Legend has it that Alec Guinness initially had no interest in doing that “sci-fi b-picture” set up at 20th Century Fox until he met George Lucas. Lucas, it turned out, was a genuine film aficionado, and he’d chosen Alec Guinness for the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi not only to add an air of legitimacy to the clearly absurd space opera for children that Lucas was cobbling together, but because Guinness had a particular gift to adding a strong dose of emotional reality to even the silliest premise.
Now, none of us who watched Star Wars way back when – that is, none of us young kids in the U.S.A. – had any idea who he was. For us, he was just kindly old Ben Kenobi, who died and then became Luke’s moral compass for the next two movies. Spoiler alert.
But in Star Wars, Alec Guinness served a much more important function: he helped to make a clearly silly movie feel real. Who else could have given that speech about the Force such weight? In the hands of a lesser actor we never would have believed it, but from a trained British actor doing his duty and taking the whole thing seriously, that speech comes out like gospel. Go watch it right now. I know you’ve got it. Go.
So now imagine Alec Guinness playing every member of an aristocratic English family slowly getting bumped off. That’s this week’s case in point:
1949’s Kind Hearts and Coronets.
A coronet is a kind of crown, and the title comes from a Tennyson quote: “Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood,” a quote so astoundingly English that simply speaking it may create an English singularity from which nothing English can escape. So don’t speak it out loud unless you want all the crumpets in the world to get sucked down its gaping English maw.
Still, that’s the theme of the movie: personal kindness is more important than the aristocratic hierarchy that’s shaped English culture ever since they discovered the monocle.
The story’s simple: in order to get the title due him by birth, a man must kill every single member of the aristocratic family who holds that title. It’s a very British bloodbath, carried off with good-natured humor. The fun of it comes from the fact that every member of that family is played by Sir Alec Guinness, including a lady.
You may have seen some of Eddie Murphy or Mike Myers carry off similar performances in their recent films, but what Ale Guinness does in Kind Hearts and Coronets is a much subtler feat: rather than distinguishing each character through a kind of physical comedic caricature, he takes each role seriously. This isn’t to say his performances aren’t funny, because they are, but the humor is grounded in real emotions and situations. It’s an astonishing feat.
So the next time you’re trying to explain to someone why you still, after all these years, after Jar Jar and midichlorians and all the rest of it, why after all that you still dig on the original Star Wars, just level your eyes at them and say “Sir Alec Guinness,” pop in your monocle, toast a crumpet, and fire up Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Next week: Humphrey Bogart writes a screenplay.
