Sir Alec Guinness
Burris, Keith
you all the way below the surface. And ...
...a bit sexless, in a ter...
...Was he...
...Guinness actually loved the theLaurence Olivier was all motion, even mad...
...Fr...
...bits of this or that characteristic to med- Adlai Stevenson, and a hit man...
...They walked along in tzcsSc~urc crnoflt silence, and in the dark, Guinness afraid I1 C- YIIof.ic Ti{OI CH-1 to speak for fear of frightening the boy with his strange English tones, until the boy got to where he wanted to go and ran off...
...At your bookstore, or call 800-253-7521 Keith Burris, editorial page editor of the f7j4i WM...
...it simply got his attention...
...I'm sure I first saw him in The Bridge creation, cutting out the middle stop at Certainly there was something priest- on the River Kwai (1957), when I was too the actor's star turn...
...duction, the corporate nature of theater flection of attention from himself...
...GRAND RAPIDS, MT 49,50 Connecticut, is writing a biography of the conductor Robert Shaw...
...Star of taking a break during the filming of often made worse by the hammiest of Wars (1977) would have been Buck Rogers The Detective one evening in France...
...But scious clown) and a man of depth...
...What And this is the point of Guinness's work and friendships, the reliance upon one often hopes for in a priest is the abil- art...
...Olivier played him (on film) as a stage and in film, and is said to have mean old SOB who was lovable in spite been even better in the stage version...
...the said it was a relief to go to the Farm Christian's role in a secular societs...
...playing Dean Swift, in a one-man show fussy way...
...Guin- one couldn't finally say whether Richard- reasons that seem very Catholic: the ritness was stillness...
...And there is no doubt that he never got to be a clown (an oafish, unselfcon- bested the Bard as the others did...
...He never lets you see more than a text versus image...
...He was picking out his little up Hamlet, with touches of Gandhi, had never seen...
...It of himself...
...In so many of his ing...
...oner of war Colonel Richardson was years...
...FranceProbably both were too English, too retIn these posthumously published texts, Delbrel draws from her own experi- icent, and equally bored and embarences living in IST...
...Guinness himself told the story made mostly dreadful movies, which he improved the bad movies he was in...
...In both of those parts Guinness ers...
...It was a last month at age eighty-six, ing and watching...
...son was impossibly noble or impossibly uals surrounding preparation and proAlso priestlike was Guinness's de- nuts...
...He never quite explained that Arthur...
...He always need to...
...witnessing to the possibility of a life at once rooted radi- rassed by pretension...
...And PPRECIAT10 he never cheapens the character...
...Guinness made cept that it was important to him...
...And in shuffle here, a dialect there, a mannerism and masks, but a sort of clear glass...
...Commonweal 2 0 September 22, 2000...
...He added that the walk of the Streets with the boy wasn't why he became a Catholic...
...Or as Dylan amazing quiet and stillness...
...That Sir Alec Guinness quiet centeredness was the core of every portrayal...
...Of the 1985 BBC production based on the Gra- finest English stage actors of his eraham Greene novella of the same name, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ralph and as Father Brown in The Detective Richardson, and himself-Guinness (1954), the one Chesterton adaption he seemed to rank Guinness a proper fourth...
...But AS CLEAR AS GLASS you always knew it was Guinness...
...ly took his hand...
...Requiescat in pace...
...without him...
...Jacques Loew and a preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar, this volume is of Sir Alec Guinness remained, steadmuch more than historical interest...
...ly in Guinness: something at once inti- young to "get" the movie or his charac- I would have loved to see Guinness mate and detached...
...Spanning the Guinness got a bit impatient with clumwhole of Delbrel's life, these pas- sy liturgies and illiterate sermons (he sionate literary texts explore...
...B. EERDMANS Fax...
...e.e...
...cummings by heart...
...Guinness played him (on strikes me as a role he was born to play, stage) as a mean old SOB who was utand one that no one else could play with terly unlovable, but who demanded his insight and sympathy...
...Guinness said this incident suggested to him that there must be somethe Ordinary People thing justly sacred and lasting about the Catholic church...
...He never takes man, to be sure, one who knew pasCommonweal 1 9 September 22, 2000 sages of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and justly, accused of underacting in the Guinness as Freud...
...these ssTitings present a highly relevant fastly, an elusive individual, hiding not paradigm for Christian life in the modern world...
...Or in the Alan Bennett plays ter spy George Smiley priestly, and is nalistic verdict that the duty-bound pris- he did in London's West End in later not that both his blessing and his curse...
...He played the part as a grownlamenting the ones I could not find or private life...
...movies, but never of overacting...
...He was a sacred text ity to escape the ego-to listen...
...He cessful of his generation in the movies...
...love...
...We, the Ordinary People of the Streets contains a series of pcnverfitl reflections It is fun to think of Guinness and his by _Madeleine DelhreI (1904--1964), an award-winning poet, writer, and friend Graham Greene debating Catholic Catholic layperson whose religious conviction and insight led her to a life of doctrine and Catholic folly over sherry social work in the atheistic, Communist-dominated city of IFTy-sur-Seine, or Scotch, but I suppose they never did...
...Tory, he surprises you with an unexpected prejudice...
...cliche is that film is the director's sand- craft in any way that I can detect, exAnd he was by far the best and most suc- box, stage the actor's...
...What a pity there were not Certainly he was not as heroic as the othmore...
...He ham acting...
...Manchester Journal-Inquirer in Manchester, ww v.ccrdmans.corn 255 JEFFERSON AVE...
...This there was something pure about his actwas perfect for him...
...And if you read his BBC import of Shaw's play Caesar and I have been reviewing the diaries and multivolume autobiography, Cleopatra, and Guinness was an incredS films I could find of the specifically Blessings in Disguise (1986), ible Caesar-tragic, detached, and selfgreat and elusive Alec Guinness, and you find out he was doing just that in aware...
...The His faith was not important to his But his greatest successes were on film...
...616-459-6544 ttttt#Illl~i PUBLISHING Co...
...He was not PC, in any Including an excellent introduction to Delbrel's Iife and faith by her friend direction...
...Seeing it years later, I was astonished...
...And I have never seen The Prisoner (1955), itate on, absorb, and appropriate-a there was not an ounce of the maudlin in which he plays a Roman Catholic car- or sentimental...
...And unlike so many famous converts, he stayed...
...He couldn't save Lovesick strolled down the street in his priest's Guinness was often, and probably (1982), but it is worth watching to see cassock and a little boy he had never seen before sidled up to him and silentIr rRIL ' '-' I. & r2NL \VA1...
...Guinness played the part on (1971...
...film an actor's medium, with sheer vari- said that his conversion to Catholicism It seems a sacrilege that Gielgud is best ety of roles and inventiveness (also the (along with the music of Haydn) kept remembered for the Dudley Moore farce mark of his stage career), and, at the him sane...
...But Madelein e Delhrei it was the story he told about how he Preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar came to the church...
...True enough, technically...
...dinal imprisoned in an Iron Curtain na- Guinness and Olivier both played the tion during the cold war-a man im- blind English barrister in John Morprisoned also by his own beliefs and timer's A Voyage Round My Father doubts...
...And Olivier, except for his great same time, the directness and truthful- because, I gather, he thought he didn't Henry V and his very, very great Lear, ness of his characterizations...
...It is not all technique look, peeks out but cannot stay...
...Is not mas- ness's death, to read the common jour- Thomas...
...Street Church in London and experience the difficulty of faith in an atheistic a dignified Mass and an intelligent environment, the need for prayer, the centrality of the Church, and preacher), but just when you are about the fundamental importance of los- to type him as a religious or political ing both God and our neighbors...
...Surely the point was that ater more than films, and he loved it for if it was only his face in camera...
...He's awfully good in his two other He said he was not an actor in the priest roles: as Monsignor Quixote, in a league of the really great ones...
...Keith Burris It was often said that he disappeared into the character and was a man of masks...
...so much behind his masks as the mystery and dignity he brought to his life ISBN 0-8028-4696-3 - 287 pages - paperback - $24.00 and work...
...Reading his pubcally in the Church and fully lished diaries, one sees that later in life engaged in the world...
...did on film...
...goes right to the heart of the playwright's ness-like Buster Keaton's...
...Guin- few burning embers...
...He the comedies there is an underlying sad- too odd to be seen as stage business...
...It is acting without ego, if such a straight parts the ironic inflection, or thing is possible...
...The tube gave me my first glimpse of ince his death in England ness, in every part, appears to be listen- how good Guinness could be...
...and, of course, there is that And I was astonished also, after Guin-, of the actor's own devising...
Vol. 127 • September 2000 • No. 16
