Alec Guinness Film Poll

Kehr today

Today? I rented it last night!

clearly it was slipped to you by a vacuum-cleaner salesman.

Well, then, how do you account for the Wilson Yip/Sammo Hung/Donnie Yen/Simon Yam thing that also showed up?

Kill Zone, it's called.

(and btw, Sammo makes one hell of a scary mob boss. I didn't think he had scary in him!)

I bet he's not as funny-scary as Ernie Kovacs' Havana cop.

I'll find out soon enough. I'll be Sammo kicks harder and higher, though.

Not one of the great Reeds, but consistently entertaining. Guinness essaying one of his few relatively straight roles is droll throughout, and an unexpectedly funny Maureen O'Hara compensates for his lack of sexual charisma.

Our Man in Havana, that is.

Maureen is unusually lolish, it's true.

need to re-poll for his centennial, sans fucking Star Wars

The Horse's Mouth would've topped my list.

same here i think. excluding the le carre miniseries a bit ridiculous here also. love star wars and guinness in it but i do hope alot of those votes were trolling.

NYC retro... I need to fill in some of my '50s blind spots, like The Card aka The Promoter and The Captain's Paradise.

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/alec_guinness_100_festival

He is really terrific in The Card, reminding me sometimes of a Stan Laurel with brains and brass balls. (It's a collab w/ Ronald Neame before they did The Horse's Mouth.)

Guinness seemingly never appreciated much of his finest work. He frequently fell out with David Lean, and Piers Paul Read tells me, “He played down his roles in the Ealing comedies. He appeared unable to see that they displayed his genius quite as much as the `heavier’ roles he was proud of in Bridge on the River Kwai, Tunes of Glory and even Hitler.” Read adds his private torment perversely benefited his artistic attributes: “I suspect that the air of mystery—the enigmatic smile—which audiences found so appealing had something to do with his desire to conceal his homosexuality and also the dramatic struggle between his libido and his beliefs.”

It’s hard to disagree with the costume designer Percy Harris’ observation that “What you should remember about Alec is that he is a not very nice man trying to be a good one”. Others admired Guinness for—in a phrase he would doubtless hate—keeping it real. Gore Vidal, who scripted The Scapegoat, a preposterous 1959 murder yarn that would collapse were it not for Guinness’ compelling performance, observed of his leading man: “He is always a joy, the intelligence acute, malice serene, sense of absurdity alert.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/12/the-concealed-genius-of-alec-guinness.html

His journals are a joy for the same reasons: Malice serene, sense of absurdity alert. And he Read Books.

Another tribute.

I was wondering if that was going I be a link to your own blog.

Where Peter Sellers—who worshipped Guinness, and scrutinized him avidly when they worked on “The Ladykillers” (1955)—would spend himself in a fury of impersonation, Guinness gave no hint of a hollow core. He found a still point in the turning world

Ha! Possibly. I was rereading the diaries a couple nights ago.

saucy one-liner in that DB piece by Gielgud -- like AG, once arrested for "cottaging."

David Thomson on Guinness:

He is the most disarming and self-effacing of the English actors who dominated stage and screen in the middle of the twentieth century—the others were John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, and Laurence Olivier. Those fellows carried themselves like grand actors; they had brave, proud voices that signaled poetry or drama. Alec, by contrast, was slight, soft-spoken, losing his hair and bashful to the point of retreating into the background. He was most plausible as a suburban bank manager or a minor naval officer. Indeed, on one occasion when asked to name the best performance he had ever given, he said: “That of a very inefficient, undistinguished, junior officer in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. It proved to be the longest-running show I have ever been in.”

I haven't watched The Prisoner.

He's not in The Prisoner?

He is.

Oh, it's a different The Prisoner!

... which looks quite interesting.

The Card isn't the very best Guinness film about social climbing, but it is a charming little rags-to-riches comedy with fun performances from Guinness and Glynis Johns. Also, Petula Clark!

not a single vote for our man in havana, thats tougb

what fucking monsters voted in this?

genuine class

of course its tinker tailor

by all means come around mine and let me know that its not a film

by all means

can we have nine people FP'd into a gulag or

Very nearly gave The Quiller Memorandum a shout out on this thread yesterday. A typically excellent turn from Max Von as a neo-Nazi.

I still haven't watched Tunes of Glory. Must I?

it's better than For Completists Only, i think; Alec doing a diff military type than Kwai's Nicholson.