Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

The Golden Coach (Photofest)

Mamma Roma: The Films of Anna Magnani

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
“She’d probably spent the night in bars,” said filmmaker Jean Renoir, remembering Anna Magnani, star of his thrilling valentine to acting and the theater, The Golden Coach. Magnani, he explained, would arrive at the set haggard and drawn, and wonder how they could possibly shoot with her looking so wretched......
Those lips

Lulu at Lacma

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
In her sharp, immensely enjoyable collection of essays, Lulu in Hollywood, silent-film star Louise Brooks refers repeatedly to the sorry state of the beautiful woman who “knows she’s dumb,” counting herself as just such an unfortunate (alongside Marlene Dietrich, whom she refers to as “that contraption”). It’s one of Brooks’......
Born Yesterday

Full of Life: The Films of Judy Holliday

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
It’s 1950, and postwar America is seething with anxieties over, among other things, women reluctant to relinquish economic powers tasted during the war years, the conflict between progressive politics and commie-hating paranoia, and the common man’s transition from national hero to boom-time drone. Enter Born Yesterday, directed by George Cukor......

Ready for Her Close-Up

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
Last year I quit my job as a film critic and an editor at the Weekly to move with my husband, George, to the small town of Hanover, New Hampshire, where he took an English professorship at Dartmouth College. Among other things, I soon found myself missing the potential for......
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Triple Luxe

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
Photo by Leah Adams It’s the finals at the 2004 World Figure Skating Championships, and Bulgarian ice dancers and gold-medal contenders Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski are having the skate of their lives. The two have just nailed an intricate lift and are flying intertwined over the ice, when an......

Hassan Christopher: Moving Force

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
Photo by Tom Johnson “When you say the word ‘red,’” says a dancer in choreographer Hassan Christopher’s work in progress, Whispers, “I hear ‘vermilion.’” The line could easily be a motto for Christopher, who, in his quest to pinpoint the intersections of public and private lives, looks at everyday items......
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Romance vs. Reality

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
Photo by Slobodan Dimitrov Boze Hadleigh’s speaking voice is a mélange of proper grammar and crisp enunciation, softened by a subtle, singsongy hint of Continental origins. On the phone, the longtime entertainment journalist gives the impression of an older, distinguished gentleman, and when he offers his Beverly Hills address as......
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Charlie's Clotheshorses

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
Take a good look at the trailer for the upcoming Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and you’ll see that among the many fashions adorning Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu (a staggering 15 getups apiece, by a freeze-frame count), there is one particular ensemble that not only makes sophisticated use......

O Pioneer!

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
“If one is going to be in the movie business,” Dorothy Arzner once remarked, “one should be a director. He is the one who tells everyone what to do. In fact, he is the whole world.” Given that Arzner, whose oeuvre spans the years 1927 through 1943, still stands as......

Stranded and Swept Aside

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
By all appearances, the writer Sherman Alexie is the kind of artist one might call driven. At 36 years old, he has published books of poetry, novels and short stories. He‘s done standup comedy, prevailed at live poetry tournaments and participated in a televised dialogue on race with President Clinton......