Hiram Keller

In Satyricon (1969), Hiram Keller’s Ascilto looks pleased with himself, and Keller makes that vulgar self-satisfaction easy to read. Federico Fellini gives him plenty of competition in a film crowded with strange faces, elaborate sets and costumes worth inspecting. His coarseness is appropriate to the part, and we would not mistake a character’s unpleasantness for a failure of acting.

The difficulty comes when the characters have to talk. Alongside Martin Potter’s Encolpio and Max Born’s Gitone, Keller struggles against stiff dialogue and dubbing that keeps making itself heard. We were bored by the static exchanges, because the people speaking gave us so little reason to care about them. The dialogue and dubbing handicap all three actors, so blaming Keller alone would miss what is going wrong. Keller’s physical presence helps Fellini populate his world, but cannot make the wandering story more involving.

After that debut came a run of European films, chiefly Italian, through the mid-1970s, with leading parts as well as supporting ones. Antonio Margheriti cast him opposite Jane Birkin as Lord James MacGrieff in Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye (1973). He played Dr Ben Land in Lifespan (1975), a science-fiction thriller also featuring Klaus Kinski, and appeared in Catherine Breillat’s A Real Young Girl (1976). Across his European work, the recurring offer was a striking young man for stories of unease, appetite or trouble. His final screen role came in Countryman (1982).

Fellini remains the main reason Keller is remembered, a narrow basis on which to make large claims for him. We see a useful, distinctive actor in Satyricon, caught in a film that often needs a striking figure more than a convincing person. There is pleasure in that, provided it is enough for an evening. Start there for the faces and costumes; bring patience for the conversation.