1973: Badlands (+producer, role as architect). 1978: Days of Heaven.
1969: Lanton Mills (short) (scenarist/scriptwriter). 1972: Pocket Money (Rosenberg) (scenarist/scriptwriter). 1974: The Gravy Train (co-scenarist/scriptwriter, under pseudonym David Whitney). 1982: Deadhead Miles (Zimmerman) (co-scenarist/scriptwriter) (filmed 1970).
Journalist for Newsweek, Life, and the New Yorker, late 1960s; lecturer in philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1968; directed first feature, Badlands, 1973.
Waco, Texas, 30 November 1943.
Harvard University, B.A., 1966; Oxford University on Rhodes Scholarship; Center for Advanced Film Studies, American Film Institute, 1969.
Though he has directed only two feature films, Terrence Malick has received the kind of critical attention normally reserved for more experienced and prolific filmmakers. His career reflects a commitment to quality instead of quantity?an unusual and not always profitable gamble in the film industry.
In 1972, Malick wrote the screenplay for Pocket Money, which starred Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, a film memorable more for character study than story. The following year, Malick made his first feature, Badlands. The film was an amazing debut. Based loosely on the sensational Starkweather-Furgate murder spree, Badlands concerns Kit Carruthers, a twenty-five-year-old James Dean look-alike, and Holly Sargis, his fifteen-year-old girlfriend. After murdering Holly's father, they begin a flight across the northeastern United States, killing five others along the way.
This disturbing and beautiful film is narrated by Holly (Sissy Spacek), who unemotionally describes the couple's actions and feelings. Her partner in crime, Kit (Martin Sheen), is a likeable, unpredictable, and romantic killer who is so confident of his place in American history as a celebrity that he marks the spot where he is arrested, and gives away his possessions as souvenirs to police officers.
Days of Heaven, Malick's long-awaited second feature, was released five years later. The film was critically acclaimed in the United States, and Malick was named best director at the Cannes Film Festival. Days of Heaven is a homage to silent films (the director even includes a glimpse of Chaplin's work), with stunning visual images and little dialogue. Moving very slowly at first, the film's pace gradually accelerates as the tension heightens. Its plot and style elaborate on that of Badlands: the flight of two lovers following a murder, and the use of unemotional narration and off-beat characterizations.
Malick now lives in Paris, and as critics wait for his next endeavor, some wonder how the director will remain profitable to any studio with his lapses between projects, his aversion to interviews, and his refusal to help in the marketing of his films. Paramount, however, is confident of Malick's value, and has continued to send the director scripts plus a yearly stipend.
In the 1990s, Malick has not revived his career, perhaps because conditions within the industry would make it difficult for him to continue his attempts to create an American art cinema. Unlike Welles, whose lack of productivity must be traced in large measure to studio hostility to his methods and work, Malick cannot blame anyone but himself for a talent and interests that have been wasted now for almost two decades.?ALEXA FOREMAN and R. BARTON PALMER