Alan J. Pakula

Alan J. Pakula (born April 7, 1928, Bronx, New York, U.S.—died November 19, 1998, Melville, New York) was an American motion-picture director, producer, and screenwriter who evoked exceptional performances from actors and actresses in the 16 films he directed, most notably in three dark, foreboding psychological thrillers: Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974), and All the President’s Men (1976). Pakula examined complex emotions in his films, which often featured themes dealing with fear and the abuse of political power.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

Early life and work

Born into a family of Polish Jewish descent, Pakula grew up on Long Island and in New York City, where his father operated a printing business that he hoped his son would take over. After attending the Bronx High School of Science and the Hill School (a prep school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania), Pakula studied drama at Yale University, graduating in 1948. Moving to Hollywood, he used his father’s connections to get a job in the Warner Brothers cartoon department. Later he served as assistant to Don Hartman, the head of production at Paramount. During that period he also began producing plays for the New York stage.

The first film that Pakula produced was Fear Strikes Out (1957), the psychological biography of baseball player Jimmy Piersall, which starred Anthony Perkins and was directed by Robert Mulligan, with whom Pakula then formed a production company. Pakula then produced and Mulligan directed To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), the moving adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel of the same name, which earned an Academy Award nomination for best picture and for which Gregory Peck won the award for best actor. Pakula and Mulligan continued their collaboration, Pakula as producer and Mulligan as director, on Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), Inside Daisy Clover (1965), Up the Down Staircase (1967), and The Stalking Moon (1968).

In 1969 Pakula directed his first film, The Sterile Cuckoo. Based on a novel by John Nichols, it traced the evolution of a relationship between an eccentric coed (Liza Minnelli) and the young man from another college with whom she falls in love (Wendell Burton). Minnelli’s performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. She was the first of a long line of actors who would find great success under the sensitive direction of Pakula, whose keen psychological insights into character and motivation contributed to his reputation as an “actor’s director.”

Films of the 1970s

Pakula’s second directorial effort, the thriller Klute (1971), cemented his reputation as an important director and remained one of his most highly regarded films. Jane Fonda won an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of a neurotic prostitute who, against her will, becomes emotionally involved with a reserved detective (Donald Sutherland) who is trying to save her from her self-destructive tendencies as well as from a psychotic killer. Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973) was a smaller, less-commercial enterprise, with Maggie Smith and Timothy Bottoms as a couple involved in a September-May romance.

More impressive was The Parallax View (1974), a masterpiece of paranoia that drew on the conspiracy theories associated with the assassination of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy. Warren Beatty played an investigative reporter who uncovers evidence about a group of political assassins following the killing of a senator. He infiltrates their organization, but so sophisticated are their evil machinations that no one believes they exist, despite an ever-increasing number of dead witnesses. As with his previous three films, Pakula produced as well as directed The Parallax View.

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His next effort, All the President’s Men (1976), was an adaptation of the best-selling book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (played in the movie by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, respectively) about the Watergate scandal. Applying the techniques he had developed in Klute and The Parallax View to create an atmosphere of mounting dread (those films and this one are often characterized as Pakulas’s “paranoia” trilogy), Pakula came up with a peerless real-life political thriller. All the President’s Men received an Academy Award nomination for best picture, and Pakula earned his only nomination for best director, while William Goldman won for his screenplay, and Jason Robards captured the best supporting actor award.

On the heels of that critical and financial success, Pakula’s Comes a Horseman (1978) was viewed by some as a major disappointment. It was a slow, if beautifully photographed, psychological western set in post-World War II Montana. Robards starred as a crusty rancher bent on expanding his spread, and Fonda portrayed his neighbour, who is determined to hold on to her family’s land. Richard Farnsworth was nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting performance. The romantic comedy Starting Over (1979) followed. Adapted from Dan Wakefield’s novel of the same name, it featured Burt Reynolds as a divorced professor who relocates to Boston, where his relationship with a preschool teacher (Jill Clayburgh) keeps getting derailed by the frantic reconciliation attempts of his ex-wife (Candice Bergen). Clayburgh and Bergen were nominated for Academy Awards for best actress and best supporting actress, respectively.

Films of the 1980s

Generally regarded as one of Pakula’s lesser works, Rollover (1981), a thriller about high finance, paired Fonda with Kris Kristofferson. However, his next film, Sophie’s Choice (1982), was one of his best as a director. Adapted from William Styron’s award-winning novel, it featured Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning performance as a Holocaust survivor whose postwar life in Brooklyn has been irrevocably damaged by her concentration-camp experiences. Pakula’s screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.

The psychological thriller Dream Lover (1986) failed at the box office and with most critics. Orphans (1987), an intriguing “small” drama adapted from his own play by Lyle Kessler, centred on a rich drunk (Albert Finney) who is snatched by a pair of orphaned brothers (Matthew Modine and Kevin Anderson) and taken to their home, where he slowly but steadily changes their lives. In the less-than-well-received See You in the Morning (1989), Jeff Bridges and Alice Krige played a recently married couple whose ex-spouses (Farrah Fawcett and David Dukes) and children (Macaulay Culkin, Drew Barrymore, and Lukas Haas) conspire to make their transition a bumpy one.

Films of the 1990s

Presumed Innocent (1990), an adaptation of Scott Turow’s best-selling thriller, was a return to form for Pakula. Harrison Ford starred as an attorney who has been charged with the murder of his former assistant, with whom he had an affair. Pakula (who cowrote the screenplay) allowed the clever plot to unravel effectively and made the most of a strong supporting cast (Bonnie Bedelia, Brian Dennehy, Raul Julia, Greta Scacchi). But Pakula stumbled with his next film, Consenting Adults (1992), which was generally regarded as overly complicated and implausible. He then wrote, directed, and produced The Pelican Brief (1993), which starred Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. It was a big commercial hit but failed to impress the critics.

Pakula’s final directing effort was The Devil’s Own (1997), a well-made thriller starring Ford as a New York City police detective who unwittingly takes in a boarder (Brad Pitt) who turns out to be an extremely lethal Irish terrorist. The film demonstrated that Pakula was still able to work effectively with major stars in a commercial genre. He was soon afterward killed in an automobile accident on the Long Island Expressway.