A NOSE FOR TROUBLE

A retrospective for a great screen rebel

August 2, 2007—In France, he's regarded as the gallic De Niro. In the U.S., he's known as, er, the guy from Green Card. Here's hoping that Tough and Tender, a 20-film retrospective starting tomorrow at New York's Walter Reade Theater, will go some way to restoring Gérard Depardieu's stateside reputation. Like his Italian-American counterpart, with whom he starred in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (sadly missing from this lineup), Depardieu made his bones in seventies cinema, bringing the same kind of explosive street energy to the screen. The 59-year-old actor may have mellowed or at least thickened since then—he now owns vineyards, the equivalent perhaps of Bobby D's Nobu investment—but his mesmerizing emotional volatility is on full display in this series. Whether as a thief in Maîtresse (1976), a boxer in Barocco (also '76), or a cop in Police (1985), Depardieu was never afraid to show the vulnerability beneath his peasant farmer's physique. His finest hour, though, may be the death scene in 1990's Cyrano de Bergerac (for which he earned his only Oscar nomination). As Roger Ebert put it: "Perhaps only Depardieu could deliver a dying speech that rises and falls with pathos and defiance for so long, only to end with the assertion that when he is gone, he will be remembered for ... what? His heart? Courage? Nothing half so commonplace: for his panache." It's certainly better than being remembered for Green Card.

Tough and Tender: The Films of Gérard Depardieu, Aug. 3–19, Walter Reade Theater, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, NYC, (212) 875-5600, www.filmlinc.com