Stunning recreations on screen

HIS STAGE and screen interpretations of the works of Eugene O'Neill may have won critical acclaim for Jason Robards, but he is best remembered in India for the handful of Hollywood-based feature films where the raspy-voiced actor turned in a memorable, even if small supporting performance.

In ``Tora Tora Tora'', the 1970 Japanese-American film about Pearl Harbour, he played a U.S. General reluctant to believe that the Japanese Navy would dare to attack the American stronghold. In the 1971 version of ``Julius Caesar'' he underplayed to striking effect - a contrast to the flashier Mark Antony of Charlton Heston.

But nowhere was he more convincing than as the gruff Ben Bradlee, the real life Executive Editor of The Washington Post, in the film version of ``All the President's Men''. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, had the meatier roles as the investigative duo: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, but it was Robards' stunning recreation of the real Bradlee, down to the loose tie and rolled up sleeves - the man who masterminded the Post's investigation of Watergate -that finally walked away with the Oscar (for supporting actor).

Again, he created something of a record by winning another Oscar the very next year playing the pulp novelist Dashiell Hammett to Vanessa Redgrave's novelist Lillian Hellman in ``Julia'', a true story set in Nazi Germany.

In 1993 Hollywood dared at last to make a feature film about AIDS. Tom Hanks played the victim and Robards had to do the tough role of the outraged law firm boss who sacks Hanks when his ``secret'' is out. This time it was Hanks who took the Oscar.

In mid 2000 the satellite movie channels showed one of his last films: ``A Thousand Acres'', where he plays the tyrannical father of three daughters - Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jennifer Jason Leigh - in an update of Shakespeare's ``King Lear''.

Most recently on the Indian screen, he popped up as a U.S. Congressman slain by a rogue security agent in the Will Smith thriller, ``An Enemy of the State''. It was one of Jason Robards' briefest roles - but played by the gruff voiced pro, it stuck in the mind long after one forgot what the film was all about.

ANAND PARTHASARATHY

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Section  : Entertainment
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