WARREN BEATTY--BEAUTY AS A FORM OF IDEALISM

To appreciate an actor you must have seen his work. To know a movie actor, you must have been moved when his films were new. It is impossible now to feel all that Lillian Gish meant before 1920, or Garbo in 1930. The excitement turns camp nearly as quickly as ripe cheese becomes inedible. It is enough to make a picture actor wonder whether it is worth working.

It is a measure of the great stars that they seem to speak privately to the individual stranger: that is their shyness and our sensitivity. For it is essential to the great public show of stardom that it whispers to every pair of eyes in the dark, “Here, here is my secret. For you .” The secret shines like a gift; the same offer of knowledge and privilege is made in love or seduction. The viewer’s enormous desire has been recognized, but the trick is to let him or her believe that no one else has noticed their need.

It is all desire at the movies--wanting to get on the screen. Suppose Warren had been drawn to movies once for no better reason than to get into that fame and to meet women? When the public thinks of him now they feel the undertow of his seductiveness, his longing to be secret.

There is no welling up of imminent merriment and affection, as there is for Nicholson. There is not the amused respect accorded to Clint Eastwood, the securely unimaginative Clint, safe in his timidity. When Beatty’s films are thought of it is in scenes of sexual allure--the orgasm in death in “Bonnie and Clyde” (so stroked by photography and cutting), Julie Christie going under the table in “Shampoo,” or even a poster picture, the angel of death and sex in “Heaven Can Wait.”

His weight does not fluctuate. He has resisted anything like his father’s weakness for peanuts. He has not rivaled the Brando huge with dismay and idleness, likely to be “taken” against his will by scandal sheet photographers at airports. He has disdained being a Jack Nicholson, prophet of commonness at $4 to $6 million a movie, prepared to let his lovely gut hang out in view of the camera. It is hard to imagine Warren doing what Robert De Niro did for “Raging Bull,” stuffing himself for the character. What is most special about Beatty’s face is still that it is not haunted. It is the face of someone who thinks well of himself, without being a fool.

This is where physical well-being and thinking well of oneself come together. For in movies, beauty is inseparable from moral worth. It is a form of idealism; we know it is irrational and contrary to life’s evidence, but we adhere to it helplessly. We think beauties reach the greatest heights of passion and compassion. We think Garbo’s elevated face was the imprint of her fineness. And so Garbo did not play Mother Courage or Baby Jane, and she retired from pictures when this idealism put its greatest test on photography.

One of the most intriguing implications in Warren Beatty’s career is that he persists in being a star, but worries at it, and would therefore often rather not work, not be seen. He is like a man who makes a great quest for treasure, but who has an urge to back away at the threshold--as if he knew the quest was more precious than the jewels and the gold.