In praise of Paul New­man, Director

Paul New­man always pre­ferred the jour­ney to the des­ti­na­tion. Explain­ing the dif­fer­ence between his act­ing approach with his wife, Joanne Woodward’s, he said, ​“Joanne enjoys act­ing, I don’t. I enjoy the rehears­ing, the intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise.” Even as one of the last great movie stars, New­man was always hap­pi­est behind the scenes and built a suc­cess­ful adja­cent career as a pro­duc­er and direc­tor. Sim­i­lar to his approach to act­ing, as a direc­tor, he empha­sised per­for­mance and reflect­ed the inti­mate struc­ture of impro­vi­sa­tion­al spaces.

In 1968, New­man direct­ed his first fea­ture, Rachel, Rachel, star­ring Joanne Wood­ward. An adap­ta­tion of Mar­garet Laurence’s nov­el ​‘A Jest of God’, the film fol­lows a mid­dle-aged school teacher who expe­ri­ences a late com­ing of age. Rachel’s inte­ri­or world dom­i­nates the direc­tion of the film, as her dreams, mem­o­ries and fan­tasies guide the nar­ra­tive. Rather than a film about big events, it is about the accu­mu­la­tion of small inci­dents that lead to a trans­for­ma­tive shift.

In Rachel’s world, small talk or a morn­ing alarm can set off a range of thoughts and ideas. While the film relies heav­i­ly on an inte­ri­or mono­logue as a form of nar­ra­tion, its abstract premise focused on the inte­ri­or world of the char­ac­ter is dif­fi­cult to trans­late for both actor and direc­tor. Tasked with evok­ing a more mature com­ing of age, Wood­ward coun­ter­bal­ances a jad­ed know­ing­ness with a stunt­ed per­son­al evo­lu­tion by artic­u­lat­ing the dif­fer­ence between inten­tion and impact. As Rachel’s desires are artic­u­lat­ed for the first time in the real world, she’s pre­sent­ed with dis­ap­point­ment and ecsta­sy in equal measure.

For his sec­ond direc­to­r­i­al effort, 1971’s Some­times a Great Notion, New­man took over shoot­ing sev­er­al weeks into pro­duc­tion. Based on a nov­el by Ken Kesey, the film tells of a fam­i­ly of tim­ber cut­ters defy­ing a local union by con­tin­u­ing to work dur­ing a strike. New­man stars along Hen­ry Fon­da, Richard Jaeck­el and Lee Remick.

Much of the film is focused on the work and leisure of the char­ac­ters with­out great inci­dent. Numer­ous extend­ed sequences take place around the break­fast table as char­ac­ters make off-colour jokes and drink. Strik­ing a loose, nat­u­ral­is­tic tone, the film has a relaxed pac­ing and almost mun­dane atmos­phere. This builds up to an incred­i­ble cli­mac­tic sequence as a rot­ten tree col­laps­es, injur­ing two char­ac­ters. Ignor­ing the easy sig­ni­fiers for pan­ic and pain, the char­ac­ter reac­tions build on the ordi­nar­i­ness that pre­ced­ed it to achieve a scene of incred­i­ble poignan­cy and unex­pect­ed depth of emotion.

A year lat­er, the extrav­a­gant­ly titled The Effect of Gam­ma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds reunit­ed New­man with Wood­ward. As in Rachel, Rachel, she por­trays a char­ac­ter who is frowned upon by the rest of soci­ety: an old­er unem­ployed woman car­ing for her two daugh­ters. Nick­named the ​“loon”, Beat­rice is a loud-mouthed joke­ster. Con­stant­ly grift­ing and hus­tling to afford to con­tin­ue to care for her chil­dren, she is repeat­ed­ly humil­i­at­ed over the run­ning of the film.

While not quite as accom­plished as Newman’s ear­li­er efforts, this is nonethe­less a prime exam­ple of a direc­tor obsessed with process and per­for­mance. Wood­ward plays things ​“ugly” in ser­vice of the real­i­ty of a well-mean­ing char­ac­ter whose abra­sive­ness makes her a social pari­ah. Many of her scenes feel like act­ing exer­cis­es more so than final prod­ucts, as she utilis­es per­for­mance as a mean of under­play­ing her character’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Often play­ing with props or cos­tume, Beat­rice tries to escape from her bor­ing real­i­ty through per­for­mance itself by adopt­ing a vari­ety of personas.

Newman’s next film was The Shad­ow Box, a made-for-TV adap­ta­tion of Michael Cristofer’s Tony Award-win­ning play about three ter­mi­nal­ly-ill patients. With a more restric­tive bud­get and loca­tions, the film some­times feel a bit like canned the­atre, lim­it­ing its over­all impact. Yet the per­for­mances all round are remark­ably strong – par­tic­u­lar­ly from Wood­ward and Christo­pher Plum­mer – once again under­lin­ing Newman’s pref­er­ence for actors who are able to move beyond the clas­si­cal emo­tion­al mark­ers for sad­ness and grief in order to achieve a greater sense of truth.

Newman’s next film, 1984’s Har­ry & Son, is more con­tentious; its report­ed­ly trou­bled pro­duc­tion is often reflect­ed on screen. While New­man nonethe­less gives a great per­for­mance, his co-star Rob­by Ben­son lacks the same ener­gy and emo­tion­al pow­er. The screen­play by New­man and Ronald Buck is unfo­cused, though the film is still inter­est­ing in the way it reflects on mas­culin­i­ty, work and identity.

Arriv­ing three years lat­er, Newman’s last film behind the cam­era, The Glass Menagerie, stars Wood­ward and a fresh-faced John Malkovich. The extend­ed rehearsal process was doc­u­ment­ed in screen­writer Stew­art Stern’s biog­ra­phy ​‘No Tricks in my Pock­et: Paul New­man Directs’. In the book New­man reveals the lim­its he set upon him­self and describes his hand’s off approach on set, direct­ing the action only if the actors’ asked.

Rather than try to abstract Ten­nessee Williams’ famous play, using voiceover nar­ra­tion and mul­ti­ple loca­tion changes, New­man want­ed to show how it was por­trayed on stage, trans­plant­i­ng a live audi­ence for a cam­era. He hoped that the lim­its of cin­e­ma, rather than feel restric­tive, would accen­tu­ate the claus­tro­pho­bic aspect of the play. For var­i­ous rea­sons ​‘The Glass Menagerie’ is not com­pat­i­ble with con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing. Newman’s adap­ta­tion is ulti­mate­ly uneven, but it does have a cer­tain min­i­mal­ist beau­ty, and faith­ful­ly adheres to Williams’ sin­gle loca­tion setting.

While his films were often made through tra­di­tion­al means with an empha­sis on nat­u­ral­ism, New­man now seems ahead of his time in his inher­ent under­stand­ing that the des­ti­na­tion is not always the essen­tial part of the film­mak­ing process. Excep­tion­al­ly in the Hol­ly­wood are­na, his direc­to­r­i­al per­son­al­i­ty is prod­uct adverse as he is tak­en in by the jour­ney of mak­ing a film rather than its end result.