Oscar Profile #375: Bruce Beresford

Born August 16, 1940 in Sydney, Australia, Bruce Beresford was the son of an electrical goods salesman and his homemaker wife. Interested in film making from an early age, he made several short films beginning in 1959 while still in his teens. Having graduated from the University of Sydney in 1964, he moved to England where he continued to make short films through 1980 when he returned to Australia. His first Australian film was 1972’s The Adventures of Barry McKenzie which he directed after co-writing it with Barry Humphries. It was the first Australian film to make more than a million dollars at the Australian box office. A sequel followed two years later

Beresford directed several more Australian films before breaking out internationally with 1980’s Breaker Morant which would earn ten Australian Film Institute awards out of twelve nominations, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay co-written by Beresford.

The director’s first Hollywood film was 1983’s Tender Mercies which he became attached to after numerous Hollywood directors had turned it down. The film would receive five Oscar nominations including Best Picture and director and win two, for Robert Duvall’s performance and Horton Foote’s Original Screenplay.

Beresford’s next important film was 1986’s Crimes of the Heart starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek as sisters. It earned Oscar nominations for Best Actress (Spacek), Supporting Actress (Tess Harper) and Adapted Screenplay by Beth Henley. Three years later came the film Beresford is best known for, Driving Miss Daisy, which won Oscars for Best Picture, Actress (Jessica Tandy), Adapted Screenplay (Alfred Uhry) and Makeup, as well as five other nominations, though oddly not one for Beresford.

Not one to repeat himself, Berseford’s prolific 1990s output covered such topics as an educated black man in Nigeria of the 1920s in Mister Johnson; a Jesuit priest in 17th Century Canada in Black Robe; an unconventional modern South Carolina family in Rich in Love, British imperialism in A Good Man in Africa; a woman on death row in Last Dance and women in a World War II Japanese prison in Paradise Road. He followed the same pattern in the first decade of the 21st Century with such diverse films as Double Jeopardy based on a best-selling American mystery; Bride of the Wild about the life of Alma Mahler; Evelyn about parental rights in 1950s Ireland and Mao’s Last Dancer about the defection of a Chinese ballet dancer in 1970s Texas.

More recently, Beresford has been directing films for television, most notably episodes of the 2013 mini-series, Bonnie and Clyde and the 2016 reboot of the 1970s mini-series, Roots. His latest work, in post-production, is Ladies in Black, a comedy set in a Sydney department store in 1959. Featured in the large cast are such once popular names as Julia Ormand, Vincent Perez and Nicholas Hammond.

Bruce Beresford continues to be a one-of-a-kind internationally renown director who even at the age of 77 shows no signs of slowing down.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

TENDER MERCIES (1983)

Beresford maintains that he got the job of directing the only film for which he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar was because he was the first of more than thirty directors asked to do the film who wanted to do it, jumping at the chance to go to America to make it. Although he praised co-producer/star Robert Duvall’s performance, he found him strange, hostile to everyone on set. Nevertheless, Beresford got great performances, not only from Duvall in his Oscar-winning performance, but also from Tess Harper, Ellen Barkin, Wilford Brimley, Betty Buckley, Paul Gleeson and more.

DRIVING MISS DAISY (1989)

Awards watchers were shocked by Beresford’s lack of a Best Director nomination for the film’s Best Picture Oscar winner, but Beresford himself maintained that the film practically directed itself, that everything was in Alfred Uhry’s script, an adaptation of his play based on childhood memories of his grandmother and her chauffer. Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman were Oscar nominated for their performances, as was Dan Aykroyd in support. Tandy won, but Freeman, considered neck-in-neck with Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July, lost to surprise winner Daniel day-Lewis in My Left Foot.

BLACK ROBE (1991)

Based on Brian Moore’s classic novel about a young Jesuit priest in 17th Century Canada seeking to convert Indians to Catholicism, Beresford’s film earned ten Canadian Genie Award nominations, winning six including Best Picture and Director. It also earned ten nominations from the Australian Film Institute, winning one for its cinematography. Beresford recently said he admired the film’s priest (played by Lothaire Bluteau) immensely even though he was deluded about everything. It was the most successful film made from a novel by Moore, whose The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne may be better known.

EVELYN (2002)

Another award-winning film from Beresford, but one that isn’t as well known is this lovely film about a real-life court case that changed Irish law in the 1950s. Sophie Vavasseur had the title role of Pierce Brosnan’s daughter, who along with her two younger brothers, was taken from their father’s home because his wife left him for another man, moving with him to Australia, leaving him with no visible means of income and because there was no woman in the house. The hard-won case against almost impossible odds led to a happy ending not just for Evelyn’s family, but for families in similar situations all over Ireland.

MAO’S LAST DANCER (2009)

Yet another award-winning Beresford film that isn’t as well known as it should be, this film based on the autobiography of Li Cunxin tells of his grueling apprenticeship as a classical dancer in Communist China and his extraordinary journey from poverty to international stardom after he defects to America, having fallen in love with an American dancer during a state visit. Chi Cao, who won acclaim for his portrayal of Cunxin is the son of two of Cunxin’s former teachers and a principal dancer with Birmingham’s Royal Ballet. Sadly, he has not made another film, but then film career opportunities for classical dancers are rather limited.