De Niro’s sad fall from grace
COMMENT: One of the greatest actors of all time has opted not to age so gracefully
Judi Dench, now 82, with macular degeneration, has signed for an all-star remake of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express, while 86-year-old Clint Eastwood recently unveiled his newest movie, Sully.
Meanwhile, 76-year-old Patrick Stewart and 77-year-old Ian McKellen appear in an acclaimed stage revival of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land.
Add people like Robert Duvall, Woody Allen and Maggie Smith to the roster of artists who continue to thrive in the autumn of their careers.
Then there’s the depressing example of Robert De Niro, two-time Oscar winner and the man once hailed as the greatest actor of his generation.
De Niro is only 73, and recently appeared in The Comedian — playing an aging standup comic who figures he can get laughs by making incest jokes and reworking comedy legend Eddie Cantor’s signature song, Making Whoopee, into a dirty ditty called Making Poopee.
To be sure, the perilous and mysterious art of creating comedy can be worthy of pungent examination on film. That’s why De Niro’s own 1982 movie, The King Of Comedy, in which he brilliantly portrayed a demented wannabe comic who kidnaps Jerry Lewis, was such an unsettling experience.
But there’s a huge gulf between that film, directed by Martin Scorsese, and the travesty of De Niro’s latest. And what’s truly dismaying is the seeming indifference this legendary actor shows as he continues to shred his once lustrous reputation.
Well, perhaps, not totally indifferent. During an interview in Britain a couple of years ago, De Niro blew up when asked how he avoided being on “autopilot” when doing a scene. Complaining of a “negative inference,” an angry De Niro stormed off.
Daily Telegraph columnist Ed Power said the tantrum “called attention to one of the most dazzling declines in modern cinema history.”
The question obviously touched a nerve.
Long gone are the glory days of Godfather ll and Raging Bull, (the two movies that earned De Niro his Oscars), Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Goodfellas and The Untouchables.
For anyone who cares about the cinema, De Niro’s decline is a saddening spectacle. In 2012, he received his first Oscar nomination in more than 20 years — a supporting-actor citation for his performance in Silver Linings Playbook. But immediately afterward, there was a return to dreck: Big Wedding, Killing Season, The Family, Las Vegas, The Bag Man — and, most notoriously, Grudge Match, in which De Niro and Sylvester Stallone attempted a geriatric sendup of their Raging Bull and Rocky images. Dirty Grandpa offered up an aging De Niro masturbating while watching porn.
In 1993, American film historian Douglas Brode described De Niro “as our greatest screen actor, on the level of a Guinness or Olivier.” And the verdict today? “One of our greatest working actors has lost himself in crumby, mindless comedy,” says Los Angeles Times film critic Betsy Sharkey.
There are those who relish De Niro’s excursions into the world of the Focker family, or the send-ups of his gangster image in the overrated Analyze This and Analyze That.
But it could be argued that his last significant acting work came in 1995. That was the year he and Al Pacino finally worked together in Heat. It was also the year of the brilliant Casino, De Niro’s last involvement with director Martin Scorsese.
There may be some truth in critic David Thomson’s suggestion that as De Niro has grown older, he’s become more difficult to cast. But there’s also evidence that he needs a strong director to guide him to the right material.
In general, his most distinguished work has been done under major filmmakers like Mann, Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma. It could be argued that De Niro’s real decline began when he stopped working with Scorsese, the most important figure in his career development.
Still, there’s hope. In May, HBO will unveil The Wizard Of Lies, in which De Niro reportedly gives a sizzling performance as the notorious Bernie Madoff. The movie has A-list credentials, with Michelle Pfeiffer as co-star and Barry Levinson as director. It’s on cable because the industry concluded there was no audience for it in movie houses, because it’s not a Dirty Grandpa.
That’s Hollywood for you.