2024-05-10 03:57:44
It’s been almost six decades since Faye Dunaway starred in Bonnie & Clyde in 1967, but her role as a town waitress continues to feature among the most glamorous in the history of cinema. With her blonde hair, red lipstick, and unmistakable air of mischief, you knew she was trouble.
Dunaway’s Bonnie Parker, who joined Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) to commit a crime in the movie, it was a Depression-era bank robber and yet, with his high cheekbones and piercing eyes, he had an effortless poise. No one could wear a beret and smoke a cigar like her. Even dying in a hail of machine gun bullets seemed chic, like an avant-garde piece of art in slow motion. That was her third feature film and made her an international star.
The newcomer was as unmistakable on camera as any Hollywood legend, such as Greta Garbo o Joan Crawford (which he would later embody), and yet he was also completely modern, as if he had just stepped out of a French New Wave film shot on the Left Bank. She and Beatty complemented each other perfectly. “They are young, they are in love and they kill people,” read the advertising slogan of the film that, after an eventful arrival in American theaters, became a great success.
It is not surprising that the actress born in florida won multiple awards and appeared alongside the biggest names of his time. In the late 60s and throughout the 70s, was at the top of the A list, working with, and often eclipsinga actores como Beatty, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Marcello Mastroianni, Kirk Douglas, Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine y William Holden.
At 83 years old, Dunaway will go to Cannes at the end of this month for the premiere of Faye, he documentary by Laurent Bouzereau about his life and career. The film produced by the network HBO includes interviews with fans and collaborators such as Mickey Rourke, his co-star in butterflies of the night (1987); James Graywho directed her in The other side of crime (2000); y Sharon Stonewhom he accompanied at the premiere of Low instincts. “Now you’re a big star and everyone can kiss your ass,” Dunaway told him after the film was enthusiastically received. The documentary also addresses the mental health problems and bipolar disorder de Dunaway.
A new book that tells the story of one of his most notorious failures, With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic, will be released soon. Network: Power that kills (1976), for which won an Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of a ruthlessly ambitious television executive, will be re-released this summer. Chinatown (1974), from Roman Polanski, with Dunaway as a femme fatale in 1930s Los Angeles, celebrates her 50th anniversary.
The star of Bonnie & Clyde is back in the spotlight, where many believe it should be. It is impossible, however, not to notice the way unequal of his career or the fact that it has been many years since he made a truly memorable film. After dear mommy (1981), where he played the evil mother Joan Crawford terrorizing her daughter, The leading roles seemed to disappear in a very striking way.
Dunaway’s story is an example of how Hollywood often marginalizes strong women. He rarely accepted sympathetic roles and always held his own, even against autocratic directors like Otto Preminger and Roman Polanski. In the end, it was punished for his independent spirit.
“I started playing these urbane, sophisticated, neurotic women,” Dunaway later commented on the “strong, convention-breaking” roles she sought. “She was not a little star, a brainless beauty.” Instead, he was always given roles that “broke the mold.”
No one complained about their performances. She brought coolness and wit to her role as a svelte, impossibly glamorous insurance investigator, “like a female James Bond, in a designer dress”, as she herself described the character, following and falling in love with the elegant millionaire thief McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). McQueen was known for steal scenes, but she matches it, chess move for chess move. As the psychologically damaged Evelyn Mulwray no Chinatown, At first she seems cold, arrogant and spoiled, but then the audience discovers the sexual abuse what the character has suffered and how vulnerable he really is. In Power that kills, the tough television executive ends up becoming a pathetic figure, someone so obsessed with her career that she is unable to stop the implosion of her private life.
Dunaway wasn’t afraid to go in one direction either. unconventional. She played a charismatic but surprisingly believable alcoholic, drinking with Rourke in butterflies of the night, and it was wonderful imperious and eccentric as a desert matriarch who has an affair with the much younger Johnny Depp in Arizona’s dream (1993), from Emir Kusturica.
As she grew up, she was labeled “difficult” and she was treated as if she were similar to the bumbling, outspoken characters she so often portrayed on screen. Stories are told of her overbearing and strange behavior on set. Peter Biskind writes in Easy Riders Raging Bulls that, during the filming of Chinatown, According to several sources, he had “the habit of piss in the trash cans instead of taking a walk to her trailer.” Biskind acknowledged that “when asked about her urinary habits,” she said she “didn’t remember” soiling the trash cans, but the gossip they extended.
As Dunaway makes clear in her autobiography, her perfectionism He also continually played against him. “The fact is that a man can be difficult and people applaud him for trying to do a superior job… and “A woman can try to do it right and it’s ‘a pain in the ass.'”
As her fame increased, she recoiled from the level of public attention she received and then she was accused of being “cold.” The fans admired her without sympathizing with her and did not stay with her when the wheels turned against her. Her role as his abusive mother in Dear mommy, biopic based on a book by Joan Crawford’s adopted daughter, It clearly damaged his reputation. “Crawford’s tough, brittle character had rubbed off on me,” he admitted. Dunaway, who was a big fan of Crawford, later claimed that when she was shooting the film, he could feel Crawford sitting in the room next to him. Not that Joan’s ghostly presence helped her much. It was a big budget film that was destroyed during the assembly process and quickly became the subject of derision.
A. Ashley Hoff, author of the new book about the film, recently noted on the podcast Air Mail what dear mommy was one of the last of those character-driven 1970s dramas like Chinatown y Power that kills. “We saw, as the eighties progressed, the rise of Spielbergian blockbusters loaded with special effects”.
There was no place for Dunaway in this new world. She may have played a megalomaniac villainess in Supergirl (1984), but she was not cut out for fantasies of suits and capes. The media became increasingly hostile towards her. If you search the Internet, you will find a lot of stories about their supposed Cruella de Ville-esque antics, raging at team members who came into his line of sight, slapping the technicians or making angry phone calls.
Worst of all, in the mid-1990s, Dunaway suffered a very public dispute with the British music entrepreneur Andrew Lloyd-Webber. He had hired her to play Norma Desmond in the stage version of Sunset Boulevard, but then the fired. Word spread that her singing was not up to par, but she presented a demandclaiming that the real reason for his firing was that the show was losing money and he was looking for a excuse to close it. In the end they reached an agreement, but it was an episode humiliating.
In her autobiography, Dunaway says that she worked with Bette Davis in the TV movie Aimee’s disappearance (1976) and that fought with her. The Hollywood legend was very jealous of Dunaway getting her lead role and set out to undermine her. Years later, Davis continued to speak badly of her on television talk shows. “I was just the target of his blind rage for the one sin that Hollywood never forgives its protagonists: get older” Dunaway concluded of her co-star’s wildly antagonistic behavior toward her.
Now, Dunaway finds herself in Davis’ position and presents herself as a bitter veteran. But that is not how the Italian producer and director considers it. Louis Nero, who has worked with her in two films, The man who drew God (2022), in which he co-starred with Franco Nero and Kevin Spacey, and The Rage (2008). She talks about his humility and his kindness toward him when he was a young filmmaker. “When I met her, in 2008, I immediately understood that she is a legend. “It made me feel very comfortable,” she explains.
It is clear, however, that Dunaway has slipped into a twilight world of B movies and low-budget European films. That is why the replacement of Power that kills (the next June 28th) and the screening of the new documentary in Cannes, between May 14 and 25. It is time for the public to remember the time before Dear mommy, when Dunaway offered a series of electrifying performances in some of the best movies in history.
* Of The Independent From great britain. Special for Page 12.