If the mark of a good director is to erase their footprint from the film while an audience is watching, John Schlesinger is one of the greats. Schlesinger was of that generation—born in 1930—who felt that a director's touch should be light, allowing the actors, designers, and script to do all the really noticeable work. John Frankenheimer, Norman Jewison, Alan J. Pakula, and Sidney Lumet are other directors adept in this vein, and though Lumet would likely reign above all of them on a list of the great directors, Schlesinger's nipping at his heels.
Schlesinger started his career as an actor, spending much of the 1950s in front of the camera, before becoming enamored with directing. By the time he made his first feature—1962's A Kind of Loving with Alan Bates, Thora Hird, and June Ritchie—he turned his back on acting for two decades, save for two small cameos. Schlesinger wasn't a Wellesian wunderkind with a passion towrite stories in which he would star, but rather the kind of guy whowas interested in finding a great script from another writer and casting it with the best actors possible. In this regard, he was an extremely successful director, championing great scripts and discovering great actors.
While his career truly exploded in his native England with his third feature, 1965's Darling, it was 1969's Midnight Cowboy—written by Waldo Salt and starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman—that turned him into a superstar in the directing world. The film is full of directorial pizazz in the first half, but by the time the story slows and becomes more achingly intimate, so too does he back down stylistically. We'll get to both of those films in a moment, but it's just a way to illustrate the sort of director he morphed into, one that was highly respected by writers and actors.
Schlesinger is our latest in a growing list of gay male directors we've covered—he's number six followingTodd Haynes,Pier Paolo Pasolini,Pedro Almodóvar, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and James Ivory—but he diverts from his contemporaries in one key way. He often deglamorizes nudity to the point of making it unsexy. Certainly those other directors—Fassbinder in particular—haven't shied away from the more grotesque sides of sex and nudity, but Schlesinger keeps things just this side of grotesque. He's more concerned with the reality of every situation and how the sex and nudity extend out from that established reality.
Darling (1965)
I didn't mean to denigrate 1965's Darling in the introduction, as the film was a hit here in the States as well, it's just that compared to the ruckus it caused in England, it didn't make quite the same impact here. That's likely due to the still-in-effect Hays Code, which wasn't being as strictly enforced anymore, but it prevented the film from being seen in all corners of the country. Where it was shown, the film caused quite a sensation due to Julie Christie's nude scene which was rare for an English language mainstream film of the era.
Christie replaced Shirley MacLaine in the title role of Diana, launching her career into the stratosphere and winning her first—and to date, only—Academy Award for Best Actress.Crafted in the same vein as Jean Seberg's character in Breathless, the seductiveDiana makes mincemeat of the men around her, played by such luminaries of the day as Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey. Bed-hopping to get what she wants,Diana blocks herself off from emotion after an early traumatic reveal that she was the other woman in a married man's life. She keeps it caged for as long as possible before, in the film's final minutes, she suffers a full-on mental breakdown, stripping off her clothes and showing us her ass—as well as a peek at her breasts thanks to a well-placed mirror...
And you can grab one more quicklook at her breasts as she collapses on the bed...
While many viewedChristie's Oscar triumph as a reward for both this film and the previous year'sDoctor Zhivago, for which she wasn't nominated, but the performance is honestly strong enough to stand on its own merits. Ultimately, the film would prove to be Schlesinger's invitation to the big time, earning his first Oscar nomination for Best Director, with the film pocketing three awards—forJulie Harris' costumes, Frederic Raphael's script, and Julie Christie's performance. This helped establish him as both a writer's and an actor's director and Christie would re-team with Schlesinger for Far From the Madding Crowd two years later. Schlesinger wouldn't remain an Oscar bridesmaid for long, however...
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
What is there to be said about 1969's Midnight Cowboy that hasn't already been said a thousand times? Schlesinger's adaptation of James Leo Herlihy's book of the same name, based on a screenplay by blacklisted writer Waldo Salt, was revolutionary and helped to mainstream a lot of the tenets of the New Hollywood movement just coming to seed. Dustin Hoffman—and to a lesser extent Jon Voight—helped popularize the new method, intensely internal with an eye toward authenticity that drove them to extreme lengths. Just the notion that Hoffman, who exploded just two years earlier for playing the buttoned-down Benjamin Braddock, could now radically transform himself into the twisted form of Enrico Salvatore "Ratso" Rizzo, was proof enough that there was some validity to the all the madness surrounding the method.
Another strong reason that the film wasitsexploration oftaboos that still exist in today's United States. Our country's puritanical roots are still the foundation that drives people's attitudes towards sexual mores and this film flies boldly in the face of that.Joe Buck (Voight) is a naive young Texas man who leaves small townlife behind for New York City with aspirations of becoming a hustler. He's heard stories of how there are thousands of rich old ladies in New York just itching to pay young studs such as himself for sex. Upon arriving in New York, he moves into a hotel and sets out to make his fortune. Things don't necessarily go as planned, especially after his first encounter with a woman named Cass (Andy Warhol fixture Sylvia Miles) who is appalled that he would ask her for money...
Joe crosses paths with the aforementioned Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman), who eventually takes pity on the young hustler and offers to be his pimp.Like seemingly everything else that these two lost souls attempt, this proposition falls flat on its face. Joe Ratso struggle to survive, Joe on his endless optimism and Ratso on his dream of moving to Florida and living the high life. Joe, however is haunted by memories of his past in Texas, hooking up with a girl called Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt, daughter of screenwriter Waldo). She had a reputation for being a loose woman, but once she started dating Joe, she ceased having sex with the other men in town, who find the two of them together and assault them. When it comes time to name the assailants, however, Crazy Annie points the finger at Joe...
A filmic portrait of the death of "The American Dream" certainly hit a sweet spot for audiences at the time, cynical and jaded over America's involvement in Vietnam, ready to embrace an empathetic portrait of two abandoned outcasts with no place in this world. The film became the first X-rated movie to earn a Best Picture Oscar,though the film was later re-rated R as the X-rating became more and more associated with pornography. Schlesinger also won a Best Director Oscar, putting him in an elite category of directors respected by actors, writers, and his fellow directors.
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
No, not the U2 song nor the event which inspired it, Schlesinger's next film told of the open love triangle between a divorced woman (Glenda Jackson) and a much younger bisexual sculptor (singer Murray Head) who is alsoentangled with an even older gay doctor (Network's Peter Finch). Neither the divorcée nor the doctor want to lose their handsome young sculptor to the other, so they each tolerate the affairs in order to keep the whole thing going. The film is also notable for being Schlesinger's first adaptation of a female writer's work, with the latePenelope Gilliattgetting her only screenwriting credit for this film.
Hot off of winning an Oscar for Ken Russell's Women in Love, Jackson was actually the third actress Schlesinger approached for the role, but her brand of icy detachment makes it seem like no one else could have done justice to the role. Much as she did in Women in Love, Jackson goes fully nude here, earning her second consecutive Best Actress Oscar nomination in the process. Though she wouldn't go back-to-back, she would win again two years later for A Touch of Class...
Star Wars fans should also take note of this flick as it features the only nude on-screen appearance of Caroline Blakiston, akaRebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma from Return of the Jedi...
Schlesinger earned his third and final Best Director nomination for the film, along with Finch, Jackson, and the film itself landing noms, though all went home empty handed. The film got a release via The Criterion Collection a few years ago that is really quite exquisite.
The Day of the Locust (1975)
Teaming once again with writer Waldo Salt, here adaptingNathanael West's 1939 novel of the same name, Schlesinger delivered his most sprawling work to date with this seedy look at Hollywood's golden age. You may have heard of this film for a rather strange reason, as Donald Sutherland does indeed play a character named Homer Simpson, one of the strange denizens of a rundown apartment complex. The film centers around an idealistic young painter (William Atherton, dickless from Ghostbusters) who moves into the apartment to get a job painting sets for one of the studios.
Here he meets an ambitious starlet named Faye (Karen Black) living with her father (Burgess Meredith), falling for her almost immediately. The problem is that Homer seems to think he has some sort of claim to her, unleashing his rage just past the two hour mark when he catches her in bed with a young man named Miguel...
The film is one of the darker explorations of Hollywood's golden age and ends with an absolutely horrific act of violence that begets an even more horrible murder. The Day of the Locust is pitch black, one of the many reasons it didn't connect with audiences at the time, and remains something of an underrated film to this very day. Even still, Burgess Meredith earned an Oscar nomination for his work here—he'd win the following year for Rocky—as did cinematographer Conrad L. Hall, who would go on to lens Schlesinger's follow-up...
Marathon Man (1976)
Probably Schlesinger's second most well-known film is this thriller set in the world of Nazi hunters as seen from the vantage point of someone thrown in from the outside into the deep end of a violent conspiracy. Dustin Hoffman plays the titular running man, Babe, a competitive runner and PhDstudent at NYU whose life is irreparably changed when he gets an unexpected visit from his brother Doc (Roy Scheider). Doc has spent the last few years working for the government and running a scheme where they deliver diamonds to a former Nazi in exchange for information on the whereabouts of other former Nazis in hiding.
Doc soon ends up dead, minus the diamonds, leading Babe into a web of intrigue he never could have imagined. The film's infamous "root canal interrogation" scene still packs one hell of a wallop, and the film is also the source of the great apocryphal story about Sir Laurence Olivier questioning Hoffman's commitment to method acting. Though Hoffman denies the story, it continues that while explaining to Olivier that he had been up for the last 48 hours in order to better play a man in a similar situation, Olivier was alleged to have asked if he had ever simply tried acting? It's a great story, but has been dispelled numerous times.
Before his untimely death, Doc does impart some wisdom to his younger brother about the girl he's seeing, Marthe Keller, who may be dating him just to keep an eye on him for more powerful people. It sows seeds of paranoia that eventually consume the film, but at least we get to see Keller topless before it hits the fan...
Again, this was another bleak film from Schlesinger, dealing with moral gray areas and a world with no easy answers. The ending has left generations of audiences disappointed by its almost total lack of closure. Theoretically, the good guy wins and the bad guy dies, but there's no way he can reasonably explain any of this to the authorities, ultimately leaving Babe's victory at the end hollow.
Pacific Heights (1990)
Following his disastrous 1981 satire of America and the American road movieHonky Tonk Freeway, which was an overblown production and total box office failure, Schlesinger looked to scale things down. Getting back to his more intimate roots, he first reunited with Julie Christie and Alan Bates for Separate Tables forHBO, he made the successful 1985 film The Falcon and the Snowman, before returning to writing and directing with 1988's Madame Sousatzka—finally working with Shirley MacLaine. 1990's Pacific Heights seemed, on the surface at least, like something well below Schelsinger's weight class. A glossy studio thriller with an A-List cast—Michael Keaton, Melanie Griffith, and Matthew Modine—from a television writer moving into the world of features for the first time didn't seem worthy of Schlesinger's talent.
Keaton was coming in hot off of Batman and certainly had a corner on the disturbed sociopath routine, yet still got third billing to Griffith and Modine, and likely had that worked out contractually before Keaton was cast.Griffith went directly from this film to the set of Brian De Palma's notorious flop The Bonfire of the Vanities, apparently with some not-so-nice words for Schlesinger. In the long run, she discovered that she was ultimately grateful to have appeared in the film as its success helped even out the tremendous hit her career took with Bonfire.
Keaton plays anormal looking guy renting an apartment from a couple—Griffith and Modine—and proving to be the tenant from hell. It turns out he's a smooth talking con man who gets about two-thirds of the way toward stealing Modine's identity and making off with all of their money before they finally catch wise. Though Griffith did go nude on film a lot, she leaves nudity duties to Beverly D'Angelo, playing a hapless victim to one of Keaton's classic seduce, bed, and murder deals...
The Innocent (1993)
Schlesinger returns to the world of the period piece with this post-WWII tale from a screenplay by Ian McEwan, based on his own novel of the same name. Campbell Scott stars as a young engineer sent to Berlin inthe late 40sto begin an operation spying on the Russians, starting with a wealthy couple played by Isabella Rossellini and Anthony Hopkins.The film is probably most notable for containing what is likely to be Isabella Rossellini's final nude scene. Following her stunning nude debut in David Lynch's Blue Velvet seven years earlier, she again finds herself nude in bed with a younger actor playing peek-a-boo with the sheets. Interestingly enough, Campbell Scott replaced Rossellini's prior onscreen lover, Kyle MacLachlan, in this very role...
And so our discussion on this wonderful director ends here, before we get into some pretty dark and dire "director for hire" flicks. Sadly, Schlesinger passed away in 2003, the result of suffering a stroke shortly after finishing what would be his last feature, 2000's The Next Best Thing. He left a lasting legacy of some great films, all of them with the lightest of directorial touches, which may indeed be the sign of a truly great director. He certainly has all the makings of one.
John Schlesinger Films with Nudity Not Covered in This Column
Check out the Other Directors in Our Ongoing "SKIN-depth Look”Series
James Ivory|Alan Parker|Walter Hill|Tony Scott|Louis Malle|Mike Nichols
Allison Anders|Jonathan Demme|William Friedkin|Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Part One
Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Part Two|Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Part Three|Federico Fellini
Philip Kaufman|Miloš Forman|Pedro Almodóvar: Part One|Pedro Almodóvar: Part Two
Blake Edwards|Catherine Breillat: Part One|Catherine Breillat: Part Two|Spike Lee
John Landis|David Cronenberg: Part One|David Cronenberg: Part Two|Ingmar Bergman
François Truffaut|Bernardo Bertolucci|Steven Soderbergh|Kathryn Bigelow|Oliver Stone
Roman Polanski|Nicolas Roeg|David Fincher|Francis Ford Coppola|Pier Paolo Pasolini
Ken Russell: Part One|Ken Russell: Part Two|Robert Altman:Part I|Robert Altman:Part II
Adrian Lyne|Martin Scorsese|Jane Campion|Park Chan-wook|Bob Fosse|Dario Argento
Wes Craven|Tobe Hooper|Todd Haynes|Danny Boyle|Stanley Kubrick|Paul Thomas Anderson
David Lynch|Brian De Palma|Paul Schrader|Paul Verhoeven
----------------------
Non-nude images courtesy of IMDb
