No offense taken: Danny DeVito in Batman Returns, Bradley Cooper in Maestro, and Nicole Kidman in The Hours
Leonard Bernstein has a «beautiful, big nose,» according to his children, who protected the prosthetic Bradley Cooper wears in his new biopic Maestro. Other observers were less kind. Cooper, who is not Jewish, directed the film and also played the legendary conductor, a role that Jake Gyllenhaal (whose mother is Jewish) has long hoped to play.
He «stole» it from his rival, Cooper was heavily criticized for his so-called «Jewish face» due to his decision to enhance his resemblance to Bernstein with a pointy — and apparently somewhat exaggerated — fake schnoz.
There was a time when any classic actor who played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice would have putty slapped on the nose, but that's in the same era when blackface was the norm for Othello's interpretation. Times have changed. In the delicate realm of crossing any ethnic line in casting, the only sure way to create problems in Jewish roles is to go straight with a big nose. Helen Mirren also caused a bit of a buzz on the matter when she recently filmed another biopic with heavy prosthetics as Golda Meir and received criticism for it from Maureen Lipman.
Aside from the debate about treating Jews as Jews, gays as gays, etc. before they are put to sleep far away, Cooper's face is a more routine issue. Was a fake nose in movies ever a good idea? Like accents, wigs, and thick suits, this is one of those elements of performance that is easily ridiculed by critics. If it's bad, you can't see beyond that. Even if it's good, it's a bit like cheating. But then any action is a deception, so why not use all available tools?
The most infamous of all cinematic prosthetic noses turned out to be an Oscar winner, but that was touch and go. When Nicole Kidman landed the role of Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), according to book author Michael Cunningham, everyone was nervous about the «sabotage of her beauty» — especially Harvey Weinstein, who helped finance the film through Miramax and got knocked down. a fight with producer Scott Rudin when Weinstein saw what they were going to do with Kidman's proboscis. “I paid a million dollars for this girl and nobody knows who she is,” Weinstein was supposed to complain.
Infamous prosthesis: Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Photo: Allstar Picture Library Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo
The idea did not come from Kidman herself, but from her experienced costume designer Ann Roth. «Honestly, I can't put a 1917 hat on your head with a nose like that,» Roth originally said of Kidman's natural nose. There was another reason. Kidman recently broke up with Tom Cruise and was in an emotionally unstable state. “We need to do something about your face,” Roth decided, counting on the nose to be a “push, push” that would really help Kidman transform both externally and internally for this role.
For all the acclaim she received as Woolf, that nose was the subject of major criticism during that awards season: if Kidman had lost Best Actress to Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven or Renee Zellweger in Chicago, she would probably could blame him. However, in this case, it was considered her timing and she led them to victory. «Oscar gets… on the nose, Nicole Kidman,» joked Denzel Washington, opening the envelope.
added: Steve Carell was nominated for an Oscar for his role as John Dupont in Foxcatcher
Cooper might endure a lot of preemptive scorn right now, but there are a bunch of nose-augmented performances you could reassuringly point to, including others that have won Oscars for biopics (say, Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady). Sticking one often makes a statement in itself: «Look, I'm disappearing into this piece, you barely recognize me!». Such was the case with Steve Carell in Foxcatcher (2014) as creepy billionaire John Dupont. It took everyone by surprise as a dramatic performance, and to mark the change from his past comedic work, he needed that help, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hair, in addition to Carell's nomination for Best Actor.
The Academy's makeup department loves the focus on making famous actors almost unrecognizable — see also the Penguins couple, Danny DeVito in Batman Returns and Colin Farrell in Batman.
Gary Oldman's turn as Herman J. Mankiewicz in «Munk» (2020) is an interesting counterexample, especially as he has been criticized by David Baddiel and others for being a non-Jew who took on the role of the Jewish screenwriter for «Citizen Kane» . In fact, Oldman wanted to use a fake nose for the role, which is perhaps not surprising given how many of his most famous performances have been under mountains of rubber. He's a glutton for hours of prosthetic punishment—think of him as the aged Count in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), the mutilated Mason Verger in Hannibal (2001) and, naturally, in his own Oscar-winning role as Churchill in Darkest Hour. (2017).
Orson Welles wore a fake nose to play King Saul in David and Goliath. Photo: Album/Alamy Stock Photo
Munck's director, David Fincher, disagreed, wanting something more naturalistic from Oldman: «There can be no trickery between us and you,» he argued. Curiously, there is a fake nose in this film, but it belongs to Tom Burke, not 25-year-old Orson Welles.
It's playfully appropriate given Wells' lifelong obsession with wearing them. He felt that his own was too small, so he wore it in Kane and in virtually all of his subsequent appearances. They ran the gamut from the bulging, arthritic he wore as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight (1965) to his rough hook as Cardinal Woolsey in A Man for All Seasons (1966) and a whole host of dubious «ethnic — dressed for example, the absolute wheeze as King Saul in David and Goliath (1960).
Welles's devotion to Shakespeare made it only a matter of time before he could play Shylock on screen — which he did in a 1969 short, partly lost to us. Surviving footage shows him unrestrained, with tousled hair and a large (though thankfully not hooked) appendage.
This particular, enduring tradition of the «Jewish face» goes back to Richard Burbage and Edmund Keane. But now it is inextricably linked to the play's anti-Semitism discourse, which means that Shylock is at the top of the list of Jewish roles that no non-Jew would dare approach. Suffice it to say that we will not hear Cooper's phrase: «If you prick us, we will not bleed?» coming soon.
Even his Leonard Bernstein is in the line of fire — much more now with a schnoz than he and the Maestro would be without it. Under this thing, Cooper could put on a show of his life, but the nose will draw all the attention to itself, while unsettling many other people.
The Maestro hits theaters in November
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