The perfect knight

Anton Dolin - memory of Sir Thomas Sean Connery

On October 31, at the age of 90, Scottish actor Sean Connery died. According to his family, an actor who at that time was in the Bagams, had been sick for some time. Connery died peacefully, in a dream. The film critic of Medusa Anton Dolin recalls how a native of Edinburgh's lower classes not only became Sir Song Connery, but turned himself into a living embodiment of chivalry.

Choosing the best actor is always difficult: too many factors and professional criteria must be taken into account. Choosing a loved one is much easier - the heart says here, not the mind. Sean Connery was undoubtedly loved. It is possible to criticize his inability to genuine acting, lack of plasticity, subordination once and for all the chosen image - but the charm and strength of his charisma will refute any skepticism.

Sir Thomas Sean Connery was born in Edinburgh in a very simple family - his parents were a worker and a cleaning lady (and this is the main paradox of his biography: after all, for the vast majority of the audience, Connery was the standard of aristocracy). He ended up in the theater in the early 1950s, in the hope of earnings. In parallel, Connery began a bodybuilder's career.

Truly his fate was changed by the invitation to the role of James Bond in the first film of the “Doctor Nou” series. Producers considered many candidates, from the world famous Carey Grant to the debutants. Connery seduced them with his gait and manner of communication. Having approved the young actor for the role, they began to train endlessly with him, teaching not the methods of battle and shooting, but of elegance and arrogance. Sean Connery played the 007 agent seven times - in the first five, most famous paintings (from 1962 to 1967), then after the break - in the “Diamonds Forever” (1971) and, finally, in the “Enthusiastic” film by Irwin Kerschner with the speaking name “Never say“ Never ”(1983). Then he was already 53 years old.

Was he the most organic, real bond? There is no consensus on this score - many prefer Roger Moore who came later, and fans of later films love the pier Brosnan or Daniel Craig: Bond, performed by Connery, seems to them too old -fashioned and clumsy.

Perhaps the Scotsman have one indisputable advantage over other performers of the role of agent 007. In his intonation there was always, if not a grin and open irony, then a hint of them. The series of novels by Jan Fleming, despite the writer's serious professional experience, always contained an element of parody and stylization - and Connery conveyed it to his game: before you, Lady and gentlemen, not a genuine spy, but his perfect and therefore playful image. Not a story about a dirty and difficult cold war, but fascinating adventures that will make you forget about reality. Of course, there is this approach in many later films Bondiana, but none of the actors passed it as accurately as Connery, in the characters of which masculinity and irony were always combined.

In any case, to reduce Connery’s conquests to Bondian is an unforgivable undersication. Even in those years when the world recognized and loved him in the guise of agent 007, the artist brilliantly played with Alfred Hitchcock in the psychological thriller “Mernie” (1964), in Sydney Lyumet in the Military Drama “Hill” (1965), and in Mikhail Kalatozov in his last film “Red Tent”, where he played the role of Ruel Amundsen. From this work, the song of Vladimir Vysotsky was born.

And after parting with the bond, the actor was a sin to complain about the lack of interesting roles. Konneri has repeatedly worked with Lyumet - in particular, in the “Murder in the Eastern Express” (1974), starred in a huge number of genre cinema, but did not hesitate to put a fool in eccentric “gangsters in time” (1981) Terry Gilliam. The greatest success overtook him in 1988, when the role of the aging policeman Jim Mallo in the “untouchable” Brian de Palma was crowned with Oscar and the Golden Globe.

The gray hair in a beard did not stop the show of Connery to remain a luminet of action-packed genres-although it can be assumed that the work in Stephen Spielberg’s third film about the adventurers “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) symbolically transferred him to the rank of “Fathers”: playing Henry Jones Sr. Harrisson Ford, his screen son. After that, there were “Red October” - a kind of farewell with the romance of the Cold War - and the “Russian House” (both - 1990), the confusing “rising sun” (1993) and, of course, the peppy “rock” (1996), where the hero Connery clearly conveyed the greetings of the mythology of “Bondiana”. In the new millennium, an elderly artist said goodbye to the audience, playing the role of a named writer in the thin drama of Gas Van Santa “Find a Forrester” (2000), and finally tried to shake the antiquity in the outrageous vulgar “League of outstanding gentlemen” (2003), in which, nevertheless, director Stephen Norrington entrusted Connarii to the role of archetypical adventurer of Allan Quermeyn.

Connery’s special and symbolically important part of the acting heritage is the images of medieval warriors and monarchs: the Shotlander-Bednyak turned into a lively embodiment of the English knight long before he officially became Sir in 2000. He was the reference Robin Hood of his generation in Robin and Marion (1976) Richard Leicester, a green knight in the Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight "(1984) by Stephen Wixes, rose to Richard the Lion Heart in" Robin Huda Guda, Prince of Thieves "(1991) Kevin Reynolds and, finally, deservedly He rose to the great king of Arthur in the “First Knight” (1995) Jerry Tsuker. And this is not to mention the immortal swordswoman Huan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez in the “Highlander” and the wisest William Basquerville in the “Rosa name” (both-1986). Inexplicably, it was Connery that ensured the connection of modern mass culture with the ideals of the European Middle Ages.

Sean Connery has always been something more than the character he played. Perhaps for the actor, such an inability to dissolve in the character is not a virtue. However, in the case of Connery, this property during his lifetime made him not just a star, but a legend.

Anton Dolin