Posted on 03/17/2023 5:46:07 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Michael Caine turned 90 this week. I can hardly believe it.
Caine was born in 1933, and like his irreplaceable contemporaries — Robert Duvall (Born 1931) and Clint Eastwood (born 1930) — he keeps on keeping on. How fortunate we are for that.
If you read Caine’s superb 1992 autobiography, What’s It All About?, you’ll discover that his true contemporaries were legends like Peter O’Toole and Terence Stamp and that he grew frustrated watching their careers explode while he scraped along…
But he hung in there, and stardom finally arrived at the ripe old age of 31 with Zulu (1964), a supporting role he basically lucked into. Zulu ended up being a box office hit (and is now rightly regarded as a classic), and in it, Caine proved he was something special: a true actor who was also a movie star, a leading man capable of character roles. But, most of all, there is his depth, a bottomless reservoir of Something’s-Going-On-Down-There-And-Something’s-Going-To-Happen. Without opening his mouth, Caine’s mere presence gives his every character a history and emotional life.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I don’t put them on a pedestal at all. I find some of them interesting, talented and/or entertaining, so I watch them. It’s not that deep.
I liked Sleuth and The Italian Job.
Not sure on that one myself. Acting is definitely a talent that some do much better than others but it seems to have no relationship to intelligence. Some actors are smart and others are idiots.
I do appreciate the talent though and I wasn’t kidding about Muppet Christmas Carol. Caine’s acting in that was magnificent.
Here is a truly fantastic Michael Caine film that almost nobody has heard of. Co-star is Omar Shariff. It’s U.S. distribution was bad, came out at the wrong time, etc. But it’s a truly great film IMHO. Watch at least the first 2 of the 12 minute segments here:
The Last Valley, Part One
“The Last Valley is an intense drama, starring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, set during war torn Thirty Years War era Germany.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6g9g1CRD1s&t=12s&ab_channel=MaxClennon
It has a long intro, you can scroll over to 3 minutes if you want to skip it. Great full orchestra theme though.
I agree. I like his acting as well. But I also like my in-laws spaghetti sauce yet and I am sure others have in laws that do great things as well. Yet I rarely see an FR post about their birthday. Again...just a commentary on how we treat people differently and one main difference is the use of public praise.
Joe Bologna and Valerie Harper were so funny in that film.
“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” - what a fun movie. Also loved Caine in “Secondhand Lions” and “Miss Congeniality.”
Hugely inyeresting. Saved for later.
Still wish they'd make a movie faithful to the first book. No idea who could pull off the eponymous character today though.
The difference is, I think, many people get a common type of enjoyment out of the performances of somebody acting in a movie or play, whereas there isn’t any type of commonality of experience with your in-laws or relatives.
You can enjoy something without Hero Worshiping it and placing it on a pedestal of some kind.
I saw “The Last Valley” when it came out and have seen it a couple of times since, it is an excellent film.
Ruprecht... hilarious!
Michael Caine is among the last of a dying breed, an actor that had a life as a man before he became an actor.
Micklewhite (Michael Caine) was sent to the front along the Samichon River Valley, where he fought the Chinese and North Koreans in raids and patrols, often at night. In 1953, he contracted malaria and was sent home.
(snip)
In 1951, he was called up to serve in the British Army.
(snip)
Nothing, he says, could have prepared him for what happened during his first watch on guard duty during the absolute darkness of the Korean night.
From his trench, the night was split open by enemy flares lighting up the battlefield and by the hordes of the enemy charging toward him. The first time he heard a Chinese trumpet break the stillness, he barely had time to ask his buddy what that was before hundreds of trumpets joined in.
“There in front of us, a terrifying tableau was illuminated,” he recalls. “Thousands of Chinese advancing toward our positions, led by troops of demonic trumpet players. The artillery opened up but they still came on, marching toward our machine guns and certain death.”
Caine describes the minefield they’d constructed to defend themselves from such a human wave as “suddenly irrelevant.” Wave after wave of Chinese infantry committed suicide, throwing themselves onto barbed wire so their bodies could be used as a bridge.
“They were eventually beaten off,” the actor says of the Chinese soldiers. “But they were insanely brave.”
After getting sent to war so early in his life, Caine came to believe that war ages kids well beyond their years. He and his mates were approaching 20 years old when they went to the front lines of Korea. On the way back, they encountered the units who would be replacing them.
“They were 19-year-olds, as we had been when we went in,” Caine says. “I looked at them and I looked at us, and we looked 10 years older than they did.”
The actor recalls the closest he came to death during the war, on a nighttime patrol in no man’s land. It was a moment that he says still haunts him to this day.
Three British troops covered themselves in mud and mosquito repellant in order to make their way deeper into the valley, an area they had been fighting to take for weeks. They were headed for the Chinese lines to try to gather information. On their way back to their own lines, they suddenly smelled garlic in the air.
“The Chinese ate garlic like chewing gum,” Caine says. “We realized we were being followed.”
The fusiliers threw themselves on the ground as a unit of Chinese pursuers began searching the brush for them. Rather than die in the weeds, the trio charged the enemy, guns blazing.
This incident comes back to the actor when others try to attack him or bring him down. He thinks about what happened on that hill in Korea, and realizes that no one could ever make him feel hopeless again.
“I just think, as I did on that Korean hillside, ‘You cannot frighten me or do anything to me, and if you try, I’ll take as much or as many of you with me as I can.’”
Listen to Actor Michael Caine Talk About Fighting in Korea
https://www.military.com/history/listen-actor-michael-caine-talk-about-fighting-korea.html
Here's Michael telling us his trick to how he does that...
I watched ZULU again a few days ago. Excellent movie!
Got it on DVD!
I love that movie. My only gripe is adult Walter just didn’t seem manly enough for someone raised with the example those two men.
Now that you have me thinking about it, I am going to watch it again this weekend.
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