Shelley Duvall, who died on Thursday at 75, had one of the most thrilling and complicated careers in modern cinema history. Discovered by the director Robert Altman, who became her greatest collaborator, Duvall fell into acting almost by accident. But her screen presence was so beguiling and irresistible that she became one of the defining stars of the 1970s and ’80s.
Her layered and detailed performances in the likes of “3 Women” and “The Shining” made her a celebrated star. And yet she never fit easily into Hollywood, remaining always decidedly herself. In later life, Duvall retreated from acting and the public eye, but left behind a remarkable and diverse body of work. Here’s where you can stream some of her best.
1970
‘Brewster McCloud’
Buy or rent on most major platforms.
When Duvall was discovered by Robert Altman and the actor and casting director Bert Remsen, in Houston, she had no intention of becoming a performer. “I wanted to be a great scientist, not an actress. Madame Curie was my heroine,” she once told Roger Ebert. But Altman and Remsen had other plans, putting her in their strange delight of a movie about a boy, played by Bud Cort, who lives in the Houston Astrodome and wants to build wings to fly. Once she appears onscreen as the tour guide Suzanne, it’s clear she is one of the most unusual presences ever to grace the screen. With her oversize eyelashes, a staple of her personal style that highlighted her features, she’s intriguingly cheerful as she chirps away about diarrhea. Her optimism seduces Cort’s Brewster, and with him the audience, even if she turns out to be fickle.
1971
‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’
Stream on Tubi; buy or rent on most major platforms.
In Duvall’s second film and second collaboration with Altman, she plays Ida, a timid young woman who becomes a prostitute after her husband’s death at the brothel run by the title characters (Warren Beatty and Julie Christie). Even in the early days of Duvall’s career you can see her range. Far from the forward girl she plays in “Brewster,” Ida is nervous about her new role, and in an almost tender scene, Christie coaches her in her new profession.
1975
‘Nashville’
In the opening moments of Altman’s sprawling tale of America and the music industry, Duvall’s character arrives at the airport in Nashville and tells her uncle that her name is no longer Martha, it’s “L.A. Joan.” Her aunt is sick, but she doesn’t care about that. She is in town to troll for rock stars as a groupie and Duvall goes about Martha’s aim with a forthrightness. Duvall did her research. “I went to night clubs where rock stars hung out for about a month, and talked to girls who were groupies, and I learned,” she said.
1977
‘3 Women’
Buy or rent on most major platforms.
The role that is arguably Duvall’s most acclaimed — she won the best actress prize at Cannes — came in Altman’s unnerving thriller in which she plays Millie Lammoreaux, a nurse at a health-care facility for the elderly in the California desert. Millie is initially a deceiving character, and “3 Women” is a tricky film. When she first introduces herself to the newcomer at work, Sissy Spacek’s Pinky Rose, she’s all talk, a friendly presence. Pinky gloms onto Millie, but Millie’s life is not as she claims. The women she chats with as she leaves work don’t listen to her. The man she says she has rejected doesn’t want to date her. There’s bravado with a sadness hiding behind her eyes that Pinky, nefarious herself, both idolizes and eventually exploits. Dialogue was improvised, but even beyond that, Duvall spoke about how personal the character was for her. “I put so much of myself into Millie, especially the parts I don’t care to see, all the vanities and the mundane things, such as Millie’s fondness for tuna‐melt sandwiches, and Scrabble, and the color yellow,” she told The New York Times. “No one likes her because she’s boring, and because all she can talk about is recipes. She lives in a fantasy, writing in her diary things that don’t really happen to her, and totally ignoring the truth — that she really isn’t popular.”
1977
‘Annie Hall’
Stream on Tubi and Fubo; buy or rent on most major platforms.
Duvall pops up in a tiny role in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” as the Rolling Stone reporter Allen’s Alvy Singer dates when he’s trying to get over Diane Keaton’s title character. Even though it’s just a brief appearance, Duvall makes an undeniable impression as she chatters away about Bob Dylan. Alvy, of course, is unimpressed by her daffy passion for her job as she quotes song lyrics. Still, they end up in bed together, where she deadpans that sex with him is a Kafka-esque experience. She’s no Annie Hall, but she’s still utterly cool.
1980
‘The Shining’
Stream on AMC+ and Shudder; buy or rent on most major platforms.
The story of Duvall’s work in “The Shining” comes with plenty of baggage. Cast as Wendy Torrance, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s disturbed writer, Jack, Duvall has long been the subject of reports that she was traumatized by the director Stanley Kubrick during the shoot. However, in an article published this year in The Times, Duvall had only positive things to say about her experience with Kubrick. (In 1980, she told Roger Ebert that it was “almost unbearable. But from other points of view, really very nice, I suppose.”) But there is no doubt that Duvall’s performance is one of the most extraordinary portrayals of terror onscreen. She plays Wendy as a quivering raw nerve from the movie’s opening moments, and, trapped with her husband in that isolated hotel, she continues to fray as his volatility increases. In her bloodshot eyes you can see what amounts to true fear a and desire to protect her son.
1980
‘Popeye’
Stream on Pluto TV; rent or buy on most major platforms.
Altman’s ambitious tale of the comic strip character Popeye the Sailor Man, with its elaborate village set in Malta, was regarded at the time as a box-office flop. But there is perhaps no more perfect casting in film history than Duvall as Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that she was “fated to be the definitive Olive Oyl, the long-legged, construction-booted, occasionally irascible beloved of the one and only Popeye.” With her gangly frame and expressive peepers, Duvall is like an animated character come to life with impeccable physical comedy. She also, however, brings a pathos to Olive Oyl, giving her a deep and lovely longing, best illustrated when she sings the catchy “He Needs Me,” swaying along to the music.
1981
‘Time Bandits’
Stream on Max and the Criterion Channel.
Duvall’s appearance in Terry Gilliam’s delirious time-travel fantasy essentially amounts to a cameo. She and the “Monty Python” veteran Michael Palin play lovers sharing a carriage ride to freedom in the time of Robin Hood. They’re interrupted when the gang of thieves that give the film its title come crashing through the roof of their getaway. (It’s worth noting that Duvall told Ebert she was injured when Gilliam himself jumped through the top of the vehicle and landed on her head.) Duvall slides easily into the mode of romantic lady in peril, lightly bouncing off Palin.
1984
‘Frankenweenie’
Stream on Disney+.
It only made sense that Duvall would end up in a Tim Burton project. Her distinctively off-kilter look was terrific fodder for the emerging director who gravitated toward heroines with enormous eyes. Thus he cast her in his 1984 short, “Frankenweenie,” as the mother of the young boy who resurrects his dead dog. Duvall glides right into Burton’s bizarro retro aesthetic.
1987
‘Roxanne’
Buy or rent on most major platforms.
In “Roxanne,” a modern-day adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac” written by Steve Martin, Duvall serves as the confidant for Martin’s big-nosed romantic, C.D. As Dixie, C.D.’s godsister, she inhabits one of the most down-to-earth characters she has ever played. Dixie is C.D.’s pal and sounding board, encouraging him to confess his true feelings to Roxanne (Daryl Hannah). It’s a near-perfect movie, but you almost just wish Duvall had more to do.
#Stream #Shelley #Duvalls #Greatest #Performances #Shining #Popeye
