a bit more on Charlton Heston

Last night Jessica and I watched the TCM Private Screenings interview with Charlton Heston. To my astonishment Heston reiterated exactly the thing I had written yesterday afternoon about the air of the great men that he played clinging to him. He closed the interview with a passage of Prospero from The Tempest that was poignant, to say the least.

Dave Kehr of the New York Times has a terrific memorial statement about Heston on his blog.

Kehr also provides a quote from Michel Mourlet, which is worth reproducing here.

The full Mourlet quote, as reproduced in “Cahiers du Cinema: The 1960s”:

“Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any film being enough to instill beauty. The pent-up violence expressed by the somber phosphorescence of his eyes, his eagle’s profile, the imperious arch of his eyebrows, the hard, bitter curve of his lips, the stupendous strength of his torso - this is what he has been given, and what not even the worst of directors can debase. It is in this sense that one can say that Charlton Heston, by his very existence and regardless of the film he is in, provides a more accurate definition of the cinema than films like “Hiroshima mon amour” or “Citizen Kane,” films whose aesthetic either ignores or repudiates Charlton Heston. Through him, mise en scène can confront the most intense of conflicts and settle them with the contempt of a god imprisoned, quivering with muted rage.”

on Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston's death came as kind of a blow to me. The reaction is different than hearing that Betty Hutton or even Katharine Hepburn has passed on; you see, neither of them are Moses. Heston played a few noble-yet-manly men over the course of his career, and there was always something iconic about those roles that followed him around, even when he wasn't acting. As a guy growing up thinking that this kind of character is worthy of admiration and aspiration, Heston's death is something akin to the day you see your own father in a wheelchair. It just breaks something inside of you.

There is a great deal of shame to be placed on press organizations who discuss his active involvement in the civil rights movement as entirely anathema to his work with the NRA, as if no one could possibly believe in private gun ownership and civil rights at the same time. It just goes to show how black and white our news organizations really see the world. Just because there are two political parties, they assume that there are only two kinds of people.

I tend to believe that Heston wasn't simply a black and white individual. Look no further than his legendary turn as Mike Vargas in Touch of Evil. Not only did Heston champion Welles as the director, he took on a character whose identity and motivations delve deeply into the metanarrative field of racial identity and social complacency.

Touch of Evil was no chump move by a party-line activist actor. You see, Charlton Heston was nobody's fool.