Star of stage and screen Scofield truly was a 'man for all seasons'
The death last week of Paul Scofield, at the grand age of 86, severed the last real link with what might be considered the golden age of 20th century British theatre.
Certainly the obituary writers seemed to think so, comparing Scofield with the likes of Olivier and Gielgud, and applauding his apparent disdain for film-making.
In a film career that spanned five decades, Scofield made only 16 movies. Unlike his '50s contemporary Richard Burton, who embraced feature films and their attendant riches – "career madly thrown away" wrote one commentator on his death in 1984 – Scofield opted for a more modest output. Unlike seven-time nominee Burton, Scofield did win an Academy Award: as Sir Thomas More in Fred Zinnemann's opulent A Man for All Seasons. That year he was up against Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, Steve McQueen and Burton. Yet it was Scofield, a relative newcomer to cinema, who was honoured.
He was a powerful figure in the few movies he deigned to make – an actor who provided a balance, a core, even an anchor for other performers.
He was the balance in Carve Her Name with Pride, a biopic of SOE agent Violette Szabo. He was the core of A Man for All Seasons. And he was the anchor in The Train, a tremendous Second World War thriller by John Frankenheimer, in which a German soldier and a French resistance fighter go head-to-head over a train loaded with art treasures. More a battle of wills than of ideology, it proved how movie star magic could be equalled (and, perhaps, even eclipsed) by the sheer power of a theatrically-trained actor.
Then there was Peter Brook's King Lear, a grim, forbidding version of Shakespeare's tale of mad monarchs; Bartleby, from Melville's novella; and Scorpio, a tale of assassins which reunited him with his Train co-star Burt Lancaster.
His later work included superb supporting turns in The Crucible and Quiz Show. Quiz Show was a capsule example of acting at its finest, summed up Scofield's brilliance and merited, I thought, some kind of tribute. Thus it was that in October 2001 I wrote to Scofield – always plain "mister", having refused a knighthood – suggesting that a retrospective of his work be presented at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford to mark his 80th birthday in January 2002.
The response I received was not the one I wanted but, in reading his letter, I couldn't find fault with his logic.
"I would have liked very much to feel that I could co-operate with you in this," he wrote, "but reluctantly I have to admit that my heart is not in it. I would prefer my birthday to pass without comment. My instinct tells me to 'play it down'."
To the man who preferred plain "Mr Scofield" to "Sir Paul", acting was a job. There was no alchemy about it. Certainly it wasn't something to be raked over, analysed and earnestly discussed at length on stage.
Everything I have read about Scofield points to a humanity and modesty that is missing in so many performers. Maybe he felt no-one would turn up. Perhaps he thought his best work had been in the theatre, and that films merely captured a fleeting moment in time.
Who knows what it was. Suffice to say that, without the blessing of the man himself, I didn't feel able to run the season.
Now he's gone. His theatre performances live on only in the memories of those who witnessed them, but his films at least give a measure of the commanding nature of an actor whose devotion to theatre meant cinema came a very definite second. Paul Scofield made too few films, and we are all the poorer for it.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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