LEGENDS OF THE SILVER SCREEN: ROBERT DE NIRO
Robert De Niro is one of the greatest actors of all time. But what makes him a Legend is his sheer prolific nature. He keeps cranking them out at a steady clip and is showing no signs of slowing down. Today, we’ll take a look at three of De Niro’s films.
First up is…
THE LAST TYCOON (1976) **
Elia (A Streetcar Named Desire) Kazan got Harold Pinter to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final unfinished novel for the screen. I guess that sounded like a great idea on paper. Too bad the screenplay feels unfinished too. (Scenes go on and on with no payoff, and the film is often dramatically inert.)
The Last Tycoon is one of those movies about the golden age of Hollywood. (Robert De Niro’s character is loosely based on Irving Thalberg.) Fittingly, it features a who’s who of movie stars. John Carradine, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, Theresa Russell (making her debut), Anjelica Huston, Donald Pleasence, and Jack Nicholson all appear. Because of that, the film coasts on mere star power alone. But star power alone isn’t enough to make for a good movie.
De Niro stars as studio head Monroe Stahr. He’s slowly working himself to death while pining away for his lost love. Monroe finds love again with a new beauty (Ingrid Boulting), but when she leaves him for another man, his professional life spirals out of control.
Kazan does a nice job at evoking the period. The costumers and set designers were all working at the top of their game. So there's that. It’s like a beautiful shining brand new car without an engine. It looks great, but it never goes anywhere.
De Niro is in nearly every scene and while he gives it his all, his character is mostly a cypher. There are some good standout scenes (like when he gives Donald Pleasence a screenwriting lesson), but the film is mostly a collection of vignettes instead of a cohesive narrative. Because of that, we never really learn much about the character, which makes it hard for us to care about him.
Critics were unkind to the film when it was released. Most of the reviews from the time placed the blame on Boulting’s performance. And although she’s not very good, she’s not the real problem. (She does have a pretty good nude scene.) The love story aspect is a bit flat, but it’s the listless script is the real issue. And the black and white scenes of the movie Stahr is producing don’t add much to the film.
If anything, the film is worth watching just to see Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson together on screen. If anyone else had played these scenes together, no one would’ve given a shit because the dialogue is tepid and the drama is pretty much nonexistent. But since it features De Niro’s quiet intensity and Jack flashing his trademark grin, it’s almost worthwhile. Their scenes come late in the movie and lack any real resonance, but they’re easily the most memorable thing about the film. And like the movie itself, it ultimately doesn’t amount to much. Still, if you ever wanted to see Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson play ping pong together…
Our next De Niro flick is…
1900 (1977) **
Bernardo Bertolucci directed this epic failure starring some big name stars like Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, and Burt Lancaster. It runs five hours and seventeen minutes and the narrative spans generations, two world wars, and the rise and fall of governments. I’m sure that somewhere deep in 1900 there is a good two and a half hour movie waiting to get out. Since it runs 317 minutes, that means you have to wade through a helluva lot of filler to find it.
Two boys are born on the same Italian plantation on the same day. De Niro is the grandson of the man of the house (Lancaster) and Depardieu is a bastard born to one of the servants (Sterling Hayden). Even though they play together as children, they eventually grow apart due to time, wealth, class, and politics.
1900 was bound to be branded as “too long”, and yes, it is too long. It’s a sprawling mess, but there are some fascinating stretches and a few rather jaw-dropping moments. Among them:
• Donald Sutherland being brutally stabbed by pitchfork-wielding peasants.
• Burt Lancaster kicking a hunchback servant in the ass.
• A kid wearing a hat full of squirming, dying frogs.
• A guy cutting off his own ear.
• An epileptic whore jerks off De Niro and Depardieu graphic detail.
• Donald Sutherland headbutting a cat to death.
These moments aside, I’m sure Bertolucci could’ve trimmed about two hours of fat off this thing. For every good hour the movie has, it has two extremely boring hours that follow it up. And somewhere around the third hour of the film, my interest began to wane. (I think it was around the point Sutherland started buggering kids and bashing their brains in. Or perhaps it was when the pig was gutted.)
The conflict between De Niro and Depardieu is at the center of the film, but sometimes Bertolucci goes a bit overboard contrasting the characters. I’m thinking specifically of the scene where as boys they compare penises. The rich kid is circumcised and the poor kid isn’t. It’s as if Bertolucci is saying, “SEE how different they are? Even their dicks are different!”
But oddly enough, the scenes of the kids growing up are probably the best in the movie. There is at least a good structure to these scenes. Once the kids grow up to become Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu, the flick sorta becomes aimless.
Robert De Niro looks kinda lost in his scenes. Still, his charisma keeps his scenes going. Whenever he’s not on screen in the later part of the film, it’s certainly lacking something. Depardieu isn’t nearly as equipped to carry the film and his scenes away from De Niro are among the weakest in the film. Sutherland’s embarrassingly hammy performance is another major debit.
Sometimes Bertolucci goes for outlandish, garish exploitation fits of craziness. Most of these scenes are overblown (especially the scenes involving Sutherland’s villainy) and are at odds with the epic Bertolucci is making. At least these bouts of weirdness make the movie at the very least, memorable.
But the most disappointing thing about the film is the ending. After five hours of all this, you’d like to have some sort of closure. Sadly, what transpires in the last few reels (De Niro’s workers revolt against him) feels forced. And when the final fight between De Niro and Depardieu comes, Bertolucci fucks with the audience by pulling the camera back until they're just a speck on the screen. Then he pans away! What the fuck? Imagine if you sat through the entire Star Wars saga and then Richard Marquand panned away from the second Death Star just as Lando flew the Millennium Falcon inside. How pissy would you be?
And our final De Niro movie is…
GODSEND (2004) ** ½
Robert De Niro usually doesn’t do many horror movies, but when he does, they’re pretty good. I happen to think that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the more underrated horror flicks of the ‘90s. Godsend finds De Niro playing not the monster, but the doctor who gives birth to one.
Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos star as a couple whose son (Cameron Bright) dies. They get mad doctor Robert De Niro to clone the boy (of course, his name is “Adam”), who at first seems perfectly normal. But once he reaches the age that the original Adam died, he changes into your typical Bad Seed/Good Son type of innocent-seeming killer.
Godsend starts off really well. As a parent, I know there would be nothing more devastating than the loss of a child. And seeing the lengths Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos go through to fill that void is a good set-up. I will say that that the whole grief-stricken-parent-who-brings-their-s
Sadly, the pooch gets screwed and it gets screwed hard in the final 45 minutes. Once Adam becomes a killer, the film stalls. Romijn-Stamos’ character becomes abysmally passive while Kinnear turns into a half-assed Columbo. And the ending is pretty terrible. In fact, it’s one big non-ending that sets things up for a sequel, but how can you set things up for a sequel when you don’t even properly resolve the business at hand?
De Niro is pretty good, especially in the early scenes. Once his more evil nature is revealed, he resists the temptation to chew the scenery, which is admirable. And Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos strike the right balance during the scenes where they mourn their son’s death. I especially liked the part where Kinnear just hands her the phone to call De Niro. He doesn’t say a word, but his face says it all. Too bad these earnest performances get lost in the shuffle during the film’s clunky final act.
Next week’s Legend: Al Pacino.