Alec Guinness Film Poll

Aw, yer so sweet.

I know he'd have wanted me to vote for star wars

BOTRK is a startling performance even now. Alec Guinness gets in a box, gets out of a box, and goes insane.

I'd have to see The Horse's Mouth again.

but for now, Kind Hearts and Coronets

There are nearly a dozen truly classic performances on this list; ended up with Kind Hearts and Coronets. Wouldn't have been able to make a choice if his George Smiley mini-series were included.

Another poll vote for the Ladykillers.

I might put the Ladykillers ahead for Ealing but Kind Hearts ahead for Alec Guinness (Not that he isn't great in both.

I went for Horse's Mouth, but could change my mind pretty easily I think, depending on what I've watched most recently.

for all my big talk on another thread, it has to be Bridge Over The River Kwai.

Wouldn't have been able to make a choice if his George Smiley mini-series were included.

would've voted for tinker, tailor, soldier, spy

Where is "one poll per poster per day" rule band?

I might put the Ladykillers ahead for Ealing but Kind Hearts ahead for Alec Guinness (Not that he isn't great in both.

Wouldn't vote for "Kind Hearts" because Dennis Price is actually better than him in it. Smiley would have got my vote.

It's BOTRK, but it's not like he wasn't amazing in everything.

i voted for star wars purely to piss off dr. morbius.

Wish Our Man In Havana was on DVD. That's a great book and Guiness seems like he would be perfectly cast.

Who's going to vote for Oliver Twist then?

he is pretty good in star wars, mind -- prob the only actor in the entire series who gives a great performance.

i like him in everything i've seen him in but kind hearts and coronets is one of my favorite films so that.

his jacob marley in the 70s musical scrooge is also prob the only time that character's ever come off as genuinely scary/menacing.

how's his hitler?

You've read the Alec G quotes on Star Wars, right? You'd be pissing HIM off...

He is splendidly cast in Our Man in Havana.

he's also a very funny Freud in Lovesick, an otherwise deservedly forgotten Dudley Moore vehicle.

i know he hated it but that doesn't mean he didn't give a good performance!

yes, but it also doesn't mean he used about 0.0005% of his talent in doing so.

(he was great rolling his eyes about it on Letterman once)

but at least Star Wars isn't as phony as Bridge on the River Kwai!

^doesn't mean he DIDNT use^

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3080/2690810820_e309ed3e0d.jpg

The Horse's Mouth is hilarious and is one of the few movies about artists that's fun to watch it. He wrote the screenplay too.

His books/diaries are great stuff. I have to vote Ladykillers, if only for his horrible teeth.

Yeah, the diaries are marvelous. I spent a whole summer posting excerpts.

"Alec" is a stupid word.

Funny shit for fans of Joyce Cary/The Horse's Mouth

Yo New Yorkers

http://www.bam.org/film/series.aspx?id=197#Kind%20Hearts%20and%20Coronets

how is a handful of dust?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not sure which is funnier, the winner or the two votes for Empire.

eejits

Our Man in Havana on DVD today, PLUS a separate Guinness box set.

It's on my Netflix queue!

same here

It's on its way!

Kehr today

Today? I rented it last night!

clearly it was slipped to you by a vacuum-cleaner salesman.

Well, then, how do you account for the Wilson Yip/Sammo Hung/Donnie Yen/Simon Yam thing that also showed up?

Kill Zone, it's called.

(and btw, Sammo makes one hell of a scary mob boss. I didn't think he had scary in him!)

I bet he's not as funny-scary as Ernie Kovacs' Havana cop.

I'll find out soon enough. I'll be Sammo kicks harder and higher, though.

Not one of the great Reeds, but consistently entertaining. Guinness essaying one of his few relatively straight roles is droll throughout, and an unexpectedly funny Maureen O'Hara compensates for his lack of sexual charisma.

Our Man in Havana, that is.

Maureen is unusually lolish, it's true.

need to re-poll for his centennial, sans fucking Star Wars

The Horse's Mouth would've topped my list.

same here i think. excluding the le carre miniseries a bit ridiculous here also. love star wars and guinness in it but i do hope alot of those votes were trolling.

NYC retro... I need to fill in some of my '50s blind spots, like The Card aka The Promoter and The Captain's Paradise.

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/alec_guinness_100_festival

He is really terrific in The Card, reminding me sometimes of a Stan Laurel with brains and brass balls. (It's a collab w/ Ronald Neame before they did The Horse's Mouth.)

Guinness seemingly never appreciated much of his finest work. He frequently fell out with David Lean, and Piers Paul Read tells me, “He played down his roles in the Ealing comedies. He appeared unable to see that they displayed his genius quite as much as the `heavier’ roles he was proud of in Bridge on the River Kwai, Tunes of Glory and even Hitler.” Read adds his private torment perversely benefited his artistic attributes: “I suspect that the air of mystery—the enigmatic smile—which audiences found so appealing had something to do with his desire to conceal his homosexuality and also the dramatic struggle between his libido and his beliefs.”

It’s hard to disagree with the costume designer Percy Harris’ observation that “What you should remember about Alec is that he is a not very nice man trying to be a good one”. Others admired Guinness for—in a phrase he would doubtless hate—keeping it real. Gore Vidal, who scripted The Scapegoat, a preposterous 1959 murder yarn that would collapse were it not for Guinness’ compelling performance, observed of his leading man: “He is always a joy, the intelligence acute, malice serene, sense of absurdity alert.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/12/the-concealed-genius-of-alec-guinness.html

His journals are a joy for the same reasons: Malice serene, sense of absurdity alert. And he Read Books.

Another tribute.

I was wondering if that was going I be a link to your own blog.

Where Peter Sellers—who worshipped Guinness, and scrutinized him avidly when they worked on “The Ladykillers” (1955)—would spend himself in a fury of impersonation, Guinness gave no hint of a hollow core. He found a still point in the turning world

Ha! Possibly. I was rereading the diaries a couple nights ago.

saucy one-liner in that DB piece by Gielgud -- like AG, once arrested for "cottaging."

David Thomson on Guinness:

He is the most disarming and self-effacing of the English actors who dominated stage and screen in the middle of the twentieth century—the others were John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, and Laurence Olivier. Those fellows carried themselves like grand actors; they had brave, proud voices that signaled poetry or drama. Alec, by contrast, was slight, soft-spoken, losing his hair and bashful to the point of retreating into the background. He was most plausible as a suburban bank manager or a minor naval officer. Indeed, on one occasion when asked to name the best performance he had ever given, he said: “That of a very inefficient, undistinguished, junior officer in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. It proved to be the longest-running show I have ever been in.”

I haven't watched The Prisoner.

He's not in The Prisoner?

He is.

Oh, it's a different The Prisoner!

... which looks quite interesting.

The Card isn't the very best Guinness film about social climbing, but it is a charming little rags-to-riches comedy with fun performances from Guinness and Glynis Johns. Also, Petula Clark!

not a single vote for our man in havana, thats tougb

what fucking monsters voted in this?

genuine class

of course its tinker tailor

by all means come around mine and let me know that its not a film

by all means

can we have nine people FP'd into a gulag or

Very nearly gave The Quiller Memorandum a shout out on this thread yesterday. A typically excellent turn from Max Von as a neo-Nazi.

I still haven't watched Tunes of Glory. Must I?

it's better than For Completists Only, i think; Alec doing a diff military type than Kwai's Nicholson.

LOL @ this poll. Watching "Cromwell" right now, apart from the obvious fact that Alec Guinness is Charles I's double, I hadn't noticed when I'd seen this film before (maybe because I wasn't paying much attention to it) that he has a slight Scottish accent and stammer. Clever that. No explanation as to why Cromwell is Irish though.