R.I.P.: Silvio Narizanno (1927-2011)

While trolling the obituaries in Variety yesterday – don’t ask why, you don’t want to know – I was surprised to find a piece on Canadian-born filmmaker Silvio Narizzano. Surprised, that is, because this was the first mention I’d read of the guy’s death, even though he’d passed away on July 26, and the obit had posted on Variety.com Aug. 8. And as I Googled his name, to read what others had to say, my surprise gave way to amazement because, except for this respectful appreciation in The Australian, and this article in the Guardian, I really couldn’t find much else anywhere. Seriously: No other obit of any substance, not even in The New York Times or Los Angeles Times.

And why, you might ask, would I have expected otherwise?

Well, to be honest, I would have anticipated at least a fleeting mention of Narizzano’s death in a few movie blogs because he directed Tallulah Bankhead (in her final screen performance) and a very young Donald Sutherland in Die! Die! My Darling! (1965), arguably the campiest of all those high-camp ‘60s gothic thrillers that provided gainful employment for aging screen queens (a subgenre spawned by the classic Bette Davis-Joan Crawford matchup in 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?).

And surely (or so I would have thought) devotees of Le Bad Cinema might have wanted to tip their Stetsons to Narizzano in acknowledgement of Blue (1968), his legendarily ill-conceived Western starring Terence Stamp – yes, that Terence Stamp – as a moody young gringo who was raised by Mexican bandits and befriended by Texas settlers, but inexplicably spoke with a thick British accent that made him sound like… like… well, like Terence Stamp.

Just how bad was Blue? Well, let me put it this way: The film was produced by Paramount back in the day when Robert Evans and Peter Bart lit most of the green lights. When I recently interviewed Bart about Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, The Mob (and Sex), his hugely entertaining account of his Paramount misadventures, I noted, only half-jokingly: “I’m probably the only interviewer you’ll meet while promoting this book who actually paid first-run admission to see Blue.” Bart, not even a quarter-jokingly, replied: “I guess I should apologize to you for that.”

But seriously folks: The real reason I was surprised by the dearth of obits for Silvio Narizzano is another movie that looms large on his resume. An era-defining film that launched a few notable careers, earned a few major Oscar nominations, helped kick off the ‘60s cycle of seriocomic flicks about Swinging England, and introduced an irresistibly bouncy title song that, to this day, remains a staple of Golden Oldie radio stations: Georgy Girl.




Yes, this Georgy Girl – the affectingly bittersweet comedy-drama starring Alan Bates, Charlotte Rampling, James Mason and, in the title role, the late, great Lynn Redgrave. Not a masterwork, perhaps, and not the kind of film that people under 30 often are exposed to. I can’t say it’s even discussed much by serious cineastes anymore, or screened at all in college film studies courses. But, trust me, for those of us who were the right age to see it way back during its original theatrical run – well, whenever someone or something reminds you about it, you remember it very fondly.

Looking back at Narizzano’s resume, it’s painfully obvious that whatever career momentum he gained from Georgy Girl – which netted him a DGA Award nomination – was dissipated by the train wreck that was Blue. (Another problem: He reportedly had a lifelong problem with depression.) He continued to work off and on in movies and TV until the ‘90s, accumulating a few respectable credits here and there – including filmizations of Loot, a Joe Orton comedy starring Lee Remick, Milo O'Shea and Richard Attenborough, and Come Back, Little Sheba, a William Inge drama starring Sir Laurence Olivier, Joanne Woodard and Carrie Fisher – but never quite managing to make lightning strike a second time.

And yet: Despite all that, despite the obscurity that had enveloped Narizzano long before his death, the general lack of attention paid that death is, as I’ve said, surprising. And, yes, a little sad. I’ve often claimed that, sometimes, all it takes is one classic film for a filmmaker to achieve a kind of immortality. On other occasions, however, it appears that really isn’t enough.

R.I.P.: Lynn Redgrave (1943-2010)

As The Associated Press duly noted in its obit, Lynn Redgrave – who passed away Sunday in Manhattan at age 67 -- “never quite managed the acclaim -- or notoriety -- of elder sibling Vanessa Redgrave…” But never mind: For the better part of a half-century, she added more than her fair share of luster to the illustrious family tradition of an esteemed British acting dynasty.

During the 1960s, in movies widely acclaimed (Georgy Girl, for which she received an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress) and unjustly neglected (Smashing Time, in which she and Rita Tushingham played small-town lasses who took Swinging London by storm), she earned rave reviews and attained international stardom by playing conspicuously unglamorous and often rough-hewn characters with enough unaffected vivacity to make their extremes of joy and heartbreak instantly and easily relatable. Gangly and gregarious, she wasn’t conventionally attractive – not an ugly duckling, mind you, but not exactly a graceful swan, either. Yet that didn’t matter. In fact, her plumpishness was a major part of her well-nigh irresistible charm.

Lynn Redgrave invaded America as part of the ‘60s British Invasion, that same pop-cultural tsunami that brought us The Beatles, Michael Caine and shagadelic supermodels. How a big a star was she during this period? Well, consider this: She had just a tiny part – no more than one scene, actually – in The Deadly Affair, a dark and brooding 1966 spy thriller based on a John Le Carré novel, starring James Mason, Simone Signoret and Maximilian Schell. But after the film flopped in N.Y. and L.A. during its initial U.S. theatrical release, it was sent out to many smaller markets with a drastically revamped ad campaign designed to make it look like a breezy spy-spoofy romp starring – yes, you guessed it -- "Lynn Redgrave of Georgy Girl."

During subsequent decades, she managed to slim down without ever really slowing down. (She was, no kidding, a prominent spokesperson for Weight Watchers during the ‘80s.) On stages throughout the world, she triumphed in everything from Shaw’s Saint Joan to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Her movie credits increased to encompass everything from the sublime (Shine, God and Monsters, Kinsey) to the ridiculous (The Happy Hooker, Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home) to the stupefyingly bizarre (The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, Sidney Lumet’s legendarily ill-conceived but guilty-pleasurably campy 1970 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Seven Descents of Myrtle). And much like siblings Vanessa and Corin Redgrave, she established ties with Houston’s Alley Theatre: In 1994, she graced the Alley stage in Shakespeare for My Father, the one-woman show she performed as a tribute to her actor dad, Sir Michael Redgrave.

In recent years, she was plagued by health issues – she was treated for breast cancer in 2003 – and personal tragedies. (Her niece Natasha Richardson died after a skiing accident last year; last month, her brother Corin passed away.) But she remained active in movies and TV as late as last year, when she fleetingly appeared in Confessions of a Shopaholic, and guest-starred in episodes of Ugly Betty and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

And yet, despite the variety of her work and longevity of her career, Lynn Redgrave will always be most fondly remembered by some an emblematic icon of ‘60s British cinema. So much so, in fact, that when filmmaker Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon) made Getting It Right, a 1989 dream project he crafted as his valentine to movies of the Swinging London era, he eagerly cast Lynn Redgrave as a sultry “older woman,” a trendy socialite who seduces the virginal young hero with all the intense, nimble-witted enthusiasm of someone pursuing a stimulating after-dinner conversation. It should be noted that Redgrave had a nude scene in the lightly delightful romantic comedy. It should also be noted that she looked pretty smokin’ hot. She had come a long way from Georgy Girl. But she remained, as ever, a formidable screen presence.