• Icon: The legendary actor Kirk Douglas dies at 103
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  • Opinion of Borja Cobeaga. Luckily in Spain it has not been called much 'Kiriki' Douglas
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  • Reactions: Hollywood mourns the loss Kirk Douglas, the last icon of his golden age

Three times an Oscar nominee, he had to settle for an honorary Oscar that he was awarded in 1996, for half a century in the service of the seventh art. He had no luck at the Hollywood Academy gala, but his career, which encompasses almost as many titles as the years he lived, speaks for itself. That characteristic dimple in his chin gave him luck from the beginning.

'The strange case of Martha Ivers' (1946): A debut in style

Kirk Douglas's career could not start with a better foot. Recommended by Lauren Bacall to producer Hal B. Wallis, she was able to become the acoustic husband of a superstar like Barbara Stanwyck in this stormy melodrama noir directed by Lewis Milestone. Both form a marriage of powerful, as rich as corrupt: she is a rich industrialist, and he candidate for mayor in a small town, Iverstown, where they dominate the situation until a childhood friend appears uncovering the crime they are linked. A vision of the privileged class that the witch hunters did not like, with whom Douglas would see them again in the future.

'Return to the past' (1947): A classic noir

In any top of the American black cinema that boasts, this classic Jacques Tourneur appears very high in which Kirk Douglas returns to have an evil shine. Robert Mitchum is a detective who flees from the past, and Douglas, the former client who reappears to remind him. Next to them, the beautiful Jane Greer, a silky vamp , with whom Douglas, as with the Stanwyck, would do more than just good crumbs, no matter how much he was already married to the suffered Diana Love Dill. With the laconic Mitchum, there was no such good tuning. Douglas tried to steal the scenes with his most visceral style, but Mitchum, a relaxed pot smoker, would not let himself.

'The mud idol' (1949): A star has been born

Kirk Douglas definitely agreed to stardom with this portrait of a boxer willing to do anything to succeed, with which he won his first Oscar nomination . A Stanley Kramer production, directed by Mark Robson, in which Douglas, in full physical form, also makes clear his dramatic gifts, which stand out when he embodies, as he would do so often, men internally shaken by an ungovernable ambition. Douglas left his face in the ring, but the Oscar went to veteran Broderick Crawford, for The politician .

'The great carnival' (1951): Eye with the press

At Billy Wilder's orders, Kirk Douglas became a journalist, come down and totally unscrupulous, a strange thing in the profession, which he sees in the news of an Indian trapped in a mine the report of his life. He will not recourse to anything to delay the rescue, and make it more spectacular, turning the news into The Great Carnival. Rejected by the public in its day for its cynicism, it was raised by critics, and ended up becoming a classic that is used every time the always battered ethical limits of journalism are discussed.

'Captives of evil' (1952): Cinema within the cinema

Vincente Minnelli directed him for the first time in one of the great classics about Hollywood seen from within: Douglas is a producer who, determined to raise a movie, calls his former collaborators, who will be reluctant. A series of flashbacks will explain why. The film earned him his second Oscar nomination, which again escaped him. This time it was for Gary Cooper of Solo in the face of danger , which he also deserved.

'20 .000 leagues of underwater travel '(1954): A classic Disney

One of Walt Disney's most celebrated productions with flesh and blood actors, which brought Kirk Douglas substantial revenues. Based on the Juvenile literature classic by Jules Verne, with James Mason as Captain Nemo, and Douglas on the tanned skin of the whaler Ned Land, who heads the expedition to clear up a series of mysterious sinking. It was a movie for children, but Douglas, reading the script, complained that there were no scenes in the company of beautiful women, nor enough action scenes in which he could demonstrate his always great physical form, and they had to content him. There was no other.

'The madman with red hair' (1956): The last lost Oscar

His incarnation of Vincent Van Gogh, again under the baton of Vincente Minnelli, earned him a third, last, and fruitless Oscar nomination (he took it off Yul Brinner, for The King and I ). The film is a great show on CinemaScope, produced by MGM, which was filmed in many of the European places where the events occurred, and focuses on the painter's relationship with Paul Gauguin (the Oscar-winning Anthony Quinn) in Arles. The resemblance to the painter was such that the oldest inhabitants of Auvers-sur-Oise, the town where he took his own life in 1890, believed he had returned. Little Michael Douglas, sitting in the audience, had a very bad time when he saw his father cutting his ear.

'Paths of Glory' (1957): Infinite Trenches

Now that 1917, by Sam Mendes, points high at the Oscars, it is worth remembering what remains the best approach to the trenches of the First World War: this great and stark masterpiece of Stanley Kubrick in which Douglas wore the colonel's uniform Dax, who defends three of his men in a mock war council, after one of those absurd massacres where the soldiers were cannon fodder. Based on little honorable real events, the anti-war burden of this allegation caused the film to be banned in countries such as France and Spain, where it was not released until 1975 and 1977, respectively.

'The Vikings' (1958): One of Vikings

A spectacular Technicolor adventure with tremendous tints of Shakespearean tragedy, again with Richard Fleischer at the controls, filmed with maximum verism in Norwegian lands and in Brittany. Douglas, who had already produced Paths of Glory, among others, also participated as a producer in this film that made his dream of embodying a Viking warrior come true. There was no one of Vikings in Hollywood since the time of the silencer, and this was struck by their violence, in which there are no lack of brutal scenes and women never totally safe from being raped.

'Spartacus' (1960): He was Spartacus

His most remembered film, not only for the greatness of this Stanley Kubrick peplum , but for the political burden of the slave rebellion led by Spartacus, which was signed by the screenwriter, chased by McCarthyism , Dalton Trumbo. His inclusion in the credits of the film ended forever with the shameful blacklist that had prevailed in Hollywood, from the 50s until then. But the film did not escape censorship, not only because of its message or its violence, but also because of the famous scene in which Laurence Olivier tries to seduce Tony Curtis, using little subtle metaphors such as "eating oysters" versus "eating snails ».

'Seven Days of May' (1964): Atomic Terror

Specialist in distressing thrillers , John Frankenheimer filmed this tense drama in black and white in which a general plans a coup against the president who, in the Cold War, intends to reach a nuclear disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union. Burt Lancaster, Douglas's old friend, with whom he starred hand in hand Duel of the Titans (1957) and whose friendship would be celebrated again in the festive Other City, Another Law (1986), is the conspirator, and Douglas who discovers the plot and debate between fidelity to his superior and the president-elect.

'The day of the cheats' (1970): Icon of the western

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who had already addressed Douglas in Letter to three wives (1949), had Douglas for the only western of his career. Not surprisingly, the actor had already starred in a few classics of the genre, such as Gallows Road (Raoul Walsh, 1951), Blood River (Howard Hawks, 1952), The Lawless Prairie (King Vidor, 1955) or The Last sunset (Robert Aldrich, 1961), to name a few on this necessarily incomplete list. Once again, it is a portrait of human greed, embodied by Douglas, in the skin of a bandit who aspires to escape from the prison to retrieve his booty, hidden in a nest of rattlesnakes, but also by Henry Fonda, prison warden, who will not miss the opportunity to finance a golden retirement in Mexico.

'The Justices of the West' (1975). Aspiring Director

After Pata de Palo (1973), an entertaining variation of Treasure Island , Kirk Douglas moved back behind the camera to direct this remarkable western in which he gives life to a sheriff determined to capture a famous bandit (Bruce Dern ), who intends to use the Senate in his political career. Listed as a revisionist western, it is part of those titles with which Hollywood was trying to counteract the rise of Western spaghetti, and stands out once again for its criticism of the political class. But Douglas already disinterested in the subject, and did not direct again.

'The Fury' (1978): Psychic Powers

It is not one of the most remembered films of Brian De Palma , who had just directed the successful Carrie , and began to handle large budgets. But it is one of the most outstanding titles of the last stretch of Douglas's career, along with The Man from Rio Nevado (George Miller, 1982), and it is memorable in several aspects. It is one of the few incursions into the fantasy of Douglas, and this has as an adversary John Cassavetes . Both begin working side by side as government agents specialized in psychic powers, and those kinds of issues that gave fame to De Palma, the most celebrated heir to Hitchcock's cinema.

'Family things' (2003): The entire clan

And finally, this nice comedy by Fred Schepisi, which is enjoyed, above all, for bringing together the Douglas clan. In addition to the patriarch, there was his wife, Diana Douglas, who died in 1992, from which he divorced in 1951, due to his multiple infidelities with voluptuous setmates, although they always remained on good terms; Michael Douglas, the no less famous son they both had in 1944, and Cameron Douglas, the wayward grandson, who went to prison for methamphetamine trafficking. A pleasure to see you all together having fun as the members of the dysfunctional Gromberg family.

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