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The circumstances surrounding the death of the actor Gene Hackman, at the age of ninety-five, have yet to be explained. On February 26th, his body was discovered at his home in Santa Fe, as was that of his wife, Betsy Arakawa. It is estimated that they both had been dead for more than a week. Foul play has not been entirely ruled out. The front door of the house was unlocked.
It is less than fitting that an air of enigma should attend the final act of Hackman’s life. Although his onscreen persona could be frightening, pained, or driven by impulses that were barely held in check, he himself did not appear mysterious. He was robust and rooted, even when we had no reason to root for the people he played, and that solidity was the core of his appeal. Theatregoers like to claim, with some justice, that there is no substitute for seeing performers onstage, in flesh and blood, but now and then the movies, too, can produce someone who seems equally and substantially present, before our eyes. Such was Hackman. We believed in his flesh, imposing and unlovely as it was, and in his hot blood.
Casting directors reached for Hackman when villainy was required, and you can see why. The idea that men in positions of high authority will be tempted, or even fated, to unsheathe a nasty edge is a conceit that, in Hackman’s hands, became all too plausible. As the Secretary of Defense, in “No Way Out” (1987), and, a decade later, as the President of the United States, in “Absolute Power,” he engaged in acts of violence against women that led directly to their deaths. His out-and-out baddies, like Lex Luthor, in “Superman” (1978), were too salty, I’d say, to leave a lingering threat. Far more potent, and more likely to endure, were Hackman’s portraits of sonofabitches: those who wage private wars in an effort to keep the peace. They include Jimmy (Popeye) Doyle, of course, in “The French Connection” (1971) and “French Connection II” (1975); the F.B.I. agent Anderson, in “Mississippi Burning” (1988); and Sheriff Daggett, known as Little Bill, in “Unforgiven” (1992). Needless to say, there is nothing little about Bill, except, perhaps, his estimation of humankind. Accused of assaulting an innocent man, he replies, “Innocent? Innocent of what?”
That is a perfect Hackman line. Neither paranoid nor purely cynical, it springs instead from a realism so brutal as to snatch your breath away. Such an attitude, you might argue, is uniquely suited to the Wild West, which flinthearted folk like Daggett once dared themselves to tame; but you can easily imagine his words being uttered behind the scenes at the House Un-American Activities Committee—or, for that matter, in Argentina, during the Dirty War, or in the face of a cheerfully incredulous Alexei Navalny. One great thing about Hackman is that there was no alteration in the rounded rasp of his voice when the moral conditions changed. Anderson, in “Mississippi Burning,” is no less of a mean bastard than Daggett, despite being on the side of the angels, and the sight of Anderson confronting racist rednecks in their illicit watering hole, grabbing the groin of the worst offender and squeezing tight, would send Lex Luthor scurrying for cover. The only way to tell good from evil, in such an environment, is that the good guy has the redder neck.
If I had to pick a precedent for that scene, I would go for “The Public Enemy” (1931), in which James Cagney, as an ambitious hoodlum, shakes down a local bar that has been serving the wrong beer. Hackman always nominated Cagney as one of his inspirations—“Everything he did had a life to it,” he said in an interview—and the brio with which Cagney bounces into the bar, bent upon troublemaking and enjoying his own show, feeds into Hackman’s confident moves. Neither actor was afraid of displaying relish (there’s no better way of getting an audience on your side, whatever mischief you’re up to), and it’s from Cagney that Hackman acquired the sharpest weapon in his arsenal: his smile. It was ten times more lethal than his snarl, and I’m missing it already.
Where should you go smile-hunting, in Hackman’s work? Almost everywhere, even in quiet corners. Try “Target” (1985), the third and very much the least of the films that Hackman made under the direction of Arthur Penn, after “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) and “Night Moves” (1975). At one point, in the role of a former C.I.A. agent, Walter Lloyd, Hackman stubs a gun under the nose of a hapless nitwit from the agency who has been sent to protect Walter and his family. Walter gives a light laugh and tells him what to do: “Take the rest of your life off. If I see you again, I won’t see you again.” It’s a nicely noirish speech, but what lends it grace is Hackman’s grin, warm with friendly menace, that comes on like a light and slowly fades. It is the expression of someone who is not to be messed with—neither physically constrained nor duped—and who bridles at the implication that he can’t look after himself.
“Night Moves” is something else. Written by Alan Sharp, it’s a wonderfully baffling thriller, much of it set in the Florida Keys, with Hackman as Harry Moseby, a private investigator. “You’re not one of those intent-on-the-truth types, are you?” somebody says to him, and the line is a clean distillation of mid-nineteen-seventies anxiety, laced with the promise of adventurous despair. Listen to an exchange between Harry and a girl named Delly, who is played by a young Melanie Griffith. Both of them are framed in closeup. “I know it doesn’t make much sense when you’re sixteen,” Harry says, adding, “Don’t worry. When you get to be forty . . .” Long pause. The smile breaks out. “It isn’t any better.” Delly smiles back, somehow comforted to learn that life is not meant to be trusted. Harry should, by rights, be worldly-wise, but the sadness in his blue eyes as he speaks to her (and Hackman’s eyes, though often narrowed in anger, could be rueful, too) suggests that even his wisdom stretches only so far. No wonder the final shot of “Night Moves” is of a boat going round and round in circles. Youth and age alike are all at sea.
Hackman was lucky to be around, and in eager demand, when tales like “Night Moves” were there to be told. He was fortunate, also, in being one of those actors whose failures fall away, and slip from public memory, leaving only the bright spots. Thus, we can treasure his performance as a surveillance expert named Harry Caul—another uneasy Harry—in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974), while merrily forgetting his part in “The Domino Principle” (1977), a belated and risible attempt by the director Stanley Kramer to catch the Watergate mood. (That movie is terrifying but solely because Candice Bergen, Hackman’s co-star, appears to be taken hostage by her own wig.) It was sheer stamina, however, not luck, that enabled Hackman to keep the strings of his intensity tuned. It was a joy, for instance, to hear the echoes of Harry Caul, the fretter with the microphone, in a fellow named Brill, played by Hackman twenty-four years later, in “Enemy of the State,” who was dedicated to dwelling in the shadows and to eavesdropping on state secrets from his lair.
Notice that Hackman was not the leading man of the film. That honor belonged to Will Smith, just as the avenging hero of “Unforgiven” was a natural fit for Clint Eastwood. Hackman, far from being humbled or diminished by his status as a supporting actor, gave of his best, and “Unforgiven” brought him an Academy Award. Without solid support, after all, the structure of a movie can collapse. He was no hogger, having neither the inclination nor the need to muscle his way into the spotlight; nobody was in less danger of being ignored. Even in “Under Fire” (1983), where his character, Alex Grazier, is more or less cuckolded—bereft of his beloved when she switches to a beefier guy—he seems essential rather than secondary to the core of the action. There’s an almost unbearable moment when Alex is asked by the newly contented couple how he’s doing. “Things are great, yeah, I’ve never been happier,” he says. He forces yet another smile, as if under torture.
“Under Fire” is a tough and messy piece of work, starting in Chad and shifting to Nicaragua, where rebels are bent upon the overthrow of President Somoza. Such a prospect is as enthralling for American journalists on the ground as it is disconcerting to murkier U.S. interests. (Forty-two years ago, in other words, folks went out on a Saturday night to watch a film about real-life political upheavals in Central America. Three years later, they probably did it again, for Oliver Stone’s “Salvador.” Talk about a lost age of moviegoing.) Alex is a reporter who trades up to being an anchorman—“It’s a face made for television,” he says, gazing glumly into a mirror—and then, missing the old thrills, trades back down again and perishes in the process. Viewed from a distance through a telephoto lens, his demise in a godforsaken town, at the hands of Somoza’s troops, is random, scruffy, and dumb.
The scruffiness matters, for the living as for the dying. Existence, to so many of Hackman’s characters, is a hard and sweaty business, not to be sailed through in a good suit. Think of Popeye Doyle, in “The French Connection”—no jacket, tie askew, and even, in extremis, doing without his trademark hat—as he helps to rip a car apart, damned sure that there are drugs to be found somewhere inside. My favorite scene, in the sequel, could hardly be simpler: Popeye shelling a hard-boiled egg in a French bar and asking the barman for a Jack Daniels. (“Jack qui?” the poor schmuck replies.) One measure of the best actors is that, under their aegis, bits and pieces of everyday conduct feel not just recognizable but also weirdly compelling; if we follow Popeye’s progress, it’s less because he’s a blustering bully and more because we can rely on Hackman, as ever, not to veer off into make-believe. He was, indeed, one of those intent-on-the-truth types. He made us believe, and that was that.
One hopes that the distressing puzzle of Hackman’s passing will be solved before long. But the career stands proud, no question, and it was clearly defined. His earliest credited movie role was in “Lilith,” in 1964, when he was thirty-four, and his final one was in “Welcome to Mooseport,” forty years later. He then retired from the fray. To be honest, he never looked young—the opposite of Leonardo DiCaprio, say, who has never looked anything else. Hackman was a grownup, with an adult’s knowledge of crimes and misdemeanors, whether his character was committing them or punishing the perpetrators. He was as American as Eastwood, often commandingly so, and there was nothing fuzzy or dreamy in his aura of amusement. Seldom did the smile bode well, and words were not there for the wasting. By all accounts, he was not a man to be crossed, but, as with Cagney, so with Gene Hackman: everything he did had a life to it. What more do you want? ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
