Richard Attenborough

Richard Attenborough stands in the archive as two separate jobs, and his name has turned into a measure in both. On the directing side, Michael Atkinson charges a film of Eastwood's with working in exactly the Stanley Kramer or Attenborough mode, which is to say playing down to Americans who like cheap triumphal sports pictures. On the acting side, a text relays that the lead of the new adaptation of Brighton Rock was faulted for not being Attenborough, and makes its own comparison: the newer one is less dead-eyed than he was, but blacker in intent. Kim Newman, describing an animation, writes that its plasticine chickens stand in for screen escapers who never stop escaping, Attenborough and John Mills among them. Of his own work, Richard Falcon's verdict on Grey Owl is harsh: Attenborough skates past the open problems and delivers a ready-made hero, and would have been happier, by that text, making an IMAX documentary.