The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (175 page)

He worked steadily in the fifties, in English films:
A Run for Your Money
(49, Charles Frend); as the man who thinks he is dying in
Last Holiday
(50, Henry Cass); playing Disraeli in
The Mudlark
(50, Jean Negulesco); the inventor in
The Man in the White Suit
(51, Alexander Mackendrick);
The Card
(52, Neame);
The Captain’s Paradise
(53, Anthony Kimmins); in a dismal war picture,
The Malta Story
(53, Brian Desmond Hurst); as
Father Brown
(54, Hamer); quite frightening in
The Ladykillers
(55, Mackendrick);
To Paris With Love
(55, Hamer); and to Hollywood to do
The Swan
(56, Charles Vidor), which began a great friendship with Grace Kelly.

After
Kwai
(which really is a thoughtful rendering of an English bureaucrat, even if the film yields to Lean’s overemotionalism), Guinness had a new stature that did not quite suit him. He got bigger parts, but they were not always suitable:
Our Man in Havana
(59, Carol Reed); uneasy with Bette Davis in
The Scapegoat
(59, Hamer); over the top in
Tunes of Glory
(60, Neame)—without Dickens or Jimson as an inspiration, he was happier playing reticent men;
A Majority of One
(62, Mervyn Le Roy), which required him to be Japanese; the captain in
H.M.S. Defiant
(62, Lewis Gilbert); an Arab king, but rather empty in
Lawrence of Arabia
(62, Lean); Marcus Aurelius in
The Fall of the Roman Empire
(64, Anthony Mann); and
Doctor Zhivago
(65, Lean).

What followed was his least distinguished period, with many poor films and showy parts:
Situation Hopeless—But Not Serious
(65, Gottfried Reinhardt);
Hotel Paradiso
(66, Glenville);
The Quiller Memorandum
(66, Michael Anderson);
The Comedians
(67, Glenville); Charles I in
Cromwell
(70, Ken Hughes);
Scrooge
(70, Neame); a Pope in
Brother Sun, Sister Moon
(72, Franco Zeffirelli); Hitler in
The Last Ten Days
(73, Ennio de Concini);
Murder by Death
(76, Robert Moore); and magisterial as Obi-Wan Kenobi in
Star Wars
(77, George Lucas), on which he received 2¼ percent of the profits.

He created the role of John le Carré’s George Smiley for TV in
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
(79, John Irvin), and he was very good in it—yet there was something too cautious in Smiley for Guinness’s alertness. One wanted more aberration, more poetry—it became all too clear, at such length, that Guinness could do Smiley standing on his head. He was also in
Raise the Titanic
(80, Jerry Jameson); on TV in
Little Lord Fauntleroy
(80, Jack Gold);
Smiley’s People
(82, Simon Langton);
Lovesick
(83, Marshall Brickman); sadly at odds with David Lean playing an Indian in
A Passage to India
(84);
Edwin
(84, Rodney Bennett);
Monsignor Quixote
(85, Bennett);
Little Dorrit
(85, Christine Edzard); as Mr. Todd in
A Handful of Dust
(88, Charles Sturridge), settling to listen to Dickens, like a dinosaur hatching an egg;
Kafka
(91, Steven Soderbergh); as Heinrich Mann in a TV
Tales from Hollywood
(92, Howard Davies);
A Foreign Field
(93, Sturridge);
Mute Witness
(94, Anthony Waller);
Eskimo Day
(96, Piers Haggard).

Sacha Guitry
(1885–1957), b. St. Petersburg, Russia
1935:
Pasteur; Bonne Chance
. 1936:
Le Nouveau Testament
(codirected with Alexandre Ryder);
Le Roman d’un Tricheur; Mon Père Avait Raison; Faisons un Rêve; Le Mot de Cambronne
. 1937:
Les Perles de la Couronne
(codirected with Christian-Jaque);
Quadrille
. 1938:
Désirée; Remontons les Champs-Elysées
. 1939:
Ils Etaient Neuf Célibataires
. 1941:
Le Destin Fabuleux de Désirée Clary
. 1942:
La Nuit du Cinéma
. 1943:
Donne-Moi Tes Yeux; La Malibran
. 1947:
Le Comédien
. 1948:
Le Diable Boiteux
. 1949:
Aux Deux Colombes; Toa
. 1950:
Le Trésor de Cantenac; Tu M’as Sauvé la Vie; Debureau
. 1951:
Adhémar, ou le Jouet de la Fatalité
(codirected with Fernandel);
La Poison
. 1952:
La Vie d’un Honnête Homme; Je l’Ai Été Trois Fois
. 1953:
Si Versailles M’Était Conté
. 1955:
Napoléon
. 1956:
Si Paris Nous Était Conté; Assassins et Voleurs
. 1957:
Les Trois Font la Paire
(codirected with Clement Duhour).

The son of actor Lucien Guitry, and a prolific playwright, Sacha Guitry engagingly transferred many of his plays and his own self-indulgent acting to the screen. Unhappy unless author, director, and actor, Guitry is the example of unbridled theatricality that ought to make a fool of himself or cinema but whose films generally work very well. He is still a notable figure in French (or Parisian) culture: a playwright-performer, an example referred to—like Noël Coward.

Guitry had a tribute at the 1993 New York Film Festival that ranged from the romantic comedy
Bonne Chance
to the bedroom farce,
Faisons un Rêve
. As actor, or sheer presence, Guitry is an unashamedly charming tyrant, a Napoleon by way of Lubitsch. Robert Horton observed of
Le Roman d’un Tricheur
’s narrative structure (a man trying to write his life story—the pages fluttering): “The movie trips along, nimble and sweet, and so quick that you barely notice the unconventional technique.… The freshest film of the festival.” For years a legend, a rumor even, Guitry was
there
, on the screen, and audiences had to pick up their pace for him.

Yilmaz Güney
(Pütün) (1937–84), b. Adana, Turkey
1966:
The Horse, the Woman, and the Gun
. 1967:
Bullets Cannot Pierce Me; My Name Is Kerim
. 1968:
Nuri the Flea; Bride of the Earth
. 1969:
The Hungry Wolves; An Ugly Man
. 1970:
Osman the Wanderer
(codirected with Serif Gören);
The Seven Bastards
(codirected with Irfan Atasoy). 1971:
The Fugitives; The Wrongdoers; The Example
(codirected with Gören);
Umutsuzlar/The Hopeless Ones; The Father
. 1974:
Endise/Anxiety
(codirected with Gören). 1975:
Zavallilar/The Poor Ones
(codirected with Yilmaz Atif). 1978:
Sürü/The Herd
(directed by Zeki Okten). 1979:
Düsman/The Enemy
(directed by Okten). 1982:
Yol
(codirected with Gören). 1983:
Duvar/The Wall
.

When directors in and out of Hollywood despair of the hard time they are having, they should be reminded of the story of Yilmaz Güney. That process would bring several vital questions to life—not least, what are the movies for? Are they a career, an entertainment, a business, or may they even be the most effective way of enlightening a population and thus ensuring the victimization, and worse, of the filmmaker? There are young people in the comfort of southern California who tell you they would die if they could not make “their” movies. Yilmaz Güney made his, under the most impossible conditions. And he died, of cancer, in a foreign country, deprived of his own citizenship, at the age of forty-seven.

The child of poor Kurds, he managed to get to university, and he began writing. That soon got him into trouble with the Turkish authorities (this in the late 1950s), and he may have sought some shelter in working as an actor. He was good-looking, and appealing enough to win a place in Turkish cinema as an heroic figure. But he could hardly help himself from getting involved in political stories, which led to his arrest. While in prison in the early sixties he wrote a novel,
They Died With Their Heads Bowed
.

As time passed, he became more involved in writing and producing his films, but as the subject matter became more urgent and provocative, he was jailed again in the early seventies. Then in 1975 he was arrested again on false murder charges and given a very long sentence. Somehow he continued to function as the long-distance director of projects while still in jail:
The Herd
and
The Enemy
. Those prepared the way for
Yol
, written by Güney in jail and actually realized by Serif Gören according to Güney’s instructions: as such, it is one of the most moving film protests against tyranny. He escaped from prison in 1981 and was able to finish the editing of
Yol
. He made one other film,
The Wall
, before his death.

For the general Western audience Turkey on film is Alan Parker’s
Midnight Express
. No one doubts the worth of that film, or its power. But it says something bleak about our regard for Moslem countries that Güney’s story, and his films, are relatively unknown. Had he been European, his story would have been told by now—he would be Al Pacino or Gérard Depardieu. He would be a legend.

Edmund Gwenn
(1877–1959), b. Glamorgan, Wales
My trouble with Gwenn was that the more cozy he grew in old age, the more resolutely my toes curled. Half a sentence of leisurely explanation from that gentle voice and a film was already dragging. Since Hitchcock showed some interest in Gwenn, it is a wonder that he never saw the pleasure in a situation that had Gwenn as a grindingly benevolent wealthy uncle, whose death is plotted at by nephews, but who uncannily survives every attempt and is forever garrulous about how he has come through. Imagine the mounting frustration: audiences stamping their feet for this senile chatterbox to be throttled.

Gwenn had been on the stage since 1900, a fact that glowed out of his Pickwick face. He made very few films before sound elicited that monotonous articulateness:
Unmarried
(20, Rex Wilson); as Hornblower, the part he had created onstage, in
The Skin Game
(20, Bernard Doxat-Pratt);
How He Lied to Her Husband
(31, Cecil Lewis); as Hornblower again in
The Skin Game
(31, Alfred Hitchcock);
Hindle Wakes
(31, Victor Saville);
Money for Nothing
(32, Monty Banks);
Frail Women
(32, Maurice Elvey);
Condemned to Death
(32, Walter Forde);
Love on Wheels
(32, Saville);
Tell Me Tonight
(32, Anatole Litvak); as Jess Oakroyd in
The Good Companions
(33, Saville);
Cash
(33, Zoltan Korda);
Early to Bed
(33, Ludwig Berger);
I Was a Spy
(33, Saville);
Channel Crossing
(33, Milton Rosmer);
Smithy
(33, George King);
Marooned
(33, Leslie Hiscott);
Friday the 13th
(33, Saville); as Johann Strauss in
Waltzes from Vienna
(33, Hitchcock);
The Admiral’s Secret
(34, Guy Newald);
Java Head
(34, T. Walter Reuben);
Father and Son
(34, Banks); and
Spring in the Air
(34, W. Victor Hanbury).

He then went to America for his first film there,
The Bishop Misbehaves
(35, E. A. Dupont). For the next few years, he worked in both countries:
Sylvia Scarlett
(35, George Cukor);
Laburnum Grove
(36, Carol Reed);
Anthony Adverse
(36, Mervyn Le Roy);
The Walking Dead
(36, Michael Curtiz);
Parnell
(37, John M. Stahl);
South Riding
(38, Saville);
A Yank at Oxford
(38, Jack Conway);
Penny Paradise
(38, Reed);
Cheer Boys, Cheer
(39, Forde);
An Englishman’s Home
(39, George Dewhurst).

Thereafter he settled in America and became a “lovable” character actor: as the butler in
The Earl of Chicago
(40, Richard Thorpe, but produced by Victor Saville); indisputably an MGM Mr. Bennett in
Pride and Prejudice
(40, Robert Z. Leonard);
Foreign Correspondent
(40, Hitchcock);
The Devil and Miss Jones
(41, Sam Wood);
Cheers for Miss Bishop
(41, Tay Garnett);
Charley’s Aunt
(41, Archie Mayo);
A Yank at Eton
(42, Norman Taurog); showing that a dog’s best friend is someone who will talk to it in
Lassie Come Home
(43, Fred M. Wilcox);
Between Two Worlds
(44, Edward A. Blatt);
The Keys of the Kingdom
(44, Stahl);
Of Human Bondage
(46, Edmund Goulding);
Undercurrent
(46, Vincente Minnelli); an Oscar as Father Christmas in
Miracle on 34th Street
(47, George Seaton);
Life with Father
(47, Michael Curtiz);
Hills of Home
(48, Wilcox); a forger with a true heart in
Mister 880
(50, Goulding);
Peking Express
(51, William Dieterle);
Pretty Baby
(52, Bretaigne Windust);
Something for the Birds
(52, Robert Wise);
Les Misérables
(52, Lewis Milestone);
The Bigamist
(53, Ida Lupino); as a professor who tries to talk to giant ants in
Them
(54, Gordon Douglas); as the Captain in
The Trouble with Harry
(55, Hitchcock); and
Calabuch
(56, Luis Garcia Berlanga).

Jake
(Jacob Benjamin)
Gyllenhaal
, b. Los Angeles, 1980
We have more actors now looking younger—is it a response to the prevailing demographics in filmgoing? Or is it a commentary on how more Americans—in the age of health—are simply not aging? It’s not a small issue, not when we think of the plain invasion of experience, pain, or loss in such faces as Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, and James Stewart. Most of the stars of that era never looked as boyish as Jake Gyllenhaal or Tobey Maguire (or Tom Cruise). But will these modern heroes ever seem as seasoned?