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happy returns
Lord Attenborough at 80. Andy Dougan assesses a national treasure
academy focus
Lord Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames is a name that would cost a for- tune to put up in lights. Thankfully to those who know him, love him, and have reason to feel grateful to him – which takes in just about the whole British film industry – he is simply “Dickie”.
A stalwart and seemingly ever-present at BAFTA functions and award ceremonies he is the very embodiment of vitality with an energy and vigour which puts men half his age to shame. Look up ‘indefatigable’ in the diction- ary and you’ll find a picture of Richard Attenborough next to it.
And while it is easy to lam- poon his generosity of spirit and the fact that his heart is seldom far from his sleeve, we should never forget that Attenborough is arguably our greatest living direc- tor. You can count the number of current British Best Director Oscar winners, literally, on the fingers of one hand and he is one of them. Not only that, for a great many years, Attenborough was the British film industry. There are young men and women who can now plan careers on either side of the camera instead of scratch- ing a living as previous genera- tions did and that is due to the efforts of Attenborough and a few determined but like-minded fellows. Those efforts are not just confined to his work with BAFTA.
He was of course connected to the Academy from its outset and was intimately involved as chairman of the David Lean BAFTA Foundation Trustees before, in 1970, becoming Chairman of the Council. In 1983 he was awarded a Fellowship, three years after brother David making it a rare family double, and last year he became the Academy’s fourth President.
But beyond the committee rooms and the smoke-filled lob- bies, Attenborough has made a
contribution which far outweighs his screen presence.
One of Britain’s finest and best-known actors he became a driving force behind the revitali- sation of British film-making in the Sixties. With his great friend and producing partner Bryan Forbes he produced The Angry Silence, Whistle Down the Wind, The L- Shaped Room and Séance on a Wet Afternoon.
Each of these films is shot through with a moral certainty that has informed everything to which Attenborough has attached his name. That sense of decency and innate integrity comes from his parents and Attenborough has carried it with him now these eighty years.
When he finally stepped behind the camera himself – at the insistence of possibly his clos- est friend in the business Sir John Mills – the result was Oh! What a Lovely War, which was released in 1969. This was a bold, innovative, and provocative film. Like the great Busby Berkeley, many of the dramatic and stylistic innova- tions of that film came about because Attenborough didn’t know you couldn’t do it that way!
It was the beginning of a new career that established him as the master of what we might call the intimate epic. Films such as Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far, the incomparable Gandhi, and Cry Freedom told stories that were huge in scope but with a well-defined human dimension.
Gandhi was the film Attenborough was put on earth to direct. His interest in the story began in 1962 and twenty years later he was able to pick up a Best Director Oscar for his film ver- sion of the story.
In between times there have been other, smaller pictures. Films such as Magic, Shadowlands – my own favourite of his films – and the unjustly neglected Grey
Owl showed that there was more to Attenborough than the ability to get thousands of extras mov- ing in the same direction.
Attenborough is the actor’s director. A list of those who have worked with him would have casting directors ransoming their children: Anthony Hopkins – five times – John Mills, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Anne Bancroft, Michael Douglas, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Ben Kingsley, John Gielgud, Pierce Brosnan, Sandra Bullock, Robert Shaw, Debra Winger. The list goes on.
More than that he is also, according to Steven Spielberg whose E.T. lost to Gandhi in the 1982 Oscars race, a director’s director. That’s why when Spielberg was under the cosh with post-production on Jurassic Park while he was still filming Schindler’s List, he asked Attenborough to take over the reins on Schindler’s List for a few days.
Deeply committed at the time to Shadowlands, Attenborough was unable to do it. To this day Spielberg insists he is the only director he would have asked to take over the film which was as
much his life’s work as Gandhi had been to Attenborough.
Lord Attenborough will spend his 80th birthday on August 29 as he would want, preparing to shoot another film. Closing the Ring, a love story spanning fifty years, will be his twelfth as a director.
What else can one say? Happy birthday, Dickie!
Andy Dougan is author of
The Actors’ Director: Richard Attenborough Behind the Camera (Mainstream) Photograph courtesy
of Terry O’Neill
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