Curtis Hanson makes complicated stories clear by giving us people worth following. We rate him highly for his patient work with actors, though L.A. Confidential also shows how unevenly that attention can be shared.
Fi1m perspective
A change in someone’s manner can matter as much as a clue in Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997). He keeps us watching the people while we try to solve the case. Kevin Spacey’s Jack Vincennes enjoys an audience, and that ease lets the film relax without losing our attention. We laughed at Danny DeVito’s Sid Hudgens because his grubby humour interrupts all that hard-man seriousness.
Hanson worked through B-thrillers in the 1980s, with The Bedroom Window (1987) marking a growing assurance in suspense. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and The River Wild (1994) brought wider recognition. His grounding in suspense helps explain the precision of his storytelling, but actors remain central to it. He adapts his methods to each setting and cast, giving performers room to work.
In L.A. Confidential, he and co-writer Brian Helgeland make James Ellroy’s crowded mystery intelligible without tidying away its complications. The men’s weaknesses help us follow the corruption; information arrives with a reason to care about it. Cinematographer Dante Spinotti makes 1950s Los Angeles attractive enough for violence to disturb the view. Production designer Jeannine Oppewall gives the period surroundings a solidity that lets the actors seem at home there. Hanson keeps those actors in charge, even when there is plenty else to look at.
That attention is not distributed fairly. Kim Basinger makes Lynn Bracken feel like a person despite a film too interested in how she looks. Hanson and Helgeland let the men contradict themselves more freely, leaving her less room to surprise us. A little more of that curiosity about her would have made an already persuasive film richer.
The move into the literate comedy-drama of Wonder Boys (2000), then 8 Mile (2002) with Eminem, makes sense for a director so attentive to performance. The settings change; his interest in finding the right conditions for an actor does not. Some critics have treated that adaptability as evidence of a journeyman; we think it takes skill to make different kinds of story work. Start with L.A. Confidential, but pay as much attention to the people as to the case.
Biography
Curtis Hanson was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Reno, Nevada, he grew up in Los Angeles. After leaving high school he worked as a photographer and editor for Cinema magazine before moving into screenwriting and directing.
Hanson directed the psychological thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and the action film The River Wild (1994). He achieved widespread recognition with the neo-noir crime film L.A. Confidential (1997), which he also co-wrote and produced; the screenplay, written with Brian Helgeland, won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
His later films include Wonder Boys (2000), 8 Mile (2002) and In Her Shoes (2005). Hanson died in 2016.
