Program Notes

One of Hollywood’s most versatile actors, all of Amy Adams’s transformations emanate from within. For the most part recognizable from film to film, it’s as if Adams is forever divesting herself of unwanted layers. Over the course of her career, and in her most revealing work, the masks keep falling away.

She made her screen debut in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), and followed it with supporting roles in long-running television shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000), Smallville (2001), and The West Wing (2002). She seemed on the verge of a breakthrough as Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend in Catch Me If You Can (2002), and the first time she was paired with a major director (Steven Spielberg). She lent her voice to multiple characters in King of the Hill; and was a sister to Debra Messing in The Wedding Date (2005). But it was not until Junebug (2005) that she gave the sense of having truly arrived. The role of Ashley, an unworldly and pregnant young wife, tapped into those qualities that appear genuine and integral to Adams herself: wholesome and good. But her character was also very complex, and within the film’s family dynamic—a successful brother returning to his family home with his sophisticated wife—Ashley understood, or at least intuited, more than she was letting on. Adams won a prize at Sundance, as well as outstanding reviews, and received the first of her Academy Award nominations—for Best Supporting Actress. She returned to television, with a role in The Office (2005-2006), and then took on an out-and-out and comedy, Talladega Nights (2006), with SNL alumni Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. But then with Enchanted (2007), Adams drew on her musical theatre background and embraced the challenge of a Disney live action/ animated adventure: her Disney princess, Giselle, was an unadulterated delight.

By now her range was becoming apparent and her ascension to the A-list inevitable. A supporting role in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) paired her with Philip Seymour Hoffman for the first of three films together. Doubt (2008) saw her conflicted and on shifting moral ground as a young nun caught between Hoffman’s priest and Meryl Streep’s bitter principal, Sister Aloysius. In The Fighter (2010), her Boston-Irish barmaid was just as tough as Mark Wahlberg and the quiet centre of David O. Russell’s voluble film. She took a supporting role in On the Road (2012), and was arguably the most interesting and least explored character in The Master (2012), which saw her back with Hoffman. There, as in all her best work, Adams’s complexity clouds the outer disposition that is sunny and bright—her musical theatre optimism. It is this capacity that leads many of her directors to entrust her with the emotional centre of their films. That is certainly the case in American Hustle (2013), even in a cast with mesmerizing (Christian Bale) and firecracker talent (Jennifer Lawrence). Transparent in the best sense of the word, Adams’s vulnerability is perhaps her greatest strength.

—Mick McAloon

Gary Oldman led the way for a generation of British actors—among them Daniel Day-Lewis, Alfred Molina and Tim Roth. Schooled in the theatre, Oldman and his coevals claimed as their rightful inheritance the screen legacy of the “Method”, thus extending a line of influence that runs from the Moscow Art Theatre to British film in the 1980s and beyond. What happened in between—the formation of the Group Theatre and the subsequent emergence of the Actors Studio—was crucial to this development, as were the remarkable films that came out of the New Hollywood, and especially the work of Robert DeNiro.

Like DeNiro, Oldman was capable of extreme physical transformations. Already a versatile and award-winning stage actor, Oldman enhanced his reputation with a run of films that showed a talent for deep immersion. He made his screen debut in Remembrance (1982), followed by a supporting role, alongside Tim Roth, in Mike Leigh’s Meantime (1983). The latter hinted at Oldman’s capacity for danger and volatility, albeit with an innate sense of comic timing—qualities that would go on to serve him well. But it was his performances as Sid Vicious, in Sid and Nancy (1986), and as Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987), that Oldman revealed the depth and range of his talent. Putting flesh on the bones of biography, Oldman went beyond impersonation. The distinctive manner in which he inhabited both punk and then playwright led Roger Ebert to hail Oldman as “the best young British actor around.” With his ear for accents and a great vocal facility, Oldman now laid claim to roles that previously would have gone to an American. His migration to Hollywood was inevitable and desired, though the films he made on his arrival, Criminal Law (1989) and Chattahoochee (1989), were unremarkable.

Not that Oldman had finished with England. In Alan Clarke’s The Firm (1989), he was exuberant, menacing and funny as an estate agent-cum-football hooligan. He brought the same unpredictability to his Irish-American gangster in State of Grace (1990), which saw him go head to head with Sean Penn. Both actors had drawn from the same wellspring of artistic influence, though it was Oldman who landed eye-catching roles in films by Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola. In JFK (1991), Oldman vanished into the void that was Lee Harvey Oswald; while as the lead in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), he lowered his voice an octave and made the “undead” soulful in perpetuity.

For the rest of the 1990s, Oldman lit up big budget movies with extravagant star turns and in the process typecast himself. But he delved deep for the autobiographical Nil By Mouth (1997), his directorial debut and return to South London roots. Benevolent but pivotal roles in two franchises, Harry Potter (2004 – 2011) and The Dark Knight (2005 – 2012), established his cumulative box office eminence. And as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), both actor and spy came in from the cold.

—Mick McAloon

Sean Penn arrived in American movies fully formed and iron willed. Confident and charismatic from the start, he drew early comparisons with Robert DeNiro, his most significant influence as an actor. Unfortunately for Penn, he came of age when American cinema was in the doldrums. High concept movies, exemplified by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, ruled the day and defined the era, while the “personal” auteur-driven films of the previous decade found fewer champions in a Hollywood underwritten by multi-national conglomerates. Still, Penn flourished in a way that seemed to be entirely self-generating, his intransigence apparent from his big-screen debut in Taps (1981). Penn stood out in a cast that included George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton (fresh from an Oscar win), and Tom Cruise in what was only his second movie. If Cruise went on to enjoy spectacular box office success, Penn, with his roiling complexity, was quickly regarded as the best actor of his generation. Pauline Kael singled him out as early as Bad Boys (1983): “Each time, Penn comes as a complete surprise.”

He had already demonstrated his range with an influential comedic turn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), a rare feat in itself for a heavyweight talent conscious of his place within a tradition of sullen but poetic American actors: Brando, Clift, and Dean. But what Penn the tragedian needed—great material, a Scorsese to his DeNiro—was simply not there. Instead he gravitated towards mavericks and mentors, befriending John Cassavetes, Marlon Brando, and Dennis Hopper, while conspiring to act opposite the previous generation’s best actors. One by one they all lined up, as though at a passing-out parade: Christopher Walken in At Close Range (1986), Robert Duvall in Colors (1988), DeNiro in We’re No Angels, and Pacino in Carlito’s Way (1993). And on each occasion Penn acquitted himself. The torch had been passed, and then he threatened to quit acting altogether in favour of directing.

But his absence only seemed to incite a clamour for his return. He began to work with directors deserving of his talent: De Palma, Fincher, Malick and Woody Allen. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in Dead Man Walking (1995), directed by his fellow actor-turned activist Tim Robbins. He received another nomination for his egotistical though oddly endearing jazz guitarist in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999). Here Penn offered a rare instance of an actor dominating an Allen script without recourse to Allen’s mannerisms. He won his first Oscar for his performance in Mystic River (2003), where he was turbulent and vengeful, as well as tender. And then in Milk (2008), as the eponymous gay rights activist and politician, Penn reminded audiences that he could be light on his feet and no less sorrowful. In recent years acting has taken a back seat to his own activism and humanitarian aid work. But he “suited up” again for This Must Be the Place (2011) and Gangster Squad (2013), where he blazed brighter than the pyrotechnics.

—Mick McAloon

Gena Rowlands is best known for the remarkable films she made with her husband John Cassavetes. Although she appeared (uncredited) in Shadows (1959)—Cassavetes’ astonishing debut—and had a supporting role in A Child is Waiting (1963), it was not until Faces (1968) that their collaboration began in earnest. Gena’s is the first face we see after that film’s post-title sequence: closer than close-up, looking straight into the camera, and every inch a movie star. The grain and gauge of the film is like one of Warhol’s Factory movies—unvarnished, black & white, 16mm—but Rowlands’ face, presence and beauty evokes 1950s Hollywood glamour. She once told a journalist that without Cassavetes her career “might very possibly have been doing Pillow Talk…” But Rowlands was always closer to Bette Davis (her idol) or Gloria Grahame than to Doris Day: the glamour came with an edge. What Rowlands said of Davis applies equally to her: “she was tough in the right way.”

Like many New York-based actors, particularly in the early 1950s, she came up through live television in such programmes—or telecasts—as Studio One and Robert Montgomery Presents. But it was on Broadway, in Paddy Chayefsky’s ‘Middle of the Night’ (1956), where she made her name. Cast as ‘the girl’ opposite Edward G. Robinson, her performance received critical raves as well as attention from Hollywood and a contract with MGM: The High Cost of Loving (1958); Lonely Are the Brave (1962); The Spiral Road (1962); in Sinatra’s orbit in Tony Rome (1967); and Machine Gun McCain (1968), with Cassavetes in the lead role. But then from 1968 to 1984, she acted almost exclusively in her husband’s films: Minnie and Moscowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), and Love Streams (1984). With the exception of the generic Gloria, all of them could be described as “home movies”, albeit on an elevated artistic scale—even Minnie & Moscowitz, which puts its own heady spin on the “screwball comedy”, feels “personal” if not downright autobiographical.

The sense that this singular body of work was very much a family affair is intensified by the way the films were made. Cassavetes and Rowlands mortgaged their home to fund each project; friends, family and associates were cast in significant roles; in-laws’ houses were commandeered as locations; and at the heart of this enterprise—Gena Rowlands’ galvanic presence. To see her in her prime is to realize how much her influence has been absorbed by other filmmakers and actors. Pedro Almodovar had her (and Bette Davis) in mind when he made All About My Mother (1999)—the film directly references Opening Night as well as All About Eve (1950). Blue Jasmine (2013) and Cate Blanchett’s ‘woman on the verge’ had traces of Rowlands’ Mabel Longhetti—but then Woody Allen had worked with Rowlands on Another Woman (1988), where Sven Nykvist’s camera drew on the expressive power of her face. After Cassavetes’ death in 1989, she began to work more regularly for other directors: Jim Jarmusch’s Night On Earth (1991), Terence Davies’ The Neon Bible (1995), and then for her son Nick Cassavetes, Unhook the Stars (1996), She’s So Lovely (1997), and The Notebook (2004). She lent her voice to the English-language version of Persopolis (2007), and further family support—this time for her daughter, Zoe Cassavetes—to Broken English (2007). But it is the films that Cassavetes wrote for Rowlands which will be remembered and that cry out for an Almodovar-inspired rubric: All About Gena.

—Mick McAloon