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Features
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The Stories of a Saint
After a five-year absence from the big screen, actress Eva Marie Saint is thrilled to be a small part of the gentle rhythms of Because of Winn-Dixie.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
By Brett Buckalew
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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With husband Jeffrey Hayden
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The moviemaking anecdotes related by most actors can range from the delectably scintillating to the irritatingly dull. But when Eva Marie Saint, still strikingly elegant at age 80, and possessed with a zippy conversational energy that would be impressive coming from someone a quarter of her age, excitingly says, ‘Oh, I have to tell you a story,’ it’s safe to say that what you’re about to hear will be packed with enough humor, wisdom, and old-Hollywood folklore to satisfy even the most hard-to-please film buff.
Having snatched an Oscar in her film debut, playing the innocent but tough-minded Edie Doyle, who melts the heart of vulnerable lug Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in Elia Kazan’s timeless moral fable On the Waterfront, Saint embarked on a legendary big screen career. Other highlights include starring in the grand melodrama Raintree County, opposite Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, bringing human nuance to Otto Preminger’s wartime epic Exodus, and, of course, imbuing sexy, intelligent life into double agent Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest.
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Columbia Pictures
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A debut as memorable as Bacall's
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So, considering such a staggering resume, it’s no surprise that Saint is blessed with an uncanny storytelling savvy. On the one hand, this skill reveals itself when she shares personal memories of her movies, like her naïve reaction to the suggestive final images - Eve and Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill hopping into bed, followed by a shot of a train heading into a tunnel - of North by Northwest, when she first saw the film at its premiere, accompanied by her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden. (In a true Hollywood rarity, the two are still married, and have been for over 50 years.)
“I was sitting next to my husband, and I said, when the train goes in, ‘Well, honey, isn’t that a little Freudian?’” Saint recalls, when sitting down for a one-on-one chat with FilmStew. “And my husband said, ‘You got it, honey!’”
On the other hand, the actress’ knowledge of story manifests itself in a far deeper way, as an awareness of what separates the narrative-building powers of a director like Hitchcock from many of today’s far more shallow, imagination-starved filmmakers. “Now, [Hitchcock’s] whole secret was not the thing that happens, not the climax, not the car going through the window, but [everything] leading up to it,” Saint analyzes. “Suspense is the scariest thing!”
“I get so mad at the sound and the crashing [in today’s movies], and you just want stories,” she continues. “That’s what I love about Winn-Dixie.”
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20th Century Fox
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Her latest director, Wayne Wang
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Saint is referring to Because of Winn-Dixie, a family movie that marks her return to the big screen after a five-year absence (she was last seen by movie audiences in the Kim Basinger vehicle I Dreamed of Africa). While the kid-friendly tale of Opal (AnnaSophia Robb), a young girl who brightens the damaged spirits of a sagging Southern town with the help of an abandoned dog, may seem miles away from the mistaken-identity intrigue of North by Northwest, Saint has already been proven right in attesting to the lure of Winn-Dixie’s upbeat story; the book the movie’s based on was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2001 Newberry Honor for children’s books.
In the film, directed by Wayne Wang, an acclaimed observer of tight-knit communities as diverse as the Asian-American women who make up The Joy Luck Club and the multi-racial inhabitants of the cigar shop of Smoke, Saint plays a lonely librarian named Miss Franny, who befriends Opal and her canine pal, Winn-Dixie. It would be viewed as a small part if played by anyone else, but with the grace and depth that Saint brings to it, it becomes a scene-stealing one.
Saint, who has two grown children and three young grandchildren, says she was most moved by the concepts of unity and friendship represented by the character of little Opal. “She’s like a shaker, and in her way, her darling, loving way…she gets these people together,” the actress observes.
Saint herself can be credited with bringing generations together, as her films have survived the test of time to appeal to whole new audiences. In fact, On the Waterfront was given a theatrical re-release just this past December, at LA’s NuArt theater, to mark fifty years of entrancing viewers with its gritty style, and powerful themes of self-worth and personal ethics.
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20th Century Fox
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As librarian Franny
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“As you get older, you’re doing different parts, but the young people, like yourself, they keep you excited, because they’ll see Waterfront, and they’ll want to talk about it,” Saint enthusiastically notes.
“Before, older actors would be forgotten, and films had disintegrated,” she relates. “But it’s great to be part of the scene, by [young people] seeing the movies, and it’s wonderful when they can appreciate an On the Waterfront, because it is a fine movie, and even though it’s black and white, they’ll see it. You know, a lot of people don’t want to see a black and white film.”
If there’s a slight downside to engaging with young cineastes, according to Saint, it’s in encountering the obsessive, fan-boy extremes of their passion. In particular, the actress recalls a four-day Hitchcock seminar at New York University, where - accompanied by other Hitch leading ladies Janet Leigh (Psycho) and Tippi Hedren (The Birds), as well as the filmmaker’s daughter, Patricia Hitchcock – she ended up fielding fan questions about the number of taxi cabs in a single shot from North by Northwest.
“After four days, I wanted to say, ‘You guys and gals, get a life! Get a life! There’s more [to it] than talking about Hitchcock and Cary Grant!’” Saint confesses, laughing while remembering the Q-&-A frenzy. “But they study it,” she concedes of the fans. “They study, reel-by-reel, scene-by-scene, and they end up knowing more than [you].”
“You know, you do it, and you get paid for it, and you have a wonderful time, [but] then you’re on to something else.”
And Saint can look forward - or not - to even more minute hair-splitting from fans when she tackles the role of Martha Kent, Superman alter-ego Clark Kent’s adoptive mother, in director Bryan Singer’s upcoming, eagerly-anticipated Superman movie. The actress has only kind things to say about Singer, who previously bowled over comic book aficionados with two thrilling X-Men movies that stayed remarkably faithful to the source material.
| “He’s energetic, and he loves [the material], and apparently, he’s talked to [director of the ’78 Superman film] Richard Donner about this, because he wanted to be very good about this, and didn’t want to taint it in any way,” Saint gushes. “And I think he knows Christopher Reeve’s wife or mother. And he’s involved in it in a wonderful way, not just, ‘I’m gonna go off and do my thing, and show them.’”
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A believer in the power of a strong auteur, Saint sees no difference between how movies were made back in the Golden Age of the ‘50s, and how they are made now, claiming that every movie, regardless of time period, comes down to a firm presence behind the camera.
“It all has to do with the director, the captain of the ship,” she asserts. “He sets the pace, the mood. If the director is quiet, the set is quiet. If the director is loud, then everybody has to be louder to be heard. Then, it’s a loud set.”
Chatty and bubbling over with enthusiasm, Saint is never loud but can unmistakably be heard - and listened to - with great attention. Naturally, it helps that she knows the value of a good, old-fashioned story.
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