The nine-film retrospective “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall,” running from Friday, Aug. 30 through Wednesday, Sept. 4, celebrates the career of this thrillingly unique American actress, who died in July at the age of 75.
Shelley Duvall was 21 years old and selling her artist boyfriend’s paintings out of a van in Houston, Texas when Robert Altman asked her if she wanted to be in a movie. Members of the filmmaker’s entourage, including longtime assistant director Tommy Thompson, had met her at a party a few nights before and told the filmmaker he needed to “get a load of this girl.” Duvall had never acted before; never even considered it, really.
It was visually inspired to pair the lanky, elongated Duvall with stubby, pint-sized misfit Cort. They reunited for Joan Micklin Silver’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “” The Brattle has a rare 16mm print of this little-seen gem, which was produced for the PBS series “The American Short Story” in 1976. Duvall stars as an awkward wallflower coerced by her shallow, debutante cousin into a disastrous haircut as a mean-spirited prank.
It’s not included in the Brattle series, but Duvall’s funniest moments onscreen can be found during her quick cameo in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” playing a free-spirited Rolling Stone reporter who epitomizes all the counterculture good times our stick-in-the-mud protagonist can’t comprehend. Gushing to an annoyed Allen about Bob Dylan lyrics and “Mick’s birthday,” Duvall coins the made-up word “transplendent” to describe her groovy vibes, repeating it ecstatically.
Her work in “The Shining” is so emotionally naked and devoid of vanity, one can understand why people might want to believe that there’s something more going on here than just craft. It goes back to Kael’s quote about Duvall seeming to be herself onscreen. There’s no protective, actorly barrier between ourselves and Wendy’s terror; it’s ugly and unflattering.
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