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Original
Sim
Mark
Venner pays tribute to the eccentric genius of Alastair Sim,
a true original of British comedy who defies the remake treatment.
The great Scottishactor Alastair
Sim was without doubt the eccentric genius of post-war
British cinema, spicing British film comedy with a peerless
gallery of Dickensian rogues and scallywags. Sim is perhaps
most widely remembered for his portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge
in Brian Desmond Hurst's Scrooge (1951). His performance
eschews the cosy Yuletide nostalgia of all other screen incarnations
of Dickens' curmudgeon in favour of an unnerving Gothic intensity
that has more in common with the horror film than a jolly
seasonal favourite.
Sim's film career spanned almost 50 years, beginning with
George Formby comedies in the mid-1930s and appearances with
the Crazy Gang in Alf's Button Afloat (1938). He first
became inclined towards the sinister in the Edgar Wallace
chiller The Terror (1938), but it was during the war
years that he began to gain recognition with his portrayal
of Sergeant Bingham in the Inspector Hornleigh films.
This three-part series paved the way for his classic portrayal
of the eccentric and irreverent Inspector Cockrill in Frank
Launder and Sidney Gilliat's Green For Danger (1947).
Set in a small 'cottage hospital' in rural Kent, under the
direct flight path of Nazi Germany's dreaded doodlebug flying
bombs, this strange murder mystery portrays a close-knit community
of surgeons and nurses torn apart by emotional turmoil, sexual
jealousy and the horrors of war. Sim's detective, brought
in to investigate a baffling murder, is the first of his truly
eccentric characterisations – an unsettling and ambiguous
authority figure with sinister hooded eyes and a nervous grin.
This was the persona he was to embody for the remainder of
his career in British cinema; he became the paradigm of ambiguity
that embodied the post-war decline of the middle-class hegemony
quite brilliantly.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland
114.
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