Alec Guinness: Performing obsession

by Cláudio Alves

David Lean's film career is a rather peculiar thing. Before he ever sat on the director's chair, Lean was an editor whose resumé included collaborations with such lofty names of British cinema as Powell and Pressburger. It was during World War II that he started working as a director, adapting several Noël Coward plays and Charles Dickens novels. His early work was a cinema of über-Britishness, one that both celebrated, ravaged, and autopsied the idea of what it was to be British, taking an especially hard look at the effects of the war on society. 

It's strange to consider that this master of the chamber drama, a director of modest style, would go on to become synonymous with the sprawling epics of the 1960s. Apart from some missteps, he'd be as wonderful doing these monstrously big movies as he was doing the small ones, but there's a clear dissonance of approach fragmenting the man's filmography. If there's a transitional piece to be found, a stylistic and thematic bridge, that explains how the humble adapter of prestige literature became the epic maker, it's 1957's The Bridge on the River Kwai… 

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Curio: The Storied Career of Alec Guinness

Alexa here to wish a Happy Centennial to Alec Guinness. Born 100 years ago today to a single mother in London, Guinness' theatre career began in his 20s. It wasn't until after he served in the Royal Navy in World War II that his film career began in earnest, and soon he was playing eight roles in one movie (Kind Hearts and Coronets).  One of his six famously tempestuous collaborations with David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai, got him his Oscar for Best Actor, although he was nominated four other times (even for Best Screenplay) and he received an honorary Oscar in 1980. The geeks know him as Obi-Wan, but for me he will forever be Professor Marcus from The Ladykillers (a little obsession of mine).

Here are some vintage curios to celebrate his career in film

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