Justin Kurzel adds to his cinematic rebel poems with another gorgeously-lensed look at a real-life disruptor and his skewed ideals. After tackling outliers in The True History Of The Kelly Gang and Nitrum, the director turns his attention to Bob Mathews, an eighties white power leader whose rhetoric in Reagan-era America threatened to metastasize to civil unrest and polarisation. Like his previous historical films, Kurtzel’s latest boasts a disquieting pertinence to current events and cultural leaders…
Focusing on Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) as he tries to build a white supremacy army in 1983-4 via bank robberies, bombings and assassinations as well as the broken FBI agent, Terry Husk (Jude Law) tracking him, The Order shows two men who are only divided by the law in their obsessions. The radical offspring of a hate-preacher, Mathews is charismatic, unfaithful and blinkered in his pursuit of an Aryan America as he recruits and seduces. His wife and mistress are secondary to the excitement he feels carrying out his six-step to domination, his bank robberies (thrillingly executed in nail-biting interludes) a high. Husk is damaged goods – a chain-smoking, gum chewing blunt instrument with a drink problem, he’s survived an incident in New York and has transferred to the quiet of Idaho in the hopes of ‘putting back the pieces’. His wife and children are secondary to his quarry, silently admonishing via unanswered phone calls he makes as he digs into white power in the state. When the local nous of a deputy sheriff (Tye Sheridan) links a couple of leads, Husk realises he has a bigger case on his hands and brings in a bureau former colleague to start a manhunt. As the film toggles between Mathews and Husk, it becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller – with Mathews getting sloppy and Husk getting (literally) messy as old injuries plague him.
It’s a retro presentation; the eighties production design, costumes and lensing recalling numerous previous examples of the genre. And that’s no bad thing. Law’s Husk is straight from the Popeye Doyle school of big swings and delicious to watch, even his constant gum-chewing informs his characterisation. Sheridan is the heart of the picture providing an emotional moment that hurts, and Hoult nails the blue-eyed fanaticism of a man who may tell his mates to stop burning crosses but can’t see the inevitability of his actions. Jed Kurzel’s thrumming score soars as high as the camera, swooping above stunning Idaho and Washington state vistas to show the beauty of the country Mathews is fighting so hard to control.
End credit notes tell us that the text used by Mathews has been utilised repeatedly since by far-right groups as a blueprint for their activities – including the most recent storming of the Capitol. It’s a stark reminder that though this picture plays like a slice of vintage filmmaking, the beliefs at the centre of the story are very much still relevant. As an audience, Kurzel asks us which side of the ideological line we choose to stand on. Powerful stuff.
Halina Reijn’s erotic drama has caused a stir at Venice thanks to its frank, female-gaze portrayal of desire and the nuances of power. Though it shares some similarities with Secretary, Fatal Attraction and even Fifty Shades Of Grey, Babygirl is buzzy because it unflinchingly explores the ‘orgasm gap’ between men and women, and paints a picture of a complex, contradictory middle-aged woman’s lust without anyone’s bunny being boiled.
Nicole Kidman stars as tech CEO Romy who has it all together: a loving theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), two lovely daughters, two sprawling houses (a Manhattan apartment and a country mansion), the respect of her colleagues and pots of money. A glass ceiling breaker and ballbuster, Romy has no problem asking for what she wants in boardrooms or cosmetic clinics but struggles to do so in bed. Opening on her climaxing astride her spouse, Romy sneaks off to another room post-copulation to masturbate over Daddy kink porn. There, in the darkness, on the floor, her feral orgasm is different and real compared to the performance she has put on for her partner. What Romy presents to her family and the world is very different to what she wants, and even then she’s not entirely sure what that is. Which is why new intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) intrigues and shocks her when he seems to instinctively sense exactly what she might need. A bold, self-assured young man who can control a raging dog in the street and tells her ‘I think you like to be told what to do’, Samuel whispers ‘good girl’ to her in a restaurant when she glugs a full glass of milk that he sends over to her table.
Romy is a strong, powerful woman who loves her husband, but she’s also a product of her commune upbringing, horny and looking for validation of some of her darker fantasies. Both personas coexist, the spectrum of sexual need explored as the CEO and the intern embark on a push-pull affair tinged with BDSM but is also vulnerable, protective, needy, greedy, bashful and silly. Romy may kneel to lick a sweet from Samuel’s hand or milk from a saucer at his feet, but she will also cling to him as they sway to George Michael’s Father Figure and cuddle like family in a hotel suite bed. When he gives her her first non-masturbatory orgasm the growl she lets out into a grubby carpet is one of liberation and discovery.
The traditional assumption in this kind of cinematic trajectory is that someone will lose their life (literally or figuratively), that danger is associated with such unfettered hunger. But Reijn confounds expectation by metering out no punishment. Rather the protagonists discover something of themselves and use their individual power to move forward – whether that’s the ambitious exec assistant Esme (Talk To Me’s Sophie Wilde), a collaborative Jacob or Romy herself. The only person getting shafted in this tale is a predatory exec who tries to leverage his power for sex. As Samuel says at one point to another character; ‘that’s an outdated view of sexuality’.
Modern, sex-positive and optimistic, Babygirl is sure to prompt post-credit discussion and possibly even small revolutions in marital beds.
Alfonso Cuarón’s dark seven-part thriller exploring victim blaming, the madonna/whore complex and the toxicity of trauma gives audiences a warning straight off the bat that they should question what they see. As feted documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) receives another award to add to her collection, the host of the ceremony touches on narrative and form and warns that they can be used for manipulation. Narrative and form are certainly used to skewed and smart effect in this elegant adap of Renée Knight’s 2015 bestseller as three stories are interwoven across decades.
In one strand we follow Catherine Ravenscroft as she receives a parcel from an unknown source containing a book that seems to unravel carefully held secrets from her past. The story at the heart of the novel sends her spiralling, impacting her marriage to stuffy lawyer Robert (Sasha Baron Cohen) and estranging her even more from her 25-year-old wastrel son, Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Meanwhile Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline pulling off a perfect befuddled Englishman in the vein of Jim Broadbent) is mourning the loss of his son two decades previously, as well as his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) more recently. Bereft, Stephen has nothing to live for but embittered revenge. And in a third story, horny inter-railing teen Jonathan (Louis Partridge) can’t keep his eyes off a beautiful young mother (Leila George) on an Italian beach. Grief, betrayal and brutality are bound for all the characters – but the how and why is disquietingly spun across the episodes to a gut-punch denouement that will make audiences question their own assumptions, gender bias and acceptance of narrative. The truth at the heart of this bleak tale is something that is lost repeatedly in the retelling of it, depending on who is crafting the story and what information (or lack of it) they are working with.
It would be churlish to provide any more narrative detail – the pleasure really is in the unpackaging of it – but this onion-layered story of perspective is delivered beautifully by Cuarón as writer/director, and his cast. Blanchett is a known powerhouse but she is immense here; by turns frantic, self-absorbed, rageful and ultimately incandescent as a woman being judged. George as a younger version of Catherine is a revelation in a star-making turn as both a vamp and a victim. She and Partridge generate serious heat in explicit scenes that cleverly make viewers complicit in judgement, while Kline and Manville create a blindsiding and heartbreaking portrait of grief that is hard to see past. Each of their narratives twist and turn to a barnstorming final episode that will likely prompt audience introspection about personal and public perception, society and social media’s hurry to punish without due diligence and the way we castigate women for being sexual beings. Knowing what we know at the end might also inform repeat viewing to understand the clues that were there for us to see – if only we weren’t so blinkered. A masterful binge watch that asks pertinent and uncomfortable questions.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Disclaimerpremieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October
Pablo Larraín’s latest portrait of a woman struggling under a media lens (completing the triptych with Jackie and Spencer) is his most linear and conventional approach to teasing out the pain, trauma and self doubt intrinsic to being a famous female figure in the 20th century – but it’s also his most emotionally resonant. That’s perhaps because Angelina Jolie, as opera diva Maria Callas, brings her own life experience of press obsession to the role in a performance that will certainly be in the awards conversation.
Written by Spencer scribe Steven Knight, Maria follows a 53-year-old Callas in the last week of her life in 1977 Paris, wrestling her artistic and romantic demons as her diet-ravaged body fails. An imperious, self-confessed ‘tiger’ who has weathered scandal (her affair with Aristotle Onassis), and criticism (from her mother and the media), Callas pops pills and sees visions from her life as her faithful butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) watch on. Split into four distinct acts, Callas explores the guilt, shame, pride, triumph and sadness that has coloured her career from being a shy girl in Athens singing for German officers for cash to the feted beauty ‘La Callas’ who has lost her magnificent voice. Hooked on sedatives, Maria invites a film crew into her life to document her last interview led by Kodi Smit-McPhee (pulling double duty at the Venice Film Festival on this and Disclaimer). ‘Is the film crew real?’ Maria’s butler asks doubtfully, gently, as he dutifully heaves her grand piano around her apartment on her daily whim. Maria is, at this stage, a glacial, imposing primadonna experiencing hallucinations who claims that ‘there is no life away from the stage’ yet tells a fan of the pain – both mental and physical – of performing. Taking her last bow, she crafts an emotional autobiography of sorts, a ‘human song’ of her life.
Knight carefully plots a path that allows opera buffs to enjoy parallels between Callas’ life and her roles while also informing the uninitiated of the key beats of the star’s career – taking in other famous faces including Onassis, Marilyn Monroe and JFK. In a pleasing full-circle moment with Jackie, Callas and Kennedy have a breakfast table conversation about love that elegantly illustrates the commodifying of famous women and Maria’s sharp wit that netted her a reputation as ‘difficult’.
Beautifully filmed and costumed, Maria is as operatic as any of the arias sung during the runtime and the supporting artists are a delight (Valeria Golino shines in a key moment as Callas’ sister who suggests that her sibling closes the door on the pain of letting music so destructively into her life), but the main event in every way is Jolie. The way she inhabits any space, moves with the elegance of a cat and talks in Callas’ precise, cool diction is mesmerising. And when she sings – the older Maria moments are mostly her own voice while the younger Callas is the diva’s real vocal – the emotion, drama and effort she brings to the music is genuinely impressive. Jolie trained for months to inhabit Callas and the results recall the lived-in performance of Cate Blanchett in Tar – a Volpi cup winner at the festival and gong magnet throughout the year. Jolie will likely be on the same trajectory.
In 2020, Cate Blanchett and I sat in the back of a car at a locked-down Venice Film Festival – where she was president of the jury – and discussed the idea I had for a magazine. She suggested a shoot with her chickens and I imagined what that would look like on the cover of Hollywood Authentic.
It was 2022 when we published our first issue; Sean Penn kindly agreed to be on our cover. Since then, I’ve continued to imagine that shoot with Cate and her chickens. Six months ago, my wife Daisy designed a gown inspired by Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep for our fledgling Hollywood Authentic clothing range. We knew who we wanted to see in it and announced to the team that our dream was that Cate would wear it in a pair of muddy wellies holding a chicken in her potting shed. We got on with manifesting it. Fast forward to a serendipitous encounter at Glastonbury and hey presto…
Greg Williams and Andrew Upton by Cate Blanchett
This issue represents another example of artists showing their generosity in inviting me into their lives to show an unseen side of themselves. Generosity and motion is what links all our subjects in this issue; they’re driving kid’s electric jeeps (Cate), vintage tractors (Josh Hartnett) and Ferrari race cars (Nicholas Hoult) while talking about what propels their passions and careers.
For this issue we also invited more collaborators into the Hollywood Authentic family. I met portrait photographer Charlie Clift at BAFTA a couple of years back and was immediately impressed by his work – he captures Lennie James for “a little nonsense”. We’re also thrilled to have Stephen Merchant guest-write his love letter to a Hollywood classic, Double Indemnity. Our now regular contributors are back: Gary Oldman and Gisele Schmidt write about the work of legendary Hollywood photographer Sam Shaw, Abbie Cornish gives us a review of Toronto Mexican restaurant Quetzal and Arianne Philips interviews veteran costume designer Albert Wolsky. Mark Read is also back turning his masterful lens to the Marin County Civic Center.
We’ve come full circle from that chat in Venice 2020 as we bring this issue to Venice 2024. I can’t wait to see what we take to the floating city in years to come…
Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Cate Blanchett loves her chickens. Today, she is gently hypnotising one in her potting shed. She’s never done it before but is following instruction on the art by director and friend John Hillcoat. Cate is stroking her feathered friend and gently guiding its vision from its beak to her gloved finger as she sits on a doorstep dressed in muddy wellies, a black silk gown and leather gloves. The chicken relaxes as she soothes and is soon so chilled that she can carefully place the bird on its side, where it lays motionless. ‘I’ve fucking done it!’ Cate whispers in astonishment.
It’s hardly surprising that Cate can achieve such a feat. She has been an incredible artist since I first met her on Elizabeth when we were both at the relative start of our careers in film. Since then, she has taken on historical royalty, real-life war reporters, narcissistic conductors, intergalactic baddies, Middle-earth elves, Old Hollywood stars and iconic folk musicians in her three-decade career, during which we’ve collaborated many times. A performer open to experience and hungry to explore, Cate is always creative – whether that’s being playful in Piazza Navona on set of The Talented Mr Ripley, jumping in a bath in LA to pretend to use the showerhead as a telephone, donning her face mask to execute a perfect silhouette (and make a statement) in Covid-times Venice, or agreeing to stand on a Roosevelt Hotel fire escape just before the Oscars where she was nominated for Tár to capture the best light – and losing an unimaginably expensive borrowed diamond earring in the process, which was recovered five flights down. My heart was in my mouth for the minutes it took to find it! Twenty-seven years on, we bumped into each other at Glastonbury, where Cate generously invited me to her chicken shed to shoot our cover.
After finishing shooting Black Bag with Steven Soderbergh, she is about to set sail to promote her latest role as a space renegade in game-turned-movie actioner Borderlands, as well as her autumn Apple+ TV series, Disclaimer. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, it features her as a documentarian who finds the tables turned on her and will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Then there’s Rumours, in which she plays a fictional German chancellor at a G7 meeting that goes weirdly awry in the woods. It’s a typically varied slate that shows Cate’s appetite for exploration, but right now she has found time to play in the vegetable garden. She leads me into the rambling back yard – the chicken has shaken itself off and pottered away back home to the chicken coop labelled ‘Cluckingham Palace’ that it shares with six other chickens. Cate is hoping for baby chicks soon from two broody birds snuggled in their nests.
Deep in the garden, in a tangle of trees and verdant plants, are a set of active hives that provide lavender-flavoured honey. ‘We’ve always wanted to have bees,’ Cate says as she swaps her silks for protective wear to inspect the apoid workers. ‘We’ve had bee bricks in the city, for orphan bees or solo bees. But the idea of having hives… I’ve become obsessed because about 20 years ago on the cover of Time magazine, there was genuine full-on panic about how pesticides were killing off the bee population, and the enormous knock-on effect of that. It was an exploration of how fragile bees are as an insect species, and as the major pollinators they are, how deeply we rely on them. It really activated me, environmentally – and engendered big-sky thinking. The change in the taste of the honey reflects the change of their environments. It’s fascinating.’
As she carefully peers inside the hive, she tells me how she lost a colony to hornets last year, so had to invest in paper imitation wasp nests to hang in the trees. I ask her if it’s hard to leave the garden when she has to go away to work for months at a time. ‘Don’t you think, when you’re away, it helps to have a “dreaming” place?’ she asks. ‘A point of physical connection?’ She considers the question as someone who travels extensively for work. ‘Is it hard to leave the weeds?’ she jokes. ‘Actually, can I say: weeding is deeply therapeutic. My grandmother, who lived with us, and helped raise us after my father died, was an avid gardener but hated weeding. So she hired a gardener. His name was Mr Crutchett and he used to sing these beautiful songs, and just sit on his rear end, all day, pulling weeds in our garden. I think he was serenading my gran who he had a crush on. And he was the happiest man I’ve ever met. You don’t have to make headway in the garden – I humble myself and say, you know, “One weed at a time”.’
The fact that I even got the chance to make a film was extraordinary to me. I never expected to leave the shores of home to play the Queen of England
We leave the woody dell and Cate is driving a tractor as we discuss our first meeting, on set of Elizabeth, a star-making role that gave her her first Oscar nomination. ‘If I knew it was going to be a big moment, I would have collapsed under the weight of the pressure,’ she recalls. ‘I kept saying Judi Dench, Flora Robson, Glenda Jackson – I mean, what can I possibly add to the conversation? And the fact it was Shekhar Kapur – a director from Bollywood, and I was from the Antipodes; from the colonies – only exacerbated my hubris. These two outliers were looking at Elizabethan history, which is a period where so much of the English dream time comes from. Who did I think I was? The chutzpah. I think the only way I coped was the fact that I thought: “This is both the beginning and the end of my career.” I honestly thought, “This is it, so I may as well enjoy it.” I think that was the moment where I learned to flip terror and anxiety to excitement. They’re very similar energetic forces. People often ask “What would be the advice you’d give to your younger self?” I’m always really reticent to give people advice because mistakes are so important, and I’ve certainly made a lot of them.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘But honestly, as one gets older, the advice is think quicker. Do it quicker.’ Quicker? I ask. I imagined she’d say slower. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Live more slowly, think more quickly. Don’t overthink.’
I’m always really reticent to give people advice because mistakes are so important, you know? And I made a lot of them
Who did she look up to as inspirations back then as she tried to build her career in what she describes as a sort of ‘survival mode’? ‘I grew up in this incredible golden age of Australian cinema. We had Jack Thompson, Judy Davis, Mel Gibson, Bruce Beresford, Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong and then Nicole Kidman went and forged a career, which was extraordinary, in America. But I was never that girl. So the fact that I even got the chance to make a film was miraculous. I never expected to leave the shores of home to play the Queen of England.’ It wasn’t the end of her career, obviously.
As she amassed more work in the likes of The Talented Mr Ripley, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Veronica Guerin and The Aviator, Cate admits : ‘You hone your instincts, and you learn to trust them. There are times when one doesn’t trust – I mean, the times when things have gone a bit cattywampus are the times when I’ve not trusted my instincts.’ Cattywampus? Does she really use that word? ‘You don’t use that word? Everything’s akimbo. All screwed up. Back to front. I am sure it’s in the dictionary.’ She laughs. ‘Surely Hollywood Authentic is cattywampus?!’
We walk to a nearby swing hanging from a tree and as she twists the rope and allows it to unfurl, she spins as we discuss inspiration. I have a preoccupation with ideas and the notion of where they come from, and I naturally want to hear Cate’s take on it. ‘It’s elusive and it never comes from the same source. If it came from the same place, creative flow would be easy, wouldn’t it?’ she says. ‘Inspiration, for me, arises from unexpected places. Sometimes it’s a snippet of conversation, a snatch of someone else’s conversation that you overhear, or sitting in cold water, or actually tuning in to the sounds immediately around you or the music of others… And I think probably a lot of the time it comes in that – and I hate this word because it’s so overused – liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. You know, that glorious moment just as you’re waking, and coming into consciousness. Hopefully it’s not in a gutter, it’s in your own bed!’
Inspiration also comes from being open to receiving, she says. ‘I’ve had experiences on stage where there’s energy coming from the audience, and from the other actors, and from the text – there’s something that just erupts out of this intersection, that none of you can name, and you don’t quite know how it came or what it means and it’s absolutely thrilling. I think it’s probably the feeling that people get when they bungee jump. You intellectually know the sequence of events, but, once you’re in the middle of it, it’s happening to you, and through you, and you just have to flow with it. I’m deeply uncool. I can’t surf, and I can’t play pool. But I imagine if you hit the ball in that spot, or you catch the wave, it’s similar to being on stage. You can rehearse and prepare for this but if you take flight it’s a collective experience that is about connecting to the present moment with radical openness. It’s not something you can ever plan your way into.’
The hoping for such lightning to strike must be something of a rollercoaster. Cate nods. ‘I think it’s why a lot of people who live creative lives develop a superstitious relationship to the work: “Well, this time, the muse won’t visit me. It won’t happen unless I do x, y and z to control the conditions.” For me, personally, it’s important to have a life in parallel that’s as rich as the work, and totally antithetical to the work. I’m not living my life to work. I try not to think about where ideas come from. You only think about where they come from when they’re not coming. And that’s why it’s always better to work with people who are far more interesting than you are, and more skilled than you are.’
I’ve had experiences on stage where there’s energy coming from the audience, and from the other actors, and from the text – there’s something that just erupts out of this intersection, that none of you can name, and you don’t quite know how it came or what it means, and it’s absolutely thrilling
Cate has collaborated with numerous skilled artists during her career – from Martin Scorsese, Anthony Minghella, Jim Jarmusch and Peter Jackson to Sally Potter, Gillian Armstrong, Wes Anderson and Todd Haynes. Does she ever look back at her work? ‘I think it’s challenging working in a very concrete medium where the object remains – fixed, static, finite. If you’re a plastic artist, or you work in film, there’s an object; a product that can be held, and it’s finite. But the experience is not finite. It slips through your fingers, and you have to let it go. So I don’t revisit those objects because it’s not useful. It’s like the memory of a moment or the memory of a song over time. The memory of anything can become more powerful than the thing itself.’
Those sorts of memories are produced nightly in the theatre, she says. ‘The audience warms this circle with you, and they produce, for that moment, this miniature zeitgeist – and then it’s gone. Increasingly I am drawn to those more ephemeral artforms that don’t leave a “product”, but they leave some sort of ephemeral residue between people.’
The characters and projects she inhabits leave their mark on her too – she admits that she doesn’t feel she ever leaves a character fully behind. ‘It’s like those conversations that are late-night, and protracted, and somewhere they lodge deep within you, in a way that you can’t necessarily consciously recall them. It’s like all the relationships or friendships or encounters, positive or negative, that you’ve had – they will come back to you in some way. They will keep returning to you. You view the world through the prism of the conversation – the creative conversation that you’re engaged with. So you’ll hear words. You’ll hear phrases. You’ll see gestures. You’ll hear music that all connects to the project. That leaves you. That obsessive thing leaves you. But the residue – the glorious unfolding residue – of it, never leaves you. I am eternally grateful for that.
‘It’s like reading a really, really terrific book,’ she explains. ‘You’re inside. You’re with the novelist. The author locking arms with you, going on a long walk. I don’t know about you, but when I get to the end of such a book, and I realise there’s only three pages to go, I have a bittersweet melancholy as every word, every phrase – you are inching closer to the end of something. But that story doesn’t ever leave you. But you try and recall the book – in all of its particulars, in all the order it happens… for me, it becomes a jumble. What seems so linear and clear when you’re in the middle of it creatively – you can put all the pieces together – it shatters and fragments. And if you try and put it back together, and replicate it, you know, to do the metaphorical sequel – it’s a disaster.’ She smiles. ‘You’ve got to say, “This is fragmentary, and I’ll remember it as I do, or not. Maybe I’ll forget…”’
Borderlands is in cinemas now.Disclaimer premieres at the Venice Film Festival and hits Apple TV+ in the autumn. Rumours is in cinemas later this year. Black Bag follows in early 2025
Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
I’ve arrived in Watkins Glen in upstate New York at dawn on a July weekend. It may look like a sleepy rural town but the main drag used to echo with the revs of car engines from 1948 to 1952, as sports cars raced through the streets on a 6.6 mile course. The danger of the sport and the risk to onlookers forced the building of a proper track, the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Course, which is where I’m heading today with Nicholas Hoult as he runs laps in a Ferrari 296 Challenge car as part of his training to ultimately parlay a passion to actually race. Though he’s busy with on-screen work – his latest, The Order, is out in cinemas in December – Nick is feeling the need for speed.
Actors have been drawn to racing for decades; from James Dean, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen to James Garner, Patrick Dempsey and Michael Fassbender. Nick recalls listening to Clint Eastwood talk about Newman as a racer. ‘He told me that he went to the track with Paul Newman one time, because he lived up in Northern California – he said that was fun, having a few beers with him.’ However, it wasn’t Eastwood who inspired Nick to turn a childhood fascination into a serious vocation, nor his About a Boy producer, Eric Fellner, who gave the 12-year-old child actor his first ride in a 550 Maranello. This was also the film where we first met. ‘I’ve always been excited by racing – I grew up watching F1 with my dad,’ Nick recalls as we head to the track. ‘That was our tradition on a Sunday. You’d make your cheese and pickle sandwich, and then sit down and watch the F1. Then I got a couple of little chances to get on a track and try things out. I was working with Michael Fassbender on the X-Men movies, and he started to do the Ferrari challenge. I was excited to learn about it because whenever you think about racing, Ferrari is the brand that’s synonymous with it, in every form of racing. And the cars are just magic. So to get a chance to get out on a track in one of their race cars, and to then learn how to do it properly – I’m someone who likes to try new things, and challenge myself.’
As a performer who’s moved from child actor to leading man, he’s used to bending to the needs of a director, challenging himself to portray different characters in varied genres. But racing is something that can’t be approximated. ‘For an actor, you can kind of fake it until you make it in lots of things,’ he explains. ‘And then people will make you look good in the film, whether it’s holding a sword or whatever it is. You do it to the best of your ability, and then practice, and practice, and hopefully it works on film. In racing, there’s the engineers and your coaches and everyone who’s there to teach you. But then ultimately you have to do what’s required. There’s no hiding behind “Oh, the dialogue wasn’t good” or “the scene doesn’t work”. There’s clear statistics of: you’re on the brake too early; you didn’t release it early enough; you didn’t get on the power, and you lost half a second through the corner, and now you’re slow. It’s fun to do something where the metrics are so precise and clear – but also an adrenaline rush.’
Nick began working with Ferrari – starting out training with the Corso Pilota programme, then moving on to driving a F8, a range of road cars, the 812 and the 488. ‘You go through that programme with lots of other people who are enthusiastic about racing, and then you see their racing journeys continue, and you see them at the track. It becomes a nice little travelling circus and a community,’ he says as we pull up and check out his car waiting under an easy-up beside the track – gleaming red in the early sunlight, his name decal-ed on the windscreen.
It’s fun and it’s exciting. But it’s also something I take seriously. I want to be good at it, and not embarrass myself. And to also drive within my capabilities. To be pushing it so that I can improve, but also not taking silly risks or making mistakes that could hurt anyone or myself
As he admires the car, it’s clear how seriously he takes this, the ambition to race competitively. ‘That would be the plan,’ he nods. ‘Once you finish the Corso Pilota programme, Club Challenge is a way to get on track, and get used to the environment of that. Technically, today, we’re not racing. We’re just lapping. We’re getting time in the car. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have a time attack. That’s when anyone who’s in the Club Challenge will go out and try to set their fastest lap time. So there’s a competition there. But this is more to get time on the different tracks that are a part of the challenge circuit… Suddenly you’ve got the radio in your ears, and the team are talking to you, and there are the pits, and you’ve got to manage the monitors – there’s just a lot of extra stuff alongside the actual racing. You have to be so focused, and try to stay calm, otherwise everything goes so quickly.’
We head to the trailer for Nick to get suited up and briefed on the track by his team, headed up by Stefan Wilson. His new race suit is based on one of Mario Andretti’s suits from 1971 (Andretti won races in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR). His helmet, or lid as he calls it, is designed by Mike Savage with a HANS device [head and neck restraint system]. His team talk him through the bends he’ll need to navigate, the braking distances, the points at which he’ll need to push the car through the turn.
‘I’m excited now. Yesterday, we went out for a couple of sessions, and yesterday I was scared. The speed and everything, particularly when it’s a new track I’ve never been on before. And it’s a fast track. There are a few moments where you have to really commit and trust that you’re going to make it through the turns. It’s a funny thing because the car is always more capable than me. So it’s trusting that it can do it and that you’ll make it.’
Watkins Glen hosts Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and I Love New York 355 at The Glen, and was a Formula One course from 1961 to 1980. As Nick walks out to the car, he remembers his first of these Challenge weekends. ‘The first time I was at Sonoma Raceway in California, and my name went up on the big Jumbotron… It’s weird, because I don’t particularly get excited about seeing my name on movie billboards. But it’s a different level of excitement for me, seeing that.’
As we watch other racers, we hear that one participant has crashed during lap practice. The front of the car can be seen obliterated in close-up on the big screen. It’s sobering. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I am doing this when I’m going around the track, and it gets a bit scary,’ Nick laughs. ‘I think: why? And should I be doing this?’’ I ask what his missus thinks of him racing. ‘She’s a little nervous about it. She tells me to be safe.’ His young son is getting the driving bug with him though. ‘I’ve got a little racing sim setup at home to practise. My little boy was like, “Dad, when you go out, let me know. I’m going to jump in the sim.” He stuffs the back of the seat with a beanbag. He pulls the pedals right up, he’s got a plastic astronaut dress-up helmet. He puts that on. He knows how to do the gears and the pedals. He’ll do it seriously for a little while, and then he’s like, “Right, I’m going to see how hard I can send this car into a wall.”
Thankfully the driver in the crash is unhurt and Nick gets ready to go for a circuit. He reflects again on the different disciplines of acting and racing. ‘There is a point when you zone in. On set, obviously you can prep and learn about the character, and do all the research and learn your lines. And then when you’re on set, before they’re rolling, that’s when you can start to get yourself into the headspace. Today it’s interesting because we’ve been talking about how because my track time is limited, I have to really make the most of it, particularly if I want to try to set lap times that put me into a good stead to get into the races and be competitive.’
‘It’s fun and it’s exciting. But it’s also something I take seriously. I want to be good at it, and not embarrass myself. And to also drive within my capabilities. To be pushing it so that I can improve, but also not taking silly risks or making mistakes that could hurt anyone or myself.’ He consults his notes – numbers and scrawls written next to each corner – before he gets behind the wheel. ‘These are notes from two of the sessions that we did yesterday. So it’s almost like having a script, in some ways, and learning lines because, in theory, you know what you’re trying to do on a track.’ He points to the notebook. ‘I’ve got a curved nibble – turns one and eight. That’s just getting a little bit more on the inside curve as I’m turning, which opens up the angle of the corner so that you can go a bit quicker. Brake for 300 going into that corner. Coming here, there’s a group of corners called the “S”s, where you’re pretty much flat out. You’re probably going at 120mph… Each time you go out you’re trying to figure out how far you can push it. And also just the confidence of keeping your foot pinned to the floor, because everything in the human preservation part of your brain is saying, “You shouldn’t do this.”
Before he heads out, the Ferrari team arrives with a rare 1971 512M that competed at endurance races around the world; Sebring, Daytona, Le Mans, then Bonneville in 1974. Paul Newman himself raced it in salt-flat tests. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Nick nods, checking out the then-regulation spare tyre in the trunk. He sinks into the seat and admires the sightlines of the curved windscreen, relishing the Paul Newman of it all. ‘What are the main things you want me to work on in the first session?’ he asks his coach, Stefan. They huddle together to discuss the lift and braking of turn two before Nick straps in and revs the engine. And he’s off…
Later, after he’s passed in a blur several times, he returns from those ‘S’s and the treacherous ‘bus stop’ corners. He’s downbeat about his lap timing – 1.52.5. ‘I’m a bit hard on myself,’ he admits. ‘There were lots of positives to take from it, and then it was just about cleaning up other stuff, and stringing everything together in one lap. But it’s also being in the moment where my brain… It’s doing a backflip, I guess. You have to overcome it a few times to do it. So once I do it, and I feel it, and my eyes are in the right place, then I’ll go, “Oh, that’s it”. And I’ll be able to replicate that over and over again. But at the moment I haven’t done that.’
Despite Stefan’s assurances, Nick is gutted – the sign of a serious competitor. ‘If you’re doing something, then you care about it. If you’re making a film, you care about it. You want it to be the best. If you’re doing this, you care about it. I’m not here to mess around and have fun and waste people’s time. Last night, when we finished, and I got out, the team were so excited that I’d done some fast laps and made big gains. Again, I keep going back to that “being on set” thing, but if you do a good take, and people are excited, and the scene is good, and everyone can feel that momentum of “we’re making something special” – that’s what you want to do here.’
The ultimate ambition is to compete in Le Mans; ‘I’d love to’. Nick says ‘It’s a long way away but, keep chipping away. Obviously, growing up as a kid, watching it with my dad, I was attracted to the glamour of the world, and the glitz. And then it’s the smell, the sounds. And then it becomes about the deeper kind of progression of the detail, and also the mindset, and the skill, and everything else that comes together.’ As he sits on a guard rail, he looks over his shoulder at the track behind him. ‘There are so many things coming together, because it’s these outside elements that are beautiful and glorious and just overwhelming.’
The next day, I see he’s posted a shot to his Instagram of him spraying a bottle of champagne on the first place podium. He texts me while I’m looking at it; he’s lapped the track in 1:49.2 and won the ‘track attack’. He’s delighted – and he’s still got Sonoma, Indianapolis and the Finali Mondiali ahead of him in the season…
Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Nicholas Hoult was driving in the Ferrari Challenge, North America. The Orderis out in cinemas 6 December
Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Josh Hartnett may reject the idea of being a ‘movie star’ but he does have a Lamborghini stashed away in the barn of his English country home. A vintage model that he’d dreamed of owning and managed to snag at auction, she’s a 1965 blue-and-orange machine that he calls ‘The Beast’. And she does a top speed of just 5mph. ‘I feel like a very budget Steve McQueen,’ he laughs as he unveils his restored Lamborghini tractor and strokes the polished metalwork. ‘He would be leaning on his Ferrari, and I’m leaning on my tractor…’
Though born and bred in Saint Paul, Minnesota and having worked all over the world during his 27-year acting career, Hartnett has found a contentment in the English countryside an hour’s train ride out of London, living with his wife, actor Tamsin Egerton, and four young children. The family share their home with four pygmy goats, six Silky bantam chickens, guinea pigs, a bulldog called Bear and a backyard big enough for Josh to learn about the land from the neighbouring farmers and warrant a gleaming orange tractor. His life, he jokes, is ‘fairly analogue’. He chugs out of the barn and down the field on a blustery July day. That sense of fulfilment is also mirrored in his work, having recently been a part of box-office and awards phenomenon, Oppenheimer, and now opening the new M Night Shyamalan water-cooler thriller, Trap – playing a serial killer trying to escape police at a pop concert.
‘I’ve always been attracted to directors who are working in their own realm – some of them outside of the system, some of them within the system, but always doing something that feels very authentically them,’ Josh says of his career over coffee in his cosy kitchen, which shows his very real off-screen life via the baby cot and the dog crate taking up space in the room. ‘I’ve recently been lucky enough to work with those directors but on a bigger scale, and lots of people are interested in seeing them. And that’s the best of all worlds.’
Trying to find the sweet spot in work and the fame that comes with it is something Josh has been juggling since his first role in 1997 on TV show Cracker (a US adaptation of the UK Robbie Coltrane hit). Having moved to New York after art school to pursue acting as a teen, a trip to LA nabbed him the role that would propel him into the Hollywood system and a period of time when he was being marketed as a ‘heartthrob’. Roles in Halloween: H20, The Virgin Suicides, The Faculty, Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor followed, but his public persona chafed with his ambition and own sense of self.
I know it’s an odd thing to say as an actor, but I really wanted to do specific types of films, and I felt like I had the ability to do it because I got really lucky at a young age. So I used what little clout I had to create these films
‘Fame is not the endgame for me in any way shape or form. Money is good and great – you need it. You need to be able to make enough money to be able to survive. But if it becomes your be all and end all, I think that’s a trap,’ he says. ‘I’m not particularly interested in falling into those traps if possible. I’m very happy with my family and my life. I’ve got a lot of good friends. I try to keep it all in perspective.’
That resistance to the narrative crafted for him and belief in pursuing his own interests rather than following a rote route led to the now 45-year-old famously passing on an opportunity to play Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight in 2008, when the actor and director met for a preliminary chat. Their conversation led to an interest in working together but not to Josh donning the famous cape. ‘I had an initial conversation with Josh but he had read my brother’s script for The Prestige at the time and was more interested in getting involved with that,’ Nolan recalled last year. ‘So it never went further than that.’
‘I didn’t do any of the superhero movies back when it was the inception of the modern superhero,’ says Josh. ‘Around the time Downey did Iron Man, there were a lot of new things happening but it was not really the route that I felt like I needed to go on. Personally, I didn’t want someone else dictating how I was portrayed in the media, and how I was portrayed on screen so much. I know it’s an odd thing to say as an actor, but I really wanted to do specific types of films, and I felt like I had the ability to do it because I got really lucky at a young age. So I used what little clout I had to create these films. Some of them were more successful than others. I heard a great quote from another actor. I had a film that wasn’t super-successful come out, and he said, “Look, you’re never as bad as they say you are, but you’re also never as good as they say you are. This is a business of extremes. People want to tell a story. It’s all narrative. Take it with a pinch of salt. Enjoy it when it’s working, but don’t take it too seriously when it’s not, and don’t ever get too excited about yourself.” So, all that said, I didn’t really want to be defined by other people. I wanted to do my own thing. That’s why I’ve created the career I’ve created.’
Part of the pulling away from the prescriptive ‘movie star’ persona was self-preservation. ‘It just felt like there was a lot of intrusion into my life at that point because I was a young actor, and people were interested in my life, and I didn’t know how to protect myself exactly at that point because I was young. And, also, I was still defining myself, in the way that we all do in our late teens or early twenties. So to have all these other opinions of who I was constantly swirling around in the miasma that is my brain while I’m trying to decide what it is that I want to be – it didn’t feel entirely healthy. So I just sort of took a step back, and tried to re-evaluate. The big machine wants you to do something very tried and true – something that they believe that they can reproduce or control. I wanted to try to do something that felt more authentic to me. I think, looking back on it, it was self-protective, but it was also much more positive than that. They wanted star-making. There were specific things that everybody in the industry wanted me to do, and I felt like I hadn’t signed up for that entirely. I just kind of felt like I wanted to be more myself than that.’
Though he didn’t take an official sabbatical or stop working, Josh moved physically and mentally away from Hollywood. ‘I’ve never really considered Hollywood to be the centre of my adult life. Even though I’ve been working in Hollywood my whole adult life, I’ve always thought of myself as being more spiritually a New Yorker.’ He laughs at himself. ‘“Spiritually” sounds so dorky and over the top. But I feel like I want to be around people from all sorts of walks of life. Especially when I’m not working, it feels unnatural to be constantly talking about work, or constantly talking about my own career. It feels too isolating, and it’s self-indulgent. In New York, most of my friends weren’t in the business, and still, to this day, my close friends aren’t in the business.
‘I love my job. I love acting, and I love making films – I guess I just never thought of our business as a fully catch-all lifestyle. It’s work, and I really enjoy the work, and I like to escape it and see friends and family in different places, and live in a different place. And all the travel, when you’re acting, has kind of lent itself to feeling like I could exist anywhere. So coming to the UK didn’t feel unnatural. Living here full-time doesn’t feel unnatural, as it wouldn’t feel unnatural to move to Morocco, where I was working for a long time, or Hong Kong, where I was working for a long time. It just always feels like, “Oh, this is the next step.” It doesn’t feel like it has to define you in any specific way.’
Honestly, I’ve become really fond of being here: the quiet, the still; all of it. It’s being much more aware of yourself and your surroundings. I’ve become enormously impressed by farm work, and how much people put into it, and how difficult it is
In 2011, Josh met Tamsin on the set of The Lovers and England became a place he visited more often, before moving between the States and the UK as they grew a family together. Then Covid hit and the couple made a decision to put down roots in the British countryside. They’ve been in a small village with an excellent local pub for two years now. ‘We’re sort of transplants from the city,’ Josh admits as we take a walk through the garden to the goat enclosure and the chicken coop, which borders the working farm next door. ‘We’re trying to get to know what it’s like to live in the countryside. And, honestly, I’ve become really fond of being here: the quiet, the still; all of it. It’s being much more aware of yourself and your surroundings. I’ve become enormously impressed by farm work, and how much people put into it, and how difficult it is. I grew up in cities – so all this is brand new to me. It comes with that sort of feeling of: “Is this my real life, you know?” Because it doesn’t feel like the rest of my life has felt up til now, so it’s all just fresh.’
As he introduces his goats (Olive, Lavender, Poppy and Grape) and the chickens that provide daily eggs, Josh considers his most recent projects and how he’s come full circle to actually engaging with the work that he always wanted to. He recently appeared in Black Mirror, just guest starred in Season 3 of The Bear (as Tiffany’s Taylor Swift-adoring fiancé) and was part of last year’s ‘Barbenheimer’ box-office phenomenon when he and Nolan finally worked together on Oppenheimer. Playing nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence, Josh’s was one of the roles that spanned the decades throughout the film, which meant he worked opposite most of the cast and was on-set for most shooting days. ‘Chris is a singular filmmaker on every level – nobody tells him how to make his film. He’s a great example of someone who’s been able to create a sort of independent style of film with a massive budget, in the midst of a massive industry, and still have tons of people who want to see it. It’s a remarkable achievement. I could probably count on two hands the directors who could do that. I think [Trap writer/director] Night [Shyamalan] is another one. A director who’s been able to find a way to relate to the audience, and do it his way, now for 25 years. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to keep working with these guys.’
Josh doesn’t do social media and wants his kids to enjoy their tangible country existence over a virtual life lived through a screen. ‘You just have to be careful about how you introduce your kids to it, get a sense of where the information is coming from, and who they’re interacting with. And you have to be really clear about that. Otherwise, it’s the Wild West. It’s dangerous.’ He’s also aware that careers ebb and flow – that for every awards-magnet Oppenheimer, there’s a critically mauled Pearl Harbor – but equally that all films find an audience eventually. ‘Most of [my films] went unseen until many years later on Netflix. People tend to like them, and come up to me now, and say they really enjoyed the film. But our careers in this business – there’s so much luck involved. It’s so streaky. So when people start to find you interesting again, suddenly you’re being offered a lot of stuff that people are going to see. And when people are less interested, suddenly you’re offered nothing.’
As we head out to the local pub for a burger and a pint, Josh spots my Porsche in his drive and asks to take it for a spin. As he negotiates twisting country roads with the wind in his hair, he recalls a high-speed former life before he settled down to fatherhood and the country. ‘I used to track-race Porsche cars all the time. I completely gutted 911s with the biggest engine you could get, completely light. A lot of fun. I took a Bugatti out on an F1 track in Kuala Lumpur. The straight is pretty full on. I don’t know exactly how fast I was going, but it was faster than I’d ever gone before…’ Quite the difference from the Lamborghini tractor that the actor has to switch off before putting in reverse in order to park it back up in the barn. ‘It can’t change gears while it’s driving,’ he explains fondly. The same certainly cannot be said for its owner, who changed his direction of travel mid-journey and arrived at a happier destination.
Josh Hartnett stars in Trap, directed by M Night Shyamalan, in cinemas now. Grooming by Charley McEwen. Josh wears own clothes and cardigan by Hollywood Authentic × N.Peal
How important is a little bit of nonsense now and then to you? I like nonsense. One of my favourite sounds is laughter. I can corpse [laugh during a scene] very, very easily. I’ve worked with a few actors who are very good at setting other people off, and then not doing it themselves. I find that very cheeky.
What, if anything, makes you believe in magic? I don’t believe in magic. One guy I know used to work out tricks for a very successful magician. So I’ve kind of seen behind the curtain. But I do believe that things are magical. Aretha Franklin or Otis Redding’s voice. The way Lionel Messi or Pelé played football. A work of art…
What was your last act of true cowardice? I was sat on a table next to [Everton football manager] Sean Dyche the other day. I really wanted to talk to him but I didn’t. Afterwards, I was gutted about it.
What single thing do you miss most when you’re away from home? My bed, because I’ve worked hard to get that bed to fit me. I spend quite a lot of time – because of the job I do – sleeping in beds that aren’t my own.
Do you have any odd habits or rituals? I have to play two different forms of Patience – Simple Solitaire, and then Diplomat – until I win before I can start writing.
What is your party trick? I can do the Rubik’s Cube in under two minutes. It used to be under a minute.
What is your mantra? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
What is your favourite smell? The top of a baby’s head.
What do you always carry with you? Cash in my pocket. Just a little mad money.
What is your guilty pleasure? I don’t particularly think that any pleasure is guilty but I take a great amount of pleasure in a well-made Old Fashioned.
Who is the silliest person you know? My mate Mark, who I go to the football with along with my brother-in-law. He’s just one of those guys on the terrace who always says the funniest thing at the absolute right time.
What would be your least favourite way to die? I’d quite like one where people go ‘He had a good innings, and went surrounded by the people he loved.’ I don’t want one where they go ‘…and it took them ages to get him out of the tree’.
Lennie James graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and went on to work on stage and screen in TV favourites such as Spooks, Line of Duty, The Walking Dead and Fear of the Walking Dead. He has also appeared in numerous zeitgeist movies including 24 Hour Party People, Snatch, Les Miserables and Blade Runner 2049. ‘I like characters who are having interesting conversations with themselves,’ he says of what draws him to a role. As a writer, the Nottingham-born actor has penned semi-autobiographical film Storm Damage and Royal Court play The Sons of Charlie Paora. Next up he’ll take the lead in an eight-part TV adaptation of Bernardine Evaristo’s novel, Mr Loverman, playing a man coming to terms with ‘his 60-year love affair with his best friend, Morris, and how they’ve kept it a secret through each of their marriages’. In December, he will also appear in Lion King prequel, Mufasa, and has just finished work on Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical, The End.
Mr Loverman is available from 14 October on BBC1 and iplayer. Mufasa: The Lion King is released in cinemas 20 December
Photographs by CHARLIE CLIFT
*Arguably one of the most memorable (and quotable) scenes in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is when Mr Salt mumbles, ‘It’s a lot of nonsense,’ to which Wonka replies, in a sing-song voice, ‘A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.’
In 1944, director Billy Wilder released the quintessential film noir before the term even existed. Double Indemnity bears all the hallmarks of the genre: wiseass repartee; crisp black-and-white cinematography; a manipulative femme fatale twisting a lust-fuelled sap around her finger; shards of light pouring through venetian blinds casting prison-bar shadows across the faces of our amoral protagonists as they hurtle towards a doomed comeuppance.
This is no spoiler. The movie opens at night (it’s noir, of course it’s night) with a wounded man driving his coupe through downtown LA, staggering to his office, and dictating a confession to his colleague: ‘Hold tight to that cheap cigar of yours, Keyes. I killed Dietrichson. Me, Walter Neff, insurance agent, 35 years old, unmarried, no visible scars… until a little while ago, that is. Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money – and a woman – and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman.’
From here, flashbacks show Neff (Fred MacMurray) falling for the glamorous but unhappily married Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Together they concoct a devilishly clever plan to bump off Phyllis’ husband for his accident insurance money, only to come under the suspicious gaze of Neff’s friend and colleague, insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson).
Double Indemnity is an early example of a ‘whydunnit’, telling us the killer’s identity upfront (a narrative technique popularised 30 years later by TV’s Columbo), but is it the first thriller to make us root for a bad guy driven by greed and sex? Unclear, but certainly that opening narration sets the blackly comic tone that pervades the film, in which brief early scenes of sunny LA give way to ever more darkening shadows as our conniving pair descend into murder and betrayal.
The movie was based on a novella by hardboiled crime writer James M. Cain, who as a journalist had attended the trial of a woman and her lover convicted of a similar murder in the 1920s.
Wilder’s regular screenwriting collaborator Charles Brackett declined to adapt the book, regarding it as too scandalous and immoral, so Wilder famously hired master crime author Raymond Chandler, creator of the archetypal gumshoe Philip Marlowe. Chandler assumed that writing a film would be quick and easy, taking maybe three weeks. When he was told his weekly rate was $750, he thought he could stretch it out to four. As described by Maurice Zolotow in his biography Billy Wilder in Hollywood: ‘[Chandler] schlepped it in five weeks later. Billy read it at once while Chandler watched. Then he threw it – yes, hurled it – right at Chandler. It hit him in the chest and fell on his lap. “This is shit, Mr. Chandler,” he said amiably. He suggested that Chandler use it as a doorstop.’
Their relationship went downhill from there, with Chandler battling alcoholism and Wilder every step of the way. Nevertheless, their Oscar- nominated screenplay is a triumph, cleverly refining and reworking the novella while injecting Chandler’s trademark wit and smart-alec crosstalk. Take Phyllis and Walter’s flirty first encounter, fizzing with innuendo to dodge the censor’s red pencil:
PHYLLIS: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
NEFF: How fast was I going, officer?
PHYLLIS: I’d say about ninety.
NEFF: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket. PHYLLIS: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
NEFF: Suppose it doesn’t take. PHYLLIS: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
NEFF: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder. PHYLLIS: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.
As a film and TV writer, I know full well that good dialogue is only as good as the actors delivering it, and Stanwyck and MacMurray are faultless, loading every line with just the right amount of sexy snark, Fred grinning an insouciant smirk, Barbara fighting the urge to do the same.
Years later, movies like Basic Instinct would make these seduction scenes explicit, but in 1940s Hollywood every erotic beat had to be carefully calibrated to sneak past America’s moral guardians. It was racy enough that Stanwyck first appears at the top of a staircase in a towel; moments later, Wilder’s camera fixates on her anklet as she descends in what were scripted as ‘pom-pom slippers’ – signifiers that despite her nice suburban home, Phyllis (in Wilder’s words) is showy and trashy. It’s the reason the director made Stanwyck wear a cheap blonde wig, which is constantly distracting once you realise it’s a piece. As one studio executive who hated the wig apparently stated: “We hire Barbara Stanwyck and we get George Washington.’
For a city that seems to have little reverence for its historical buildings, I take great pleasure in discovering (via Google maps) that the exterior of the Dietrichson residence, a Spanish Colonial Revival-style house in the Hollywood hills, has changed very little since it starred in the movie almost 80 years ago. If Double Indemnity is a thoroughbred film noir, it’s also a Los Angeles movie to its core, partly thanks to its locations – including the Hollywood & Western Building and the Hollywood Bowl – but also because every frame seems soaked in the sweat and humidity, cynicism and paranoia, of the big city.
Neff’s North Kingsley Drive apartment block is still standing too, the setting for one of the finest suspense scenes in any movie. Neff receives a late-night visit from Keyes, whose ‘little man’ in his stomach keeps telling him something is amiss with the Dietrichson insurance claim. Oblivious, Phyllis is on her way up to the apartment, but if she encounters Keyes, the murder conspiracy will be blown wide open. She is about to enter Neff’s apartment as Keyes is leaving, but at the last moment ducks behind Neff’s apartment door, which inexplicably opens outwards into the corridor. No apartment door has ever done this in the history of construction, but it’s testament to the movie’s immersive, slow-burning suspense that you don’t even register it on first, second or fiftieth watch.
At the 17th Academy Awards, Double Indemnity was rightly nominated for seven Oscars but wrongly won none. Wilder was apparently so furious about losing Best Director to Leo McCarey for the mawkish Going My Way that as McCarey walked to the stage, Wilder tripped him up. It’s the perfect coda for a movie that not only trips up but snaps the neck of the polite mores and suburban civilities that America was trying to sell itself in the 1940s; a movie that only an émigré like Wilder, having escaped the horrors of the Nazis, could so gleefully use to expose the dark, irredeemable recesses of human behaviour; a movie that in 2024, an election year in which politicians would have us believe there was once a golden age in which America was happy and bright, reminds us the country has always been merrily, deliciously dark.
