti and Charles Crichton).

The Loves of Joanne Godden
(47, Charles Frend);
Miranda
(48, Ken Annakin);
Once Upon a Dream
(48, Ralph Thomas);
Traveller’s Joy
(49, Thomas);
Night and the City
(50, Jules Dassin);
White Corridors
(51, Pat Jackson);
The Magic Box
(51, John and Roy Boulting);
Derby Day
(52, Herbert Wilcox);
Devil on Horseback
(54, Cyril Frankel);
Port of Escape
(56, Tony Young).

Years later, she made
The Nickel Queen
(70, John McCallum); the long-lost cousin in
Time After Time
(85, Bill Hays); superb as the maid in
Country Life
(95, Michael Blakemore);
Shine
(96, Scott Hicks).

(Laura Jean)
Reese Witherspoon
, b. Nashville, Tennessee, 1976
Reese Witherspoon is a year younger than Angelina Jolie. She is not as transportingly sensual or hilarious as Jolie. But what she has on her side is a wicked and controlled comic drive so that, even when cast in a Jolie-like role—as the innocent disaster area in
Freeway
(96, Matthew Bright)—she leaves us in no doubt but that we are beholding a comic creation. There is something of Madeline Kahn, and maybe a memory of Tuesday Weld, but the result is all Ms. Witherspoon, with the ability to present, without patronizing, an old-fashioned, nerdily decent, but helplessly dangerous girl.

She was a child model who made her debut on TV in
Wildflower
(91, Diane Keaton). Since then, she has grown and prospered in
The Man in the Moon
(91, Robert Mulligan); in Africa in
A Far Off Place
(93, Mikael Salomon);
Jack the Bear
(93, Marshall Herskovitz);
S.F.W
. (95, Jefery Levy);
Fear
(96, James Foley);
Pleasantville
(98, Gary Ross); as the good girl in
Cruel Intentions
(99, Roger Kumble); in what is so far her tour de force, a performance of Katharine Hepburn range, in
Election
(99, Alexander Payne); in her first big hit,
Legally Blonde
(01, Robert Luketic); and Cecily Cardew in
The Importance of Being Earnest
(02, Oliver Parker).

Alarm bells sounded with
Sweet Home Alabama
(02, Andy Tennant)—for sweetness is not what Ms. Witherspoon needs to pursue. But sugar is box office, and the tide of a talent had turned, tartness had turned pink in
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
(03, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld). She was Becky in
Vanity Fair
(04, Mira Nair)—too mild, too girly. But she got the biopic gutsiness of June Carter well enough in
Walk the Line
(05, James Mangold) to get an Oscar. Since then she has done nothing
—Just Like Heaven
(05, Mark Waters);
Rendition
(07, Gavin Hood);
Penelope
(08, Mark Palansky);
Four Christmases
(08, Seth Gordon).

Wong Kar-Wai
, b. Shanghai, 1958
1988:
Wong Gok Ka Moon/As Tears Go By
. 1991:
A Fei Jing Juen/Ah Fei’s Story
. 1994:
Chong Qing Sen Lin/Chungking Express; Dung Che Sai Duk/Ashes of Time
. 1995:
Duo Luo Tian Shi/ Fallen Angels
. 1997:
Cheun Gwong Tsa Sit/ Happy Together
. 2001:
Fa Yeung Nin Wa/In the Mood for Love; The Hire: Follow
(s). 2002:
Six Days
(v). 2004:
2046;
2007:
My Blueberry Nights
. 2008:
Ashes of Time
.

Wong Kar-Wai is very hot, yet very cool. You will find critics prepared to assert that he is one of the greatest filmmakers alive. Nicole Kidman has said that he is a god—which surely indicates a willingness to work for him. And stranger things could happen, though it remains to be seen whether Wong and Nicole would get under each other’s skin or deliver a kind of living magazine fashion section in which every last detail was to die for but nobody got hurt.

In other words, I am wary.
In the Mood for Love
was a tremendously accomplished exercise in passion without touching, which suggests voyeurism, and a nearly willful, drug-taker’s immersion in the narcotic of cinema. Whether or not Wong Kar-Wai has actually seen every great stylist’s last work, from Ophüls to Preminger, is beside the point. Let’s say that his exquisite stress on seeing and being seen is utterly natural. He is masterly. Yet he is also, for the moment, able to suggest that in being a Hong Konger or Asian or alien, he is freed from the need to involve us or move us. But suppose Hong Kong has no other desire than to be as lovely and empty as the standard of iconography in Western music videos and fashion magazines?

In the Mood for Love, Happy Together, Fallen Angels
, and
Chungking Express
comprise a ravishing body of work. Yet twenty minutes after you’ve been ravished, your water is so still again it could be gelid.

John Woo
(Yusen Wu), b. Guangzhou, China, 1946
1975:
Nu Zi Tai Quan Qun Ying Hui/The Dragon Tamers; Tie Han Rou Qing/The Young Dragons
. 1976:
Dinu Hua/Princess Chang Pin; Shao Lin Men/Countdown in Kung Fu
. 1977:
Fa Qian Han/The Pilferer’s Progress
. 1978:
Da Sha Xing Yu Xiao Mei Tou/Follow the Star; Ha Luo, Ye Gui Ren/Hello, Late Homecomers
. 1979:
Hao Xia/Last Hurrah for Chivalry
. 1980:
Qian Zuo Guai/From Riches to Rags; Hua Ji Shi Dai/Laughing Times
. 1982:
Mo Deng Tian Shi/To Hell with the Devil; Ba Cai Lin Ya Zhen/Plain Jane to the Rescue; Xiao Jiang/The Time You Need a Friend
. 1985:
Liang Zhi Lao Hu/Run Tiger Run
. 1986:
Ying Xiang Ben Se/A Better Tomorrow; Ying Xiong Wei Lei/Heroes Shed No Tears
. 1987:
Ying Xiang Ben Se II/A Better Tomorrow II
. 1989:
Die Xue Shuang Xiong/The Killer; Yi Dan Qun Ying/Just Heroes
. 1990:
Die Xue Jie Tou/Bullet in the Head
. 1991:
Zong Sheng Si Hai/Once a Thief
. 1992:
Lashou Shentan/HardBoiled
. 1993:
Hard Target
. 1996:
Broken Arrow
. 1997:
Face/Off
. 2000:
Mission Impossible II
. 2002:
Windtalkers;
2003:
Paycheck
. 2005: “Song Song and Little Cat,” episode from
All the Invisible Children
. 2008:
Red Cliff
.

Even before John Woo came to Hollywood, there were connoisseurs of his Hong Kong work who would seek out his action films at video stores. Equally, there are those who claim to find a kind of streamlined poetry in his American pictures—as opposed to the evidence of how a culture like that of Hong Kong had become degraded, long ago, by the attempt to live up to American models.

At the age of three, Woo was taken to Hong Kong, where he studied at Matteo Ricci College. He was a film fan as a kid and he entered Cathay Film in 1969 and worked his way up from script boy, studying with Chang Sen and Chang Cheh. Though enthusiastic about martial arts pictures, his Hong Kong work is actually quite varied—and much of it was very successful.

He came to America first for the Jean-Claude Van Damme picture
Hard Target
. He had a big success with
Broken Arrow
, one of those films that make hay with the idea of a nuclear explosion.
Face/Off
is his most interesting English-language picture, with a clever script and flamboyant performances from John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. As for
Mission: Impossible II
, what can one say except that it is—and isn’t—the new version of “Chinatown”?

Edward D. Wood Jr
. (1922–78), b. Poughkeepsie, New York
1952:
Glen or Glenda?/I Changed My Sex
. 1953:
Bride of the Monster
. 1954:
Jail Bait
. 1959:
Plan 9 from Outer Space
. 1960:
Night of the Ghosts
. 1972:
Necromancy
.

We are used to the legend of the youth who becomes obsessed with making movies and who begins in the very amateur ways of childhood. Spielberg and Scorsese are such figures. Which means to say that we treasure the affinity between early inspiration and professional and artistic fulfillment. Tim Burton’s movie
Ed Wood
(1994) is of special charm and corrective value in that it says, remember the obsessives who had no talent (or not enough, or not the right talent), but who had every tenderness towards the image, the actor, and the camera that we imagine in Carl Dreyer, say. And thank God there are some—millions, maybe—without inspiration. Otherwise, the available facility of movies might surround us with stupid talent. (You’ve never had that feeling, that fear? You’re lucky.) Edward D. Wood Jr.’s films are bad. Yet today it may be easier to think that some droll, camp masquerade made them deliberately bad, instead of the Burton line—that ardor, effort, soul, and talent’s void labored over these pictures. Because, today, we are loaded up with guilty pleasures, the films we love to hate, bad movies we treasure and giggle over, and the merciful entertainment of all that money, vanity, and self-gravity falling flat on its face. Indeed, there are very important films—like
Schindler’s List
, I fear, or
Casino
—where the importance and the vulgarity are as close as lovers (yet far more loyal—the one would never give the other away).

This can mean that decent, ordinary, consistent badness may be a rare or threatened thing. And Edward Wood (with Johnny Depp’s eyes) comes awfully close to genius in disguise. But here’s the rub: if we can no longer quite place rotten films, are we any more reliable with the good?