Favorites of 2023: Movies - Our year of Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness, 1960. Photo credit: Derek Allen. Image source: National Portrait Gallery London NPG x45667

Movies: Our year of Alec Guinness

Some famous movie actors achieved stardom by playing essentially the same character over and over again. As James Baldwin wrote, "No one, for example, will ever really know whether Katherine Hepburn or Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart or Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable—or John Wayne—can, or could, really act, or not, nor does anyone care: acting is not what they are required to do. . .One does not go to see them act: one goes to watch them be. One does not go to see Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade: one goes to see Sam Spade, as Humphrey Bogart." [1]

Alec Guinness was a different kind of star. He became renowned for his protean quality, his ability to inhabit radically different characters. We had, of course, seen Guinness before in films ranging from Dr. Zhivago (1965) to Star Wars (1977). But what inspired our mini-Alec Guinness film festival this year was seeing him as Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark (1950).

Alec Guinness (Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli) and Irene Dunne (Queen Victoria) in The Mudlark. Image source: themoviedb.org

Guinness's role as Disraeli involved the convincing portrayal of an often-photographed historical figure who would have been twice the actor's real age, and the recital of a 7-minute speech to Parliament in a single take. That performance made an indelible impression on us, and we soon sought out more of his films from the 1940s and 1950s.

Guinness got his start in films in writer-director David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). He was featured as Herbert Pocket, the man who, at the behest of an unknown benefactor of the orphan Pip (John Mills), teaches him how to dress and behave like a gentleman. [2]

Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations. Photo credit: Ealing Studios. Image source: CBS News

Guinness was cast because he had played Pocket in his own stage adaptation of Great Expectations. Lean's film remains possibly the best screen adaptation of Dickens' novel. In the 1999 British Film Institute poll surveying the greatest British films of all time, it was ranked #5.

But Guinness's movie stardom was assured by a series of films made at Ealing Studios in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In these comedies, middle- and working-class characters challenge the established order of wealth and class, but discover in the end that it is not so easy to escape their stations, or their fates.

In the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Guinness plays eight different roles: all the members of the upper-crust D'Ascoyne family, male and female, who stand in the way of Louis Mazzini (Denis Price), who is ninth in line for the Dukedom.

Alec Guinness as six members of the D'Ascoyne family in Kind Hearts and Coronets: From right to left, Guinness as The Parson, suffragette Lady Agatha, The General, The Admiral, and the 8th Duke; Valerie Hobson as the widow Edith D'Ascoyne; and Guinness as Lord D'Ascoyne, at the funeral of Young Henry D'Ascoyne, also played by Guinness. The Lord's son, Ascoyne D'Ascoyne, also played by Guinness, has already met his demise. Image source: National Portrait Gallery London NPG x88518

Louis's mother was a D'Ascoyne but was disowned by her family when she married an operatic tenor. (How low can you sink?) Louis sees a perfect way to revenge himself against the snooty D'Ascoynes and reward himself by becoming the next duke. Only, it requires a bit of murder. Eight murders, in fact. What could possibly go wrong? In the 1999 BFI poll, Kind Hearts and Coronets was ranked #6.

In a thoroughgoing departure from the flamboyantly idiosyncratic members of the D'Ascoyne family, in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) Guinness plays lowly bank clerk Henry Holland, who is so unassuming he's virtually invisible. [3]

Alec Guinness (Henry Holland) and Ronald Adam (bank manager Mr. Turner) in The Lavender Hill Mob.

Holland performs his task of safeguarding bullion transfers so well that after 20 years at the bank he has never been considered for a promotion. But being overlooked by his superiors fits neatly into a plan that Holland is perfecting: to steal a shipment of the gold he is supposed to protect. The masterstroke will be melting down the stolen bars and recasting them as Eiffel Tower souvenirs in the workshop of his partner-in-crime Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), so that they can be smuggled to Paris without suspicion. What could possibly go wrong? In the BFI poll The Lavender Hill Mob was ranked #17; watch for a very brief appearance by the young Audrey Hepburn in one of her first film roles.

The person who invented a fabric that was impervious to dirt and wear would be universally acclaimed, no? Well, no. In The Man In The White Suit (1951) Guinness plays inventor Sidney Stratton, who after many failed experiments and a few sizeable explosions manages to synthesize just such a miracle fiber. It has only three minor drawbacks: it glows faintly because it is slightly radioactive, it is so strong that it can only be cut by industrial machines, and it is so dirt-resistant that it can't be dyed. He has a blindingly white suit made to demonstrate his fiber's revolutionary qualities. What could possibly go wrong?

Alec Guinness as Sidney Stratton in The Man in the White Suit. Image source: Perisphere: The Trylon Cinema's Blog

At first the mill owner (Cecil Parker) that Stratton works for is enthusiastic—until he realizes that if clothes never wear out no one will ever need new ones, and his sales will crash. The mill workers realize just as quickly that if the market crashes they will soon be out of jobs. The owners and the workers unite around the idea that Stratton's invention should be suppressed. They try everything from bribery to intimidation to seduction by the boss's daughter (Joan Greenwood), but Stratton refuses to give up the rights. In American movies the good guy gets the girl and wins out in the end. . .but of course, this is a film made in Britain in the grim aftermath of WWII. In the BFI poll The Man In The White Suit was ranked #58.

The final Ealing comedy we saw was the darkest of all. Like The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers (1955) is a heist movie. [4] Guinness, looking a bit like a more sinister Oscar Wilde, plays Professor Marcus, the mastermind of a plan for a daring daylight bank truck robbery. He moves into the boarding house of a slightly dotty elderly woman, Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson), thinking that she will be easily fooled, and assembles his gang: the Major (Cecil Parker); Louis, a menacing mobster (Herbert Lom); One-Round, a none-too-bright ex-boxer (Danny Green); and Harry, a Teddy Boy (the young Peter Sellers in his first major film role). The Professor tells Mrs. Wilberforce that the gang is a string quintet which will be rehearsing in his rooms.

Left to right: Guinness (Professor Marcus), Danny Green (One-Round), Peter Sellers (Harry), Cecil Parker (the Major), and Herbert Lom (Louis) as an unlikely string quintet in The Ladykillers. Image source: Los Angeles Times.

During their meetings they play gramophone records to mask the sound of their planning for the heist. Their scheme involves an unwitting Mrs. Wilberforce claiming a trunk (unknown to her, filled with cash) and having it delivered to the gang; who could draw less suspicion? But things take a bad turn when Mrs. Wilberforce discovers that the group is not a string quintet after all. They decide that to ensure her silence they'll have to bump her off. Five heavily armed men against one frail old lady; what could possibly go wrong? In the BFI poll The Ladykillers was ranked #13.

Apart from the pleasures of watching Alec Guinness in the multifarious roles that made him famous, we enjoyed seeing the streets of London in the early 1950s, before architects started competing to see who could design the most whimsical building to deface its skyline and before industrial sites became luxury condos. All of these Guinness films are recommended, and we would probably rank them in more-or-less the same order (if not necessarily in the same places) as they appear in the BFI poll.

Posts in this series:

• Favorites of 2023: Our year of Byron
• Favorites of 2023: Our year of Agatha Christie
• Favorites of 2023: Movies and television
• Favorites of 2023: Our year of Alec Guinness
• Favorites of 2023: Music
• Favorites of 2023: Our year of French Baroque Opera

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1. James Baldwin, "The Devil Finds Work," in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. St. Martin's Press, 1985, p. 575.
   
2. In Great Expectations, Pip's education as a gentleman is directed and supported by an unknown benefactor. Guinness had been in a similar situation: his mother, Agnes Cuff, was unmarried, and Guinness's boarding-school education was paid for by a friend of his mother's. Guinness suspected that this friend was his biological father, but if so, it was never confirmed.
3. Lavender Hill is a street in what was once the working-class neighborhood of Battersea on the south bank of the Thames; Henry Holland and his partner in crime Alfred Pendlebury live in a run-down boarding house there. Today Battersea is filled with high-rise condos and a huge old power station that's been turned into an upscale shopping mall—with luxury condos, of course.
   
4. Not to be confused with the 2004 Coen Brothers remake.