Delightful

posted by Gareth Higgins

There’s a fellow on Myspace who lists his favourite films as ‘Champion’, ‘Paths of Glory’, ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Lonely are the Brave’. These are all pretty strong movies, let’s face it.  It’s clearly a fellow who likes Kirk Douglas.  Turns out that it is Kirk Douglas.

Kirk Douglas is one of those guys who exudes the combination of gravitas and at least imagined integrity that signals ‘Old Hollywood liberal’. I like him; always have – from first seeing him as a cowboy fighting Arnold Schwarzennegger in ‘Cactus Jack’ as the B-film with ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ in 1981 in a musty English cinema, to discovering him with James Mason in ’20 000 Leagues Under the Sea’ on Saturday afternoon TV, to finally getting around to seeing ‘Spartacus’ when I was a late teenager trying to educate myself about film history.

Of course, ‘Paths of Glory’ might be the best film he was ever in, and has his best performance, tortured, vulnerable, simmering as the French army commander whose superiors kill three of his men to teach the others a lesson.

Throw in ‘The List of Adrian Messenger’, ‘Seven Days in May’, ‘The Vikings’, ‘Lust for Life’, and a handful of others and you’ve got the image of mainstream cinema heroism.  If his Myspace page is anything to go by, he thinks the same.  Kirk Douglas.  A Chin for All Seasons.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am. It is filed under Actors We Love, Blog, Gareth Higgins, On Acting, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.