Faye Dunaway names her most overlooked movie: “Which not many people saw”
Few female actors embody the spirit of the ‘New Hollywood’ era quite like Faye Dunaway, with her appearance alongside Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde seen by many as the very start of this age of cinema.
A violent, unrelenting crime drama, the movie pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable onscreen. Dunaway’s performance as the eponymous femme fatale was particularly shocking, as women very rarely (if ever) got to do the sorts of things she got to do. Over half a century later, it hasn’t lost any of its power.
Dunaway was far from a one-trick pony, however. The rest of her 1960s included The Arrangement and The Thomas Crown Affair. In the following decade, she brought the world Network, Chinatown, and the Musketeers series, further establishing herself as one of the major players in a radically different industry. Unfortunately, her career began to tailspin shortly thereafter.
She famously didn’t get along with Roman Polanski while they were making Chinatown – which, in hindsight, puts her firmly on the right side of history – and then, in 1981, she released her most infamous picture. Mommie Dearest, a twisted biopic of Joan Crawford from her daughter’s perspective, defined Dunaway’s career for all the wrong reasons. Her unhinged portrayal of the screen legend is hated by some and utterly cherished by others. One way or another, her career was never the same again.
When asked by Pop Culture Classics in 1994 to reflect on her whirlwind career, the Oscar winner spoke about some of the films just mentioned. She called Bonnie and Clyde the performance that was “closest to me,” which, in her mind, was “why it was such a big success for me.” She also chose to highlight a much less prominent part of her filmography. “I do love Puzzle of a Downfall Child, which not many people saw,” she said. “That was perhaps the closest to my heart, in a sense.”
Released in 1970, three years after Dunaway burst onto the scene as the infamous star-crossed criminal, Puzzle of a Downfall Child sees her play a former model telling her life story through a series of flashbacks. The part of Mark, Dunaway’s character’s love interest, is played by Roy Scheider, who was still five years away from hitting the big time with Jaws. The film is something of a relic now, a lost curiosity that only a few diehard fans remember, but for its star, it held a special significance at the time.
Puzzle of a Downfall Child was directed by Jerry Schatzberg, who would go on to make Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow, a favourite of Cillian Murphy’s. Formerly a photographer for magazines like Vogue and Esquire, Schatzberg made his debut with the help of his former fiancée, who was none other than Faye Dunaway.
It might not have won her any awards or changed the fabric of the film industry as we know it, but Puzzle of a Downfall Child allowed Dunaway to help someone she cared about get a foot on the ladder. Isn’t that just disgustingly wholesome?
