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Michael Caine: 90 years in 10 films of a cinema icon

“I have never seen it, but from what they told me it is terrible. In any case, I have seen the house that was built. Nobody remembers the movie, but the house is still here and is one of the greatest sources of pleasure and happiness in my life. In the pages of his hilarious, essential, autobiography Mi vida y yo (What’s it all about?) (1993), Michael Caine very gracefully confessed how his participation in the delirious Shark IV. The actor remembered that moment when a new home was being built and construction costs were skyrocketing, he had no project ahead of him with a face and eyes, and he decided that a check for a million and a half dollars justified considering filming. of that disaster as a family vacation in Nassau.

Perhaps at that time it was not yet common, but since then, Caine has never again dropped his rings for participating in projects that did not deserve him. It is physically impossible to work on 175 feature films and maintain a level of quality. Because yes, in addition to being one of the best actors in the history of cinema, he is also one of the most active. At 90 years old, today he himself blows out the candles, Maurice Joseph Micklewhite just shot the third part of Now you do not see me and another film The Great Escaper, about a war veteran who flees the residence where he lives to attend the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Thus, he continues to build a filmography full of wonderful films that have made him one of the greatest.

The new generations recognize him as Alfred, Batman’s butler in Christopher Nolan’s moviesa filmmaker who has adopted him as a fetish actor (he also appears in The Final Trick, Origin, Interstellar o Tenet, and even had a vocal cameo in Dunkirk), but his seven decades working as an actor have allowed him to shoot with the best: from Joseph Leo Mankiewicz a John Huston, of John Sturges a Robert Aldrich, of Otto Preminger a Ken Russell, of Brian DePalma a Stanley Donen, of Woody Allen a Oliver Stone, of Peter Bogdanovich a Neil Jordan, of Paolo Sorrentino a Alfonso Cuaron.

Born in London on March 14, 1933in a humble family (his father was a fishmonger and his mother cleaned houses and was a cook), Michael Caine He was one of the best representatives of Swinging London, that movement that shook culture and fashion in England in the 1960s. He had starred in Alfie (1966), an icon of those effervescent times, after being revealed in Zulu (1964) and to impact with that response to the adventures of James Bond what did it mean Ipcress (1965), the first of the installments starring the secret agent Harry Palmer (later they would arrive Funeral in Berlin, The Brain of a Billion Dollars and the telefilms The Beijing Express y Midnight in Saint Petersburg).

With a stage name adopted from that famous movie with Humphrey Bogart, The Caine Mutiny, unlike obviously attractive contemporaries like Terence Stamp (with whom you shared a flat on Ebury Street for years) or Sean Connery (one of his best friends in the profession), Caine drew oil from an irresistible charisma, from those horn-rimmed glasses that compensated for his nearsightedness, from his cockney accent and from his status as a normal working-class man, with whom viewers could identify .

When, at the beginning of the 1990s, his career seemed to come to a halt (“one day I received a script, I refused it because it didn’t seem like much to me, and they answered me saying that the offer was not to play the lover, it was to play the father ”, he recalled in an interview, he was 65 years old), he knew how to reconvert himself and age on screen thanks, fundamentally, to the turning point that The rules of the Cider House, with which he would win his second Oscar. The first had arrived a decade earlier, with Hannah and her sisters. Surfing the final withdrawal from acting due to age-related health problems, Michael Caine leaves behind an extraordinary legacy. We celebrate 90 years of him by choosing 10 of his best interpretations in chronological order.

Michael Caine leaves an extraordinary legacy. We celebrate his 90th anniversary by choosing 10 of his best performances in chronological order

Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966)

The hedonism of Swinging London made into a movie. The sexual adventures of a womanizing chauffeur catapulted Caine to stardom and earned him his first Oscar nomination. The actor added a thousand nuances to a misogynistic and amoral characterand the story (with a moment that makes your hair stand on end and that has to do with a chilling illegal abortion) added a powerful look that questioned the limits of the frivolity of the time.

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Alfie

relentless killer (Mike Hodges, 1971)

Probably the most influential gangster film in the history of British cinema. Stripping the world of organized crime of any glamour, this hyper-violent and sordid tale of revenge turns an undaunted Caine into an angel (or rather a demon) of death, ready to kill anyone involved in his brother’s death. . Dry and uncompromising thrilleralso added a realistic and critical social perspective to the context that lived in England in the 70s. Brutal.

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relentless killer
Michael Caine sharing a soccer gathering with Stallone, Pelé and John Huston

The footprint (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972)

Adaptation of a play by Anthony Shaffer by two actors, this extraordinary hand in hand between Caine and Laurence Olivier It was quite a trial by fire for our man. In his memories, Caine recalls the nerves before their first meeting, and the whimper he had for not being intimidated by the legendary Olivier. He not only lived up to it, earning the respect of his veteran co-star. Together they turned that entertainment (which brings together a famous crime novel writer with whom he assumes he is the lover of his wife, in a game of tennis that plays with the viewer and his expectations) into an absolutely memorable movie.

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The footprint

The man who could reign (John Huston, 1975)

Probably the masterpiece of Caine’s filmography and one of the best adventure movies ever.. The spirit of Rudyard Kipling hovers on this impossible journey towards the conquest of the kingdom of Kafiristan by two reckless English soldiers destined for colonized India. With the epic at the service of camaraderie, and caressed by a delicious sense of humor, this beautiful epic without heroes is also the melancholic portrait of two losers with more shadows than lights, the great specialty of John Huston (already demonstrated in other classics, as The Sierra Madre Treasure o rebellious lives). Someone should explain to us why they took away the chance to see Sean Connery and Michael Caine together again, so much chemistry in an essential film.

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The man who wanted to be king

the eagle has arrived (John Sturges, 1976)

What a hand John Sturges had to shoot action, in westerns like The seven magnificents or in war skins like The great escape Or like this gem, in which Michael Caine leads a commando of German soldiers (he plays a Nazi, yes, but one of those who opposes Jewish extermination, a black sheep Nazi) with the mission of kidnapping Winston Churchill and taking him to Berlin. With Donald Sutherland on the team, things can only go up. Fast-paced, absorbing and exciting, a true war movie classic.

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the eagle has arrived

evasion or victory (John Huston, 1981)

Ok, this is the most questionable presence on the list, but, beyond the fact that at times it borders on ridicule, there is no doubt that this very nice party for soccer fans has ended up becoming a cult-movie. The soccer game of Nazis against prisoners organized in a German concentration camp is the high point of an entertaining war adventure that is devoted to the craft of John Huston and that tries to be reflected in classics such as the great escape o traitor in hell but that finds all its meaning when the plot is placed in the hands of coach Michael Caine and his footballers, Pelé, Ardiles, Moore and Summerbee. And yes, we even forgive the fact that the coach bets on goal for a Sylvester Stallone who wouldn’t be able to stop even a shot from a drunken chimpanzee.

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evasion or victory
Michael Caine and the crisis of the 40 portrayed by Woody Allen to Hannah and her sisters

Hannah and her sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)

In the first minute of one of Woody Allen’s best works, Michael Caine’s voice puts us in the situation: “My God, how beautiful she is. I would like to be with her, hug her, kiss her and tell her how much I love her! She’s enough, you idiot, she’s your wife’s sister. Elliot (Caine) is married to Hannah (Mia Farrow), the oldest sister of three, the epicenter of a somewhat dysfunctional family. Elliot falls madly in love with Lee (Barbara Hershey), and begins to behave like a real jerk. His is one of the little stories with which Woody Allen concentrates a handful of magnificent portraits of vulnerable and emotionally awkward characters. More inspired than ever, the filmmaker was able to include influences as diverse as Ingmar Bergman, Anton Chekhov or the Marx brothers, in a fortunate cocktail in which he adds his own experiences. Going back to Michael Caine, the actor won the well-deserved first Oscar of his careerwhich he couldn’t pick up because he was rolling… Shark IV.

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Hannah and her sisters

A pair of seducers (Frank Oz, 1988)

There are three movies in which we can find the most unleashed Caine. In What a ruin of function! (Peter Bogdanovich’s adaptation of the stage hit Ahead and behind), in the third installment of Austin Powers (playing the father of Mike Myers) and in A pair of seducers, where he competed with Steve Martin for being the best scammer of rich women, whom they seduce with the aim of emptying their pockets. The couple was irresistible, and the comedy makes you cry with laughter.

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A pair of seducers

Laso rules of the cider house (Lasse Hallström, 1999)

The freedom and nobility that Michael Caine conveys in this adaptation of John Irving’s novel gave the actor his second Oscar. He plays an orphanage director, illegal abortionist, and ether addict, to whom he brings a wonderfully balanced humanity and warmth that never lapses into sentimentality. Those words written by Irving take on, with Caine’s voice, an amplified and powerful meaning: “Good evening, princes of Maine, kings of New England”.

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Laso rules of the cider house

the stolid american (Phillip Noyce, 2002)

Caine already had experience putting himself in the shoes of that The honorary consul (1983) y returns to the universe of writer Graham Greene to surrender to him with a subtle and delicate interpretation of a romantic, melancholic and cynical character. He puts himself in the shoes of a veteran journalist special envoy to Southeast Asia, in the midst of a conflict between a Vietnam that is demanding independence and a France that sees its times as a colonizing empire dying out. The reporter will witness the rebellion as he tries to manage his love affair with his Vietnamese lover and a newly arrived American diplomat (played by recently Oscar-winning Brendan Fraser). One of the best adaptations ever made of Greene’s literature.

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the stolid american

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