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Richard, Lord Attenborough is a beloved figure in British cinema whose professional craft and personal compassion are beyond question. With his latest film, Closing The Ring , on release he tells FOCUS why he has no intention of retiring any time soon.
It seems apt to ask the man who has generously agreed to lend his name to the UK regional film critics’ awards what cinematic legacy he feels he will leave behind him. Richard Attenborough thinks for a moment and then makes a characteristically modest assessment of a directorial career that spans 13 films and nearly 40 years.
"I'm not a great filmmaker," he says, "I'm a craftsman. I have tried, whether it be in Cry Freedom or whether it be Gandhi or Shadowlands to make films about the dilemmas and the problems and the sacrifices - Oh What A Lovely War! for instance- that human beings are involved in."
His latest film, Closing The Ring, shows just the compassionate quality that informs his very best work. "It's a film about death and loss and loyalty and faith," he nods, "all those things. I thought it was as good a first screenplay as I ever read, I thought."
A romance tinged with tragedy, the film describes events surrounding an Ulster based American bomber crew in World War Two, the impact on the survivors when one dies and a chance discovery in the hills over Belfast at the height of the Troubles.
Even for a man with a track record such as his Attenborough had to suffer the vagaries of international film finance in an age when some film companies are not always dedicated to the craft to which he has dedicated the better part of his life.
"It took us about five years to raise the money," he explains. "It's very hard raising money now, because you’re not dealing any more with people who are even interested in the movies.
"They are part of conglomerates, the people who make decisions rarely read scripts, they have a chart with names of actors and they have numbers which they add together. If you've got a particular number you can get your money and if you don’t you can't.
"They change their minds. Shirley MacLaine, for instance, was very hot when we started so that was great, but for various reasons the thing didn't start when it should have done, she had a couple of dogs like we all have, and we couldn’t raise the money with her. So you battle on.
"I ought to be saying goodbye and packing it in but for some ridiculous reason I can't. I have to keep going for some reason. It’s not just the money, it's mostly the money but not entirely. I just can’t contemplate the idea of retirement."
Along with Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer Attenborough has cast British and Irish stars such as Pete Postlethwaite and Brenda Fricker along with a new generation represented by Mischa Barton.
It was during the war, of course, that Attenborough himself took his first tentative steps in the movies while he was serving with the RAF. Lady Attenborough Sheila Sim, his beloved ‘Poppy’, had worked with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on their wonderfully underrated A Canterbury Tale when she paid a visit to the legendary team at Denham Studios while they were working on A Matter Of Life & Death.
"This was 1943 or 1944," Attenborough recalls, "she went onto the set and said 'darling this is Mickey Powell, this is my fiancé Dickie Attenborough'. He asked how I was, I said I was well and he said 'you're in the air force I see, what do you earn these days?'’. I said 'seven shillings and threepence a day,'.
"He said 'if you would care to come up that escalator and when you get to the top say it's Heaven I’ll pay you more than seven bob and threepence a day,' - which he did, bless him. It wasn't quite enough for us to get married, but it helped us on the way."
It's odd to associate the young actor who subsequently made a terrifying impression in films like Brighton Rock, as the razor wielding thug Pinkie Brown, with the venerable octogenarian who exudes such a spirit of gentle compassion now.
To see the old man become young again you need only mention his long cherished dream to tell the story of Rights of Man author Thomas Paine. The puckish grin lights up his face, and the eyes dance. It is his one outstanding professional ambition, and he remains convinced that simple humanity filtered through the medium of cinema is a highly potent force for good.
"We can reach millions on Earth," he smiles, "more than any other medium that's ever been devised. If, at the end of the day, I could say I attempted to serve that creatively and managed to do it once or twice then I'd be happy with that."
ANWAR BRETT
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