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After notable successes on the stage
-- Long Day's Journey into Night, for instance, and several
at the Royal Court -- how did you come to make the transition
from stage to screen?
I didn't regard it really as a transition. I was asked
to be in a film called Whistle Down the Wind and also
in The Entertainer. I did The Entertainer first
and Tony Richardson was the director of that and John Osborne
was the author, and I had been in Look Back in Anger in
the theatre. They began in the theatre and then they formed a
film company and this happened at the time when there was a renaissance
in British films, and I just found myself in both media quite
naturally. It was just a very lucky piece of timing.
The Entertainer
looks interesting now as a combination of hot new talents like
Tony Richardson, Albert Finney, yourself, and established people
like Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, Roger Livesey. Was there
any sense of a couple of generations of actors at work together?
I suppose there was, although, particularly with Olivier,
I think he was seeking out something new with The Entertainer;
he had sought out the new dramatists and had made a very
conscious effort to place himself at the forefront of all that.
But apart from that sort of conscious choice on his part, I think
everyone merged pretty well. He did too, but we were just conscious
that he had chosen to do something specifically of the day, as
it were, rather a break from his classical mold.
So there wasn't a sense of new young
people being in great awe of him?
I think in every generation there's a certain amount of,
not awe exactly, but that sort of awareness of other people's
achievements. It's a natural sort of rollover, an evolution,
people moving into other people's positions.
Were you aware, at the time, of major
changes going on in the nature of British films?
I think things are slightly clearer when you look back
at them, but there was a conscious feeling that we had found
something, or at least those who wrote and produced it touched
on something, that people wanted to change: a change of scene,
a change of orientation, a change of focus on what films were
about. Style and people were more experimental and more daring,
and there was the spirit to back these films, which sadly has
gone for the moment. It was a very good moment, a very good time,
and we were aware of it. We were aware of it as a change, as
a difference. There was a new concentration on the social issues
of the day, the underprivileged; there was no arena untouched,
every area of life began to be explored.
Did you have a good agent at the time
or was it just a matter of getting to be known?
No, I think I was in the right place at the right time
and I just got into the right things. I was in the Royal Court
Theatre and that's where a lot of it sprang from; that and Joan
Littlewood's theatre at Stratford East were the two theatres
that seemed to spawn this whole new energy.
What do you remember about filming Bryan
Forbes's charming parable, Whistle Down the Wind? I'd
be fascinated to know anything you remember about, say, the location
work, or working with the children.
I was more aware that it was my first major part than
anything. The children really were the star of the film, or,
if not the star, the focus of the film, and the character
I played became their focus and that's why it was such
a good part. It was very naturalistically shot, it was done with
a very conscious realism. I looked at it again a few years ago
and it seemed absolutely a Biblical parallel. It's not just a
windy children's tale; it does tell of treachery, of the Judas
character, of the whole area of credibility and faith. It's quite
a strong film and I think it stands up very well.
What do you remember about those children,
who were not actors at all?
There were the two, Hayley Mills' brother and sister,
I remember of course. I believe the little girl is no longer
with us, I believe she died at some point in her adulthood. I
don't think the boy Alan Barnes ever acted again; he was just
a natural at that moment. He was a sort of person you thought
might go on to be a comedic actor of some distinction if he'd
wanted to, but he didn't. I think he ended up as a chemist somewhere.
He just had this little burst of glory as a boy. He was a great
character.
And what do you remember about the location
filming?
I'd been in that area before; the Midlands is where I
came from. I filmed there later in A Kind of Loving in
the same sort of areas -- rural, quite tough farmland. One of
the great things of filming is to act in location, in the elements,
you know; it's quite an exciting way to work.
Do you prefer it to studio work?
Yes, I do, yes. Studios are OK but there's an unreality
there and I much prefer to be on location.
Of all those New Wave films that came
out of the period, A Kind of Loving still seems perhaps
the warmest and most sympathetic. How do you feel about it now?
I think that's quite a likely way to look at it now; it
had a lot of human understanding, a lot of awareness of young
people's problems and their blindness and the whole pot-luck
chance of life. It was very well understood, it was a beautiful
book in a kind of raw way, which I think John [Schlesinger] captured
on screen. It wasn't brutal; it was absolutely life as it was
lived; it wasn't about exceptional folk, it was really about
everyday people and their struggles.
Did you feel that even the monstrous
mother Thora Hird plays is entirely believable, that she never
becomes a caricature, however hideous she is?
No, I think it's a rather great performance. It's wonderfully
naturally funny and terrific at the same time -- a blinkered
and prejudiced and dominating woman. There are such people.
How did you respond to the character
of Vic Brown and his plight? Did you see him as a victim?
I just accepted him for what he was. He seemed in one
way to understand himself very well and at the same time not
to be able to do anything about it. I think it's a quite unusual
scene when he goes back home to his mother. Unusual in the sense
that his mother does not take his side, she takes the side of
the girl he's married and that's quite unusual. Mothers usually
can see no wrong in their sons but this woman thought, no, he
took a step and he must follow it through, and he must deal with
the woman he's married.
What became of June Ritchie, who seemed
so perfectly right as Ingrid?
June is a very fine actress who is now married quite happily,
and works from time to time. I've worked with her since a couple
of times and she's done some marvellous work when she feels like
it. She doesn't chase her career with great ambition, but she
was very fine.
Your three 1963 releases each seem to
me interesting for different reasons. First, The Running Man.
How did you find working with Carol Reed, who really belongs
to a previous generation?
I was just very lucky to have worked with him and I'm
sorry the film wasn't a bigger success. He was the most subtle
and sensitive director, one of the best I've ever worked with,
and I'm very glad that I crossed paths with him once. He was
a great gentleman and he made three of the greatest British films
that have ever been made: I mean Fallen Idol, Odd Man Out
and The Third Man -- unparalleled, really. Brilliant films,
as good as you can get. I was a very young actor but I felt his
incredible generosity of spirit, which I'm afraid a lot of directors
just don't have.
How did this generosity of spirit come
over in the kind of direction he gave you?
Just in the understanding of your particular situation,
who you were at the time. Whether you were young and inexperienced,
or experienced, he would respond accordingly to the actor who
was in front of him. He wouldn't expect more or less than what
their own experience had brought them to. He listened to you
and if he wanted more or less than you were giving he would just
guide you towards it extremely gently, without making you feel
at all inadequate. He was quite a marvellous man, I think.
And what about The Caretaker?
The Caretaker was a deliberate translation
of the play to film. It seemed to have enormous filming possibilities
and it is an excellent film, perhaps somewhat exclusive in some
ways, although the play was hugely popular. It was done out of
pure love of the piece and to record it and make sure the people
could see the cast that had done it, with one exception, absolutely
from scratch. Peter Woodthorpe played it in the London theatre
and Robert Shaw took it over in New York and for the film.
photo courtesy the British Film Institute
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Of all the bright young acting
talents who suddenly brought new life to British films in the
early '60s, none has lasted so well or remained so persistently
a British star. He has outlasted, say, Albert Finney or Tom Courtenay
or Richard Harris, in the sense of working steadily in major
films (as well as much notable stage and television work); and
unlike Michael Caine or Sean Connery, for example, he hasn't
had to make a lot of international kitsch to keep working. It
was his articulate compassion that makes his performance in A
Kind of Loving as the young man caught in an unpromising marriage
so affecting and memorable. It is greatly to his credit that
he makes an unflashy character such as the bemused young Englishman
abroad in Zorba the Greek more interesting than Anthony Quinn's
bravura display or that he more than holds his own as solid,
loyal Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd against the more
obviously eye-catching work from Terence Stamp and Peter Finch.
From at least a dozen expert performances, I choose three more
examples: he is an iconoclastic Birkin, broken by a conventional
Ursula in Women in Love; his Guy Burgess, that other Englishman
Abroad (for television), is magisterially witty and painful;
and he offers a very moving study in polite bewilderment in The
Return of the Soldier. His work is central to any study of British
cinema of the last three decades.