Even his biggest fans will take time to really grasp gene Hackman’s loss. The Hollywood star, which was considered one of the greatest actors of all time, died on February 27 with his wife. His titanical work comprises over 100 films and series in five decades, 2 Oscars and countless masterful roles. Hackman had extreme versatility. He was able to suffer pathetic or burn an entire world with swine anger, he showed both on the screen.
Gene Hackman mastered a wide variety of roles
Hackman’s career started, like most, modest: from the end of the 50s, he struck out with small roles in TV dramas like Brenner or The Defenders and lived with later stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall. A supporting role in much-noticed gangster drama Bonnie and Clyde In 1967 brought him a first Oscar nomination. Three years later, a second followed for no song for my father.
The big breakthrough came with his role as a tough investigator Doyle in the thriller master plant French Connection – Brooklyn focal point: Like a blood dog, he chased drug dealers through the streets New Yorks and tied up millions. He won the Oscar as the best leading actor for his role, and from that point on the goals of Hollywood were open to him.
In the next ten years he worked to one of the most popular and successful actors in the dream factory Empor, played a sensitive listening specialist in the New Hollywood masterpiece of the dialogue, a depressed private detective in the hot lane, a tough paratrooper in the warpos the bridge of Arnheim and twice the comic basement Lex Luthor in Superman and Superman II alone.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Hackman never took a longer break until his last film in 2004, remained in high demand in Hollywood and enthusiastically enthusiastically with a brilliant spectacle until old age. As an unconventional FBI agent, he received a further Oscar nomination for the root of hate for the racism drama Mississippi Burning, for the role as brutal sheriff in Clint Eastwoods Western merciless he won the Academy Award again in 1993.
Gene Hackman burned himself as a brutal blood dog
Gene Hackman is rightly one of the most versatile performers in Hollywood story. But many of them will above all For his brutal, malignant roles, remain in the memory: It is no wonder that he made his breakthrough as a merciless investigator in French Connection.
The role is tailored to him. Doyle lives and breathes the stench of the New York jobber, he drives it. Like a wild dog, he rushes his pack, driven, merciless and without scruples. Hackmans bitten, coarse face, The appearance of an average citizen, under whose jacket a bulldog heart pounded, made it a masterpiece.
This train in Mississippi Burning comes to light even more pronounced because the role of Hackman’s FBI agents is more complex. Rupert Anderson comes from the south, whose white citizens build up their black fellow human beings on trees. He grew up among them it doesn’t take racism so precisely Like to chat with the people on the street and thinks his colleague (Willem Dafoe) for an anemic heritage meter who simply lacks the tapping-nature. But then the collar bursts him too.
In a scene that lost none of their force even after 37 years has, he confronts the racist sheriff Bell (Brad Dourif). He abuses his colleague in frenzied anger and keeps a speech of such a glowing mercilessness that the foresight -bycases immediately fall silent. Anderson sets hate for hate. He would have just as good shot every customer of the restaurant and lit the shop, At least that’s how it works.
Take a look at the scene from Mississippi Burning in English:
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His Oscar role in Clint Eastwoods is mercilessly of similar intensity. When an aging Pistolero (Richard Harris) threatens the calm in his city, the animal man of violence is once again evident: Brutally stable Sheriff Little Bill on the defenseless, an example, beats it together And still humiliates him when he has long been in prison.
But Hackman’s versatility is also evident in this tough role: Little Bill is brutal, yes – but above all to ensure security in his city. He has pity with the prostitutes who hire Desperado like William Munny (Eastwood) from revenge, but prevents them from giving their plans with the weapon.
Like a cruel racist, he lets Munny’s friend Ned (Morgan Freeman) whip and display his body. But he is popular among his peers, he builds a house, he has deep roots in his society that he maintains. Before Clint Eastwood’s figure shoots him, Bill explains: “I didn’t deserve that, I build a house!“ His judge only replies: “What you deserve has nothing to do with it.”
With Gene Hackman we lost one of the greatest actors Hollywoods
The fact that Gene Hackman could credibly embody such figures shows how much talent, how much meaning and reason and humanism slumbered in it. Little Bill is not just a decal, a one -dimensional villain: it is the symptom in which the health of a society is measured.
Doyle is not comparable to the detached detectives of the penny novels: he is a product of his city, driven, passionate, wild, tragic. And FBI agent Anderson, who abuses the racists, This does not make himself a sympathizer: he remains an expression of a difficult truth in the heart of his country.
Due to their complexity, Hackman’s characters never lose force. Perhaps that is why they have an almost traumatic effect on the viewers for decades: Hackman shows them the pure humanity that can be loved and hated at the same time, justifies and in doubt both emotions. Which actor could you say about today? Gene Hackman leaves a hole that Hollywood may never fill again.