Rage, rage against the dying light
August 16, 2008
His films have lost the raw quality of earlier work, but Robert De Niro is still a contender, writes Philip Horne.
The saddest thing in the world is wasted talent." So says Robert De Niro's character in A Bronx Tale (1993), the first film the actor also directed. The phrase is repeated at the film's end, as if it had special relevance for De Niro.
In many people's view, it has. Tomorrow De Niro reaches 65, which used to be retirement age. And his current work can feel like something of a letdown, at least by the extraordinarily high standards he set in the 1970s and early '80s.
His business enterprises - running restaurants and film festivals, producing movies and so on - and the well-paid parts he takes on to finance them look like a retreat from the absolute commitment of his great roles with Martin Scorsese: Johnny Boy in Mean Streets (1973), Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) and Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980).
Back then, no one would have believed you if you'd predicted De Niro playing a grumpy paterfamilias in a lightweight comedy such as Meet The Parents (2000), let alone providing the voice of a large cartoon fish in Shark Tale (2004). Inferior thrillers such as The Fan (1996) and 15 Minutes (2001) seemed a sour, ironic comment on De Niro's often-reported view that an actor is only as good as his choices.
From 1973 to 1984, every De Niro film was a major event: we trusted him to break important new ground, and knew he had put so much of himself into these parts that they would be fresh and challenging discoveries. Even a relative dud such as Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976) felt like a brave gesture, a tribute to the director who had steered De Niro's forerunner Marlon Brando to the summits of A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront.
It was a run few modern actors have managed. But De Niro, a shy, reticent personality, had to cope with intense media pressure. The strain he felt is underlined by comments he made at the time of Scorsese's great black comedy The King Of Comedy in which he played a wannabe celebrity comedian, Rupert Pupkin. "If it's bleak, that's because I see show business that way," he said.
It is clear the theme of wasted talent is one De Niro has lived with intimately. Raging Bull is a profound parable about vocation. Its hero, the boxer La Motta, finds that the world as it is - run by the Mafia - won't let him get a shot at the title without compromising his honour and throwing a fight.
For De Niro, show business worked the same way: the system, despite its lip service, didn't really want the disturbing authenticity he brought to those Scorsese films. Or rather, it simply wanted him to keep repeating everyone's favourite poses and phrases again and again, as lucratively as possible.
On the other hand, De Niro's readiness to become a jobbing professional star evidently allows him to help independent filmmakers, as he does with the Tribeca Film Festival, a New York rival to Sundance. And many of his choices of film since the mid-1980s can be read as his way of using his fame and talent to give worthy projects a chance. Even in forgettable films such as The Score (2001) or City By The Sea (2002) he is quietly impressive.
It's arguable that we have no right to demand of him the kind of fanatical, health-endangering devotion to the Method that saw him put on almost 30 kilograms in four months to fatten up for the bloated La Motta. De Niro and Scorsese talked of Raging Bull as a no-holds-barred excavation of their own troubled psyches.
It was thrilling, they survived it - and we need to look for other virtues in their subsequent work. It is surely ungrateful to quibble about The King Of Comedy, one of the most insidiously daring films of the 1980s, or Goodfellas (1987), an acknowledged masterpiece.
Even the move to comedy isn't exactly a betrayal. After all, if one goes back to De Niro's earliest years in film - in Brian De Palma's hippyish, edgy political satires such as Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom! (1970) - he shows a gift for deadpan comedy.
But let's hope his leading role as the producer-hero in Barry Levinson's forthcoming comedy What Just Happened?, due for release in the United States in October, is a genuine return to form in a demanding part in a substantial film.
After that, he's working again with Michael Mann on the hitman thriller Frankie Machine, and plans to reunite with Scorsese at least one more time. It seems the Taxi Driver is not yet ready to collect his bus pass.
Telegraph, London
FIVE TOP DE NIRO MOMENTS
Taxi Driver (1976) "You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here." The improvised mirror scene in which Travis Bickle reveals the depths of his alienation.
Raging Bull (1980) Any of the excruciating junctures when literal-minded, jealous Jake gets snagged on some word like "good-looking". It means trouble - a middleweight beating - for his wife, Vicky, and brother Joey.
Goodfellas (1990) We track in on De Niro's terrifying Jimmy Conway at the bar as he looks down at his drink, up at a pesky fellow robber, down again, up again … with a tiny, evil smirk that means murder.
Cape Fear (1991) Nick Nolte's teenage daughter gets a phone call from her "drama teacher": dissolve to sweet-talking, sinister Max hanging upside down in a doorway. Magnificently bonkers.
Heat (1995) The electrifying late scene in the car when, otherwise home free with his girl, De Niro's master criminal decides on one more vengeful killing: "I gotta take care of something."
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