The VIPs (1963)Ī little gem of a turn from Smith (paired Rod Taylor) in this ensemble movie, scripted by Terence Rattigan, directed by Anthony Asquith and set in the VIP lounge of an airport. She is the faintly daffy Aunt Lavinia, who derives a weirdly vicarious excitement from her niece’s gentleman caller, and who – as we might say now – lives for the drama. Smith gives one of her blue-chip “aunt” performances in this excellent, underrated and under-remembered Henry James adaptation, directed by Agnieszka Holland. In that distant age, he played Shakespeare’s Othello in blackface and with a rolling, booming bass voice, while Smith played his wronged love, Desdemona, with mellifluous dignity and grace. Smith held her own against one of the biggest alpha-gorillas of stage or screen, Laurence Olivier. Photograph: Cinetext Bildarchiv/Allstar/Warner Bros 11. It is a wacky adventure mystery in which Alec McCowen plays a bewildered chap who finds himself finagled by his mysterious Aunt Augusta (Smith) into her plan to rescue her former lover from a kidnap plot. This was the film, adapted from Graham Greene and directed by George Cukor, in which Smith first established her Wilde-Wodehousian “aunt” persona: at just 38 years old, she is playing a formidable old lady of around twice that age. In some ways, it is another grande dame outing, but Smith brings to it a fierce energy and alienated anger – with a style perhaps borrowed from Queen Mary of Teck. Richard III (1995)Ī rare but special Shakespeare on screen for Smith, who plays the hated hunchback king’s mother, the Duchess of York, opposite Ian McKellen’s Richard in Richard Loncraine’s Mosleyite-fascist staging. Lady Isabel effectively promises to open her husband’s chequebook in return for a night of passion with the handsome vicar. Smith is the sexually voracious Lady Isabel Ames, to whose wealthy husband the vicar must apply for charitable funding. He is the unworldly clergyman tasked with setting up a mission for “fallen women” in Edwardian London’s East End. The Missionary (1982)Īn eccentric comedy from George Harrison’s Handmade Films is the first of two pairings for Smith and the film’s screenwriter-star Michael Palin. Sexually voracious … Smith angles for a night of passion with a vicar (Michael Palin) in The Missionary. Lois has to become resentfully complicit in this dysfunctional non-love triangle. She plays Lois, a painter in 1920s Paris, married to a handsome art dealer (Alan Bates), a philanderer who invites a beautiful penniless young woman (Isabelle Adjani) to stay with them – for the purposes of seducing her. Quartet (1981)Ī complex, unrelatable role for Smith in Jhabvala’s cool, measured adaptation of the Jean Rhys novel, directed by Ivory. A strong, yet nuanced performance from Smith. His handsome brooding looks unlock dormant emotions in them both. Judi Dench and Smith play two sisters living on the Cornish coast in the 1930s who take in a mysterious Polish stranger.
Very often, Smith finds herself in Werther’s Original movies in which she is condescendingly required to be a feisty oldster. Young Cassidy (1965)īased on the life of the great dramatist Sean O’Casey, this movie has the Australian star Rod Taylor as the man himself and Smith as the demure librarian who falls for him, inspires his creative and theatrical career and then selflessly lets him fly free of her. Charlotte is annoyed that their rooms do not have a “view” of the Arno, and her character epitomises the ironic inability to see the passionate possibilities laid out before her. It is a small, but rather potent part as the wary and disapproving chaperone to her yearning younger cousin Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), as they tour primly around Italy, fetching up in Florence. Smith plays Charlotte Bartlett in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s adaptation of EM Forster’s novel, directed by James Ivory. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock 18. Smith with Judi Dench in A Room With A View.
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