Arthur Penn

Born on September 27, 1922 in Philadelphia (United States), Arthur Penn was the son of a watch manufacturer and a nurse who divorced when he was only 3 years old. Arthur and his older brother Irving—later a famous photographer—went to live with his mother in New York and New Jersey. Penn had an unhappy childhood that he compared to that of Antoine Doinel, the highly celebrated protagonist of François Truffaut ‘s The Four Hundred Blows .

In high school he became interested in the theater. In 1943, Arthur Penn enlisted in the army, where he organized a theater group with other soldiers. After the war, he was studying at the Universities of Perugia and Florence, in Italy. Intrigued by Konstantin Stanislavski’s new realistic methods of acting, he went to study at the famous Actors Studio in New York.

Arthur Penn began working in television as a plant manager at the new NBC studios. In 1953, Fred Coe , a producer who was a close friend of his because they had both met in the army, gave him his first directing job on the experimental series The Gulf Playhouse , because the actors spoke directly to the camera. At that time Penn was also working as a theater director of Broadway productions.

Around that time, Arthur Penn fell in love with Peggy Maurer, a young actress who had attended one of his castings for a television show. Both have been married 54 years and had two children.

The aforementioned Fred Coe was the one who produced Arthur Penn’s first feature film, El Zurdo , a psychological western, based on a work by Gore Vidal , which starred Paul Newman as Billy ‘The Kid’. Various elements were already present in the film that would be repeated throughout Penn’s filmography, since the protagonist was an immature young man who resorted to violence to rebel against the system. Curiously, the tape went almost unnoticed on the billboards in the United States, but was very successful in Europe. It would not be the first time, since Penn was destined to arouse more passions in the Old Continent than in his own country.

In the United States, he managed to succeed with his second feature film, The Miracle of Anna Sullivan , an adaptation of a play by William Gibson . She decided to cast Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke , the same actresses who had starred in the Broadway stage production. Both were awarded Oscars, while Penn had to settle for the nomination.

Penn started shooting The Train , but its leading man, Burt Lancaster , demanded that he be fired and was replaced by John Frankenheimer . After Harassed, with Warren Beatty , he directed one of his best films, The Human Pack , adapted from a novel by Horton Foote (adapted by none other than Lillian Hellman ), with Marlon Brando , Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. A young man escapes from prison and returns to his hometown in Texas, where his wife has an affair with the son of the richest man in town. The sheriff tries unsuccessfully to keep order. In this iconic title, Penn depicts the southern society of his country, showing how easily violence can break out when everything seems to be going well.

Without a doubt, that was the most inspiring moment of Penn’s career, who went on to direct none other than Bonnie and Clyde , a masterpiece based on the criminal career of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, two famous bank robbers from the 1930s. It featured a solid script by David Newman and Robert Benton , and a cast of actors—Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway , Gene Hackman —who seemed born to embody their characters.

From that moment on, Penn decided that he preferred to make small, very personal films, which have a lot to do with the subsequent emergence of independent cinema in the 1980s and 1990s . Alicia’s Restaurant is based on a song by folk musician Arlo Guthrie , whom he cast as the lead. The protagonist is another young outsider, anti-establishment, who with a guitarist friend travels to the restaurant run by Alicia, which will become her usual refuge.

In Little Big Man , Jack Crabge, a 121-year-old man, recalls his journey in the Wild West, in the days of General Custer. The film is part of the revisionist current of demystification of the characters extolled by traditional westerns, criticizing Custer and the Seventh Cavalry, and by extension the US army that was fighting in the Vietnam War at that time.

In the 1970s, Penn directed a great thriller, Night Moves , with Gene Hackman and a then-very young Melanie Griffith , and collaborated on the documentary film Visions of Eight , about the Munich Olympics. He was also responsible for Missouri , proper western with Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson . In the 80s, his wake faded, with films, Georgia and Double Agent in Berlin , correct but light years away from the best titles in his filmography. He was also an executive producer on the Law & Order series .