‘Kramer vs. Kramer ‘director Robert Benton walked exactly the dividing line between commercial and intellectual

Director/screenwriter Robert Benton, who died last week, compared himself in 2007 with Vampier Dracula, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. « I don’t leave any trace in the mirror. » Despite his three Oscars – best direction and scenario for Kramer vs. Cramerand best scenario for Places in the heart – Was this what Benton was known for: modesty. He often figured himself away, rather gave the honor to others. His secret was « hiring good actors » and « trying not to stand in their way. » His ‘film style’ was subtle and emotional.

Yet Benton left a deep impression on the American film industry. When he at the age of 35 his job as an art director Esquire Lost, he decided to become a screenwriter. He was dyslexic – so much that he was only successful at school because his mother Bridede with his teachers – and so he formed a team with journalist David Newman. Their first scenario, for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), immediately earned them an Oscar nomination. The film was a sensation, and a turning point in Hollywood. He brought the storytelling techniques from the French Nouvelle Vague to Hollywood, and became a route map for directors such as Scorsese and Coppola. With the techniques of Truffaut he had made an « enthusiastic American, American film », as eminent critic Pauline Kael wrote a long jubilation review in her 7000-words. Bonnie and Clyde Translated the swirling American counter culture into violent, sexual, comic anti -hero worship and thus used the spirit of the times.

And it turned out that Benton was good: catching social mores in commercial films. He and Newman participated in iconic seventies films such as Screwball Comedy What’s Up Doc? and the first Superman-film. His direction debut Bad Company (1972) Was a little later called an acid western, a film that showed the perverse side of the John Wayne-Cowboy culture.

Benton’s greatest success came in 1978, with Kramer vs. Cramer. Mad Man Ted (Dustin Hoffman) only has to raise his son when his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) leaves; Until Joanna returns a year and a half later and a custody starts. The film was the most visited film of the year. And was revolutionary. In the open imagination of separation (without biblical morality) and in the attention to the strangulation that the mother role could be for women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZfil9isklu

Kramer vs. Cramer Is the best proof of Benton’s talent as a screenwriter and director. As the French directors he admired, he did not necessarily pull meaning from dialogues, but from facial expressions, events and visual language – what is on the breakfast table is just as important as what is said about it. Actress Sally Field, who played the leading role in Places in the heartlater said that Benton from the smallest hand gesture understood the emotion. He was an actor director.

At its peak, Benton followed the dividing line between commercial and intellectual, in a way that rarely occurs in the US. After the 1970s, Benton’s success decreased. Actor -driven dramas like Places in the heart and Nobody’s Fool are gems. But more High Concept Films as Philip Roth film The Human Stain or neonoir Twilight beat dead. Perhaps the film industry had become too commercial for Benton’s modest ambition? In 2009 he said that Kramer vs. Cramer It would probably not be made in the modern film industry. Studios were no longer run as adventurous projects by entrepreneurs with a vision, but as companies that account to shareholders. But, he added: « I am not saying that it was a better than the other. » Typical Benton, ever modest.

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