Gene Hackman just turned 90 (!!), which seems like an opportune moment to look back on his career—or more specifically, his role as one of the essential figures of the New Hollywood. Hackman appeared in a full two dozen movies from 1967 to 1976, including some of the most important films of the movement. Although he then had six years of credits under his belt, Hackman nevertheless essentially arrived with the New Hollywood, with his key supporting role in Bonnie and Cylde as Buck Barrow (Clyde’s brother)—in a performance of considerable range and subtlety.
Following a productive 1968, 1969 would be a banner year for the actor, with notable turns in The Gypsy Moths and Downhill Racer (he also found time to appear in the star-studded if a tad lethargic space drama Marooned). The formidable cast of Gypsy Moths, a still obscure but notable John Frankenheimer film (well summarized in one account as “a portrait of existential despair with a shockingly fatalistic twist”) includes Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Sheree North; yet Frankenheimer once noted “What I remember most about that movie” [one of the director’s favorites] “is Hackman . . . What a terrific actor he is.” In Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer, Hackman gives a precise, modulated performance as the coach to an aloof, self-centered, audience-alienating Olympic skier (Robert Redford—in a smart, daring choice for that actor).
Hackman welcomed the new decade with the much praised I Never Sang for My Father, and then became a bona-fide movie star the following year with his portrayal of Jimmy Doyle in The French Connection. An exemplary seventies film, the thrilling police procedural showcased outstanding location shooting in then-gritty New York City (kudos to cinematographer Owen Roizman), and is distinguished by its portrayal of casual, racially-charged police brutality, generous heapings of moral ambiguity, and a binding subtext of crusading if implicit class politics. Both the film and its leading man were showered with accolades, and it is hard to imagine anyone else in the role, despite the fact that director William Friedkin only cast Hackman after failing to gain traction with what seemed like every other actor in America (and indeed, non-actors like Jimmy Breslin)—and despite Hackman’s initial struggles in coming to terms with the less attractive aspects of his character.
Like most interesting artists, Hackman’s top of the world success did not send him diving into the lucrative, celebratory mosh-pit of the mainstream; he reached instead for offbeat, introspective films. (Even his belated sequel to The French Connection in 1975 – a second opportunity to work with the ambitious John Frankenheimer – was uncompromising, shot in subtitled Marseilles with an otherwise all-French cast, and hard edged, most notably with its long, gripping, stop-the-narrative addiction and withdrawal sequence.) Over the next two years Hackman appeared in Cisco Pike, an intriguing, under-seen seventies film with Kris Kristofferson and Karen Black that unravels in its final act; Michael Ritchie’s very fine Prime Cut (in an uncharacteristically nasty turn, opposite that ever reliable epitome of cool, Mr. Lee Marvin); and alongside Al Pacino in the small, reluctantly humanist road movie Scarecrow, a justly-lauded production directed by Jerry Schazberg and shot by Vilmos Zsigmond. (Ok, yes, mixed in with this glorious run of films was The Poseidon Adventure. If you must, here is that scene. But in mulling minor Hackman, we prefer to think of his cameo alongside Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein.)
In the mid-seventies, Hackman, each time playing a man named Harry, carried two of the towering achievements of the New Hollywood, with his portrayals of Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Conversation (1974), and Harry Moseby in Arthur Penn’s landmark neo-noir Night Moves (1975). When watched as a (spectacular) double feature, it is a revelation to see the same performer seamlessly disappearing into two such radically disparate characters. We have written a good bit about The Conversation, for example here and here, and Night Moves as well (including here and here). Nevertheless for this occasion we will note some additional moments of peak Hackman: In The Conversation, consider that most intimate, moving moment, when Harry, dancing with Meredith, hesitatingly and, of course, obliquely, asks about how he might possibly recover his lost love: “If you were a girl who waited for someone . . .” an exchange which concludes with his most melancholy (self) realization, that she “would have no way of knowing” his feelings for her. And in Night Moves, we think often of the three early scenes with Harry’s wife Ellen (Susan Clark)—observing her rendezvous, not discussing it that evening, and then finally their riveting confrontation in the kitchen, which concludes with Harry’s illuminating coda, “Lucky you.”
As with the New Hollywood more generally, the late 1970s were less kind to Hackman (though we remain unabashedly elated by his portrayal of Lex Luthor in Superman). But he soon resumed what would become a long, illustrious career, marked by intelligent choices and great performances. It is hard to think of one that falls short of excellent, so we’ll give a quick shout out to one favorite from each subsequent decade: Another Woman (Woody Allen 1988), Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood 1992), and The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson 2001).
But it is as a New Hollywood actor that he will remain properly identified and celebrated. Phillip Lopate, in his marvelous, dissenting essay (“What Golden Age?”) from our recent volume on the era, postulated that “years hence, we may come to regard the New Hollywood as a triumphant playground for actors, a performers’ rather than a directors’ cinema”—an invitation to a great argument. Less debatable, and quite something, is that among a dozen or so outstanding and indelible peers, Hackman (with Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson) was one of the actors who personified the era.
With Estelle Parsons in Bonnie and Clyde
The Conversation
Kitchen confrontation in Night Moves