Alec Guinness' Journey

Zenit ^ | June 23, 2005 | Elizabeth Lev

[AncientAirs]

This year, Italy's first taste of the summer film frenzy was the last installment of the Star Wars saga, "The Revenge of the Sith." The die-hard Star Wars fans of Rome dutifully went and came away with the same dissatisfaction produced by the other two new films. While certainly better than the last two, even this final episode seems to lack something.

Discussing the movie with colleagues later, we agreed that one of the key elements missing was Alec Guinness as Obi Wan Kenobi. Speculating further, the question arose of whether Guinness' firm Catholic faith played a part in the moral authority and the gravitas of Obi Wan.

While it is well known that the mighty "Force" of Star Wars is more Buddhism Lite than anything remotely Christian, Guinness infused his character with something not found in the later Jedi Knight renditions.

Unlike Jedi master Windoo who knows much but never expresses faith in the Force or super-ninja Yoda and his Force-driven martial skills, Guinness' Obi Wan offered an example of spiritual peace and, most indelibly in the mind of the children who saw it, an example of self-sacrifice.

Timely enough, the subject of Guinness' conversion was back on bookshelves last year with Piers Paul Reid's biography "Alec Guinness: An Authorized Biography." Together with Guinness' own description of his conversion to the Catholic faith in "Blessings in Disguise," it appears that life does imitate art.

Both the spiritual and material origins of Sir Alec Guinness were inauspicious. An illegitimate son of a woman who barely provided for him, he was confirmed in the Anglican church at 16 when he, in his own words, "arose from under the hands of the Bishop of Lewes a confirmed atheist."

As he trained for a stage career he also started searching for a religion. His myriad of early characters -- Osric in "Hamlet," Herbert Pocket in "Great Expectations" and the astounding eight parts in "Kind Hearts and Coronets" -- reflected the numerous stops on his quest for faith, from Buddhism to Tarot cards.

While Guinness himself asserted that the catalyst to his conversion was his son's recovery from polio, there was a long, slow preparation to what would be greatest part.

As Guinness started to find himself drawn to the Catholic Church looking for inner peace, he started taking priest roles in film. In 1954, he accepted the part of Father Brown in the screen adaptation of stories of G.K. Chesterton's beloved clerical sleuth.

Then in 1955, he played the heroic cardinal in the controversial film "The Prisoner," a film banned by both the Venice and Cannes film festivals for its negative depiction of Eastern European Communism. Adapted from a stage play, it is an intense psychological duel between an interrogator representing the totalitarian regime and a prelate charged with being overly political.

While the story is loosely based on the story of Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary, the character of the cardinal has startling parallels with the actor's own life. The shame of a poor background and an unpresentable parent, and the desire for glory to cleanse himself of the past, are all used against the cardinal in his psychological torture. This must have resonated very deeply in Guinness.

In 1956 Guinness converted. He lived out his life as a very prominent Catholic in England, becoming vice president of the Catholic Actors Guild but also a lector in his home parish of St. Lawrence in Hampshire.

Guinness was not proud of his association with Star Wars. He apparently refused to read fan mail connected with it and never uttered the phrase, "May the Force be with you."

Nonetheless, he gave the generation that got to know him through these movies a new kind of hero. Who could forget the old man against the towering machine, weaker and out of practice in combat, who smiled as he lifted his saber to be cut down by his enemy?

Guinness gave young people a last gift, albeit reluctantly, of an example of love and courage in popular culture and in life as well.

* * *

Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University's Rome campus. She can be reached at lizlev@zenit.org.

[Eepsy]

"The Detective" is occasionally shown on TCM, and is well worth keeping an eye out for. They make the character a little more bumbling, but not in a mean way, and it's quite a romp :)

[Momaw Nadon]

Jedi Ping!

Let me know if you want on or off this list!

[MoochPooch]

I find religious people in general to have greater decorum. Maybe it's a greater superego, but a person who is ingrained with moral authority tends to monitor his/her conduct.

(Maybe this is why the current actors seem stunted. The actors of the earlier eras, both male and female, exuded not only a maturity but a moral authority. But they came from a more traditional society.)