Alec Guinness, who died in West Sussex, England, last weekend at the age of 86, was so ordinary looking a man that when he walked the streets of his native London he regularly went unnoticed. Unlike many movie stars, he liked anonymity.
If you had seen Guinness in real life, you might not have recognized that he was Col. Nicholson, the ramrod-straight leader whose men built “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Or Gulley Jimson, the mad, lecherous London painter of “The Horse’s Mouth.” Or Henry Holland, prim ringleader of “The Lavender Hill Mob.” Or genius inventor Sidney Stratton, “The Man in the White Suit.” Or, to cite a role nearly every moviegoer has seen, sagacious Ben Obi-wan Kenobi, the aging space samurai whose mantra was “May the force be with you.”
That was a phrase that helped make Guinness rich and secure — but it was not one he enjoyed saying. “Rubbish” was how he gently described George Lucas’ dialogue. The talk Guinness preferred was the kind he regularly said on stage, in the plays of William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot or George Bernard Shaw, in roles like “Hamlet,” the Fool in “King Lear” or boisterous poet Dylan Thomas in “Dylan.”
Still, even a hackneyed line could sing when Guinness said it. As a member of one of the greatest acting generations in British stage history — along with Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Guinness’ own mentor, John Gielgud — he honed his skills on stage and then earned bales of money in the movies, playing lesser parts with the same inimitable grace and skill.
The great Indian actor Om Puri once told me that Guinness was his favorite actor because of his “subtlety.” Where other actors would build up a role, Guinness would pare his down. Where others expressed grand passions, Guinness would suggest them, leave them simmering. Where others flaunted their personalities, Guinness would bury his in the part. Like Peter Sellers, he was one of the great chameleon actors, so brilliant that his eight roles in a single film (as the D’Ascoyne family in “Kind Hearts and Coronets”) made him an instant legend. He was so versatile that he could play, believably, both the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius and the raving tyrant Adolf Hitler, both the aloof King Charles I and Charles Dickens’ sinister slum crook Fagin.
Guinness’ most typical role though — the kind that made him an unlikely art theater superstar in the 1950s — was the seemingly ordinary, mild-mannered man who gets caught up in extraordinary events. In roles in classic Ealing Studio comedies such as “The Lavender Hill Mob,” “The Card” or “The Man in the White Suit,” Guinness became Britain’s movie star for connoisseurs.
Then he won his Oscar in 1958 for “Bridge, ” working with his favorite director, David Lean. Lean gave Guinness his movie start in 1946 (as likable Herbert Pocket in “Great Expectations”) and then cast him in six more films, ending with Lean’s last film, the 1984 “A Passage to India.”
Still, Guinness’ 1958 Oscar win was an unlikely triumph. The studio had wanted Charles Laughton as Col. Nicholson; Lean reasonably explained that the corpulent Laughton would be miserable in the on-location heat and misery of Ceylon, where “Bridge” was filmed.
Guinness at first demurred, fearing the role was beyond him. It wasn’t. And even though he was third-billed (behind William Holden and Jack Hawkins), he won the Oscar and became an American and British movie star. At first, this seemed a propitious rise. It allowed Guinness to play Joyce Cary’s wonderful Gulley Jimson in “Horse’s Mouth” in 1958, and it gave him, a year later, the part he always insisted was his best, as the man’s man, swaggering Scottish army officer Lt. Col. Jock Sinclair in “Tunes of Glory.”
But Hollywood stardom trapped him for a decade and half in big, often lumbering studio productions where he could rarely display the lightness and grace of his earlier work. Now, his subtlety was spread across Cinemascope or color canvasses to diminishing effect (“A Majority of One,” “Hotel Paradiso”).
The Lean films, “The Horse’s Mouth” and “Tunes of Glory,” are the best from this period. Jimson, boozing, painting and roaring, is a stunning portrait of an artist rampant. And, in “Tunes,” reunited with his “Great Expectations” costar, John “Pip” Mills, Guinness creates a magnificent military monster as the swaggering, egotistical Scottish army officer Sinclair, who drives his successor to distraction.
Later in life, after “Star Wars” freed him from money worries, he won another Oscar, for his career. He did magnificent work in films and on television, playing John Le Carre’s George Smiley in the TV adaptations of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and “Smiley’s People,” working subtly and splendidly as William Dorrit in Christine Edzard’s remarkable, experimental adaptation of Dickens’ “Little Dorrit.” He chilled us as the evil Mr. Dodd in the 1988 film of Evelyn Waugh’s “A Handful of Dust.” These kinds of parts — victim and monster — show the extremes of Guinness’ art, the range of his soul and talent.
Beneath that quiet surface was a large soul, which is why his “Star Wars” role suggests real gravity and wisdom, despite Lucas’ “rubbish” dialogue. Alec Guinness, like most of the great British stage-and-screen actors of his generation, seemed frustrated by the movies. He was usually better in those smaller, more personal, more idiosyncratic films he made from 1946 to 1956, though he could also register indelibly on Lean’s broad canvasses and even in the shticky vastness of “Star Wars.”
He was a gentleman, one who could all but fade into the woodwork. On stage or in movies though, he became a giant. Paring down his parts, he refined them until only the truth and the essence remained. Subtlety and intelligence were his trademarks. Those of us who saw him on stage or on the screen, in his best parts or even in his least, will never forget him.
THE FORCE WAS WITH HIM
Alec Guinness left a legacy of more than 100 films. Here are his best performances, in chronological order:
1946 “Great Expectations”: As Herbert Pocket, best friend of rising young Pip (John Mills), in David Lean’s great adaptation of Charles Dickens’ social novel.
1948 “Oliver Twist”: In the screen’s definitive portrayal of Fagin, Dicken’s evil pickpocket.
1949 “Kind Hearts and Coronets”: In Robert Hamer’s classic dark comedy as eight successively murdered members of the D’Ascoyne family.
1951 “The Lavender Hill Mob”: As deceptively mild-mannered bank robber Henry Holland.
1951 “The Man in the White Suit”: As Sidney Stratton, genius inventor of an indestructible suit.
1956 “The Ladykillers”: As Professor Marcus, sinister leader of a band of crooks (that included Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom).
1957 “The Bridge on the River Kwai”: In David Lean’s classic WWII film as Col. Nicholson, indomitable leader of a company of British POWs who build, in the Burmese jungle, a bridge that commandos Bill Holden and Jack Hawkins plan to blow up. His Oscar-winning role.
1958 “The Horse’s Mouth”:
As irrepressible painter and libertine Gulley Jimson, in screen-writer Guinness’ adaptation of Joyce Cary’s novel.
1959 “Tunes of Glory”: “Guinness” own favorite performance as bullying, charismatic Lt. Col. Jock Sinclair, who drives a gentler soldier (John Mills) to destruction.
1977 “Star Wars”: In the come-back role that made him rich, space sage Ben Obi-wan Kenobi.
1984 “A Passage to India”:
His last collaboration with David Lean, as E.M. Forster’s Professor Godbole.
1987 “Little Dorrit”: His triumphant return to Dickens, as hapless William Dorrit.
— Michael Wilmington
