The unacknowledged patron saint of first-time directors, Harvey Keitel has given his blessing to a remarkable array of embryonic talent. Starting with Martin Scorsese in 1965, Keitel’s extraordinary run of luck extends across four decades. Other filmmakers to feel the benefit of his participation in their inaugural projects include: Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, James Toback, and Quentin Tarantino. Whether Keitel considers himself lucky is another matter. A student of myth, Keitel’s career—or journey—has been defined by its openness to risk and experience. If it is hard to imagine other actors in Keitel’s signature roles—in the “personal” films of some of the above directors, as well as those of Abel Ferrara and Jane Campion—then that is surely down to the nature of Keitel’s performances and the sense that he has spared nothing of himself. At his most fearless, Keitel is the embodiment of William Hazlitt’s maxim: “actors are the only honest hypocrites.”
In 1965 Keitel was working as a court stenographer when he saw an ad in a trade paper. An NYU student was looking for an actor for what was then intended as a graduation project. The student was Martin Scorsese, and the film—four years down the line—would go on to become the director’s first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1969) Although the film did well on the festival circuit, its real significance lay in its fraternal pairing of actor and director. Raised in different boroughs, under different faiths, the two New Yorkers had enough of a shared background to realise Scorsese’s Lower East Side story. A bond was forged.
Mean Streets (1973) saw Keitel reprise his role as Scorsese’s alter ego, making up for his sins not “in the church but on the street.” He appeared in Scorsese’s next two films, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976). The latter took him away from Scorsese’s neighbourhood streets, seemingly forever, and closer to hell, or at least Hell’s Kitchen. Exchanging one inferno for another, Keitel began to show his range and his appeal to first-time directors: he was undaunted by difficult material. The films he made with Ridley Scott (The Duellists 1977), Paul Schrader (Blue Collar 1978) and James Toback (Fingers 1978) represent a high-watermark in Keitel’s career. By comparison the 1980s were something of a fallow period, though he emerged from the wilderness with the role of Judas in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He began the next decade alongside Jack Nicholson in The Two Jakes (1990), though the much anticipated sequel to Chinatown (1975) performed poorly at the box office. But then Keitel embarked on a terrific run of films: Thelma and Louise (1991), Bugsy (1991), Bad Lieutenant (1992), Reservoir Dogs (1992), The Piano (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Smoke (1995). And with recent roles in Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), he seems to have found a place in Scorsese devotee Wes Anderson’s repertory company—a home from home.
—Mick McAloon
Running From The Reels 