WHEN CAROL REED MADE AN EPIC FILM HERE

by ECB Wijeyesinghe

Sir Carol Reed, one of the immortals of the film industry, died a few weeks ago and the three or four months he spent in Ceylon making a film called “The Outcast of the Islands” will always form a vivid chapter in my book of memories.

It happened nearly 25 years ago. After making several classic films, Carol, Reed came out with a distinguished group of actors and technicians including Trevor Howard and Sir Ralph Richardson to film a story based, I believe, on a Joseph Conrad novel. He built a whole town on stilts at Hanwella, where quietly flowed the Kelani Ganga, and converted the Colombo harbour into a picturesque Indonesian port in the back of beyond with a backdrop of dhows, sampams and buggalows.

I happened to be fairly closely associated with the venture because I was then on the Information Department staff and we had unofficial instructions to give all possible help to the company, which was spending millions of rupees here. It was, besides, an artistic effort and would have been a worldwide boost for Sri Lanka.

I was asked to do a tiny part, so tiny that it may have been washed out completely in the process of editing. I have not seen the completed picture so cannot be certain. I was also asked to secure the services of three other local actors who would fit into the roles of sea-captains. Three of my friends readily consented to form this nondescript band who were supposed to come from the more obscure corners, Indonesia, Malaysia and Polynesia. We were soon measured and fitted with uniforms obviously picked up from one of the shady corners in the Pettah known as “hora kada peliya” where stolen goods could be bought for a song.

THE FOUR

The Four Musketeers were : 1. Earle Gunawardene of Hadjiar fame, whose early death left an irreparable gap in the ranks of local drama. He was six-foot-three in height and 48 inches round the chest. Dressed in his black coat decorated with gold braid, and a peaked cap sitting at a jaunty angle, he looked more like an Admiral of the Fleet than a common or garden seaman.

The there was (2) Winston Serasinghe, similarly attired, stood besides Earle and could have been mistaken for a Vice-Admiral. (3) H.C.N de Lannerolle, stockily built and with semi-French, semi-Mongol features, resembled one, of’ the natives of an island somewhere in the Pacific, where European sailors had left footprints on the sands of time. Anyway he looked as if he had emerged in a hurry from the ship’s pantry in an ill-fitting costume borrowed from a steward.

Finally, myself in white, had to look a bit respectable and slightly important because they gave me a few lines of dialogue with the great star, Sir Ralph Richardson. I felt very humble in Sir Ralph’s presence and tried my best to stand up to the big man, pretending that we were two strong men standing face to face though we had come from the ends of the earth.

He was about my height and build but the resemblance ended there. As Sir Ralph took one look at me my heart stood still. For here 1 was in the immediate presence of one of the most famous men in the history of the British stage and screen. There are only three other actors in the world of the same class and they are Sir Laurence Olivier. Sir John Gielgud and Albert Finney. As the cameras, which do not lie, started whirring, the men behind them must have seen the consternation on my face. I got the signal to begin, but something stuck in my throat. In normal circumstances my vocal chords are not to be despised, but here I was mumbling something which only I could understand.

MUMBLED

I mumbled on when the great and compassionate Carol Reed merely said, “Louder, please.” The mike above my head was gently lowered and then I gave all I had at the second time of asking. “Grand,” said Carol Reed, and added, “Cut!”

Whether this memorable exchange of words have been preserved for posterity only the film librarians will be able to say. One thing I must say that though the four of us were supposed to be weather-beaten old sea-dogs, with the usual connections at every port of call, nearly all of us would have developed sea-sickness the moment we stepped into a padda-boat.

The best we could do to live-up to one roles was to intone a sea-shanty. I may add we would have done it lustily, if requested, as we were itching to do something nautical. As soon as word got around that some local lads were doing their stuff in an international picture, press cameramen appeared on the scene and we had to pose again for their benefit which we gladly did.

We were hoping that our picture would appear with some caption such as “Ceylonese stars in Reed masterpiece.” But our faces appeared in the “Daily News” the next day, the caption being something like “Four bit part players in ‘Outcast of the Island’.” I am not sure whether even our names were mentioned.

The fact of the matter was that by our part in the film we had been brought down to earth with a bang. Then as now, the newspapers published only the truth and nothing but the truth and we had no complaints.

KERIMA

Our heroine was a girl named Kerima. She was not a ravishing beauty, but she had her points, though they were not up to the Marilyn Monroe or Rosalind Russell standards. Reed had picked her up somewhere in Cairo, on instinct as it were. One of her chief qualifications was that she had never acted before on stage or screen. It was like buying a pig in a poke – a bold and ingenious experiment with an ingenue.

Reed was confident about licking her into shape, though he had never done anything like that before. Kerima’s father was French and her mother was Egyptian. Making conversation with her was somewhat difficult. She had, however, a smattering of English and all of us tried hard to cash in on it. Even then, the going was very sticky, and like her Egyptian ancestors, who built the Pyramids, she took a long time to come to the point. And when she did come, it was not worth pursuing, as her convent education kept surfacing from time to time and spoiling everything.

The art director of the film was one of the lesser Kordas. He was a younger brother of Sir Alexander Korda and had some of his genius. The township he built on stilts on the Kelani Ganga at Hanwella was a masterpiece of make-believe. A little man with a mercurial temperament, he kept on hopping from one homestead to another stepping gingerly on the slippery planks. But one day he showed that even a Korda can’t be too careful. He made one false step and there he was struggling in the shallow water.

I could not help saying “Sursum Korda,” but the appeal fell on deaf ears and the art director managed to get back into circulation under his own steam. The headquarters of the cast was at the Mount Lavinia Hotel and this suited Trevor Howard very well owing to the proximity of the bar to the swim pool in the bay. After a day’s work they would assemble before dinner and swap yarns.

However, there appeared to be a secret code between them and whenever the names of Orson Welles was mentioned there was a great gale of laughter. I began to get the impression that Orson Welles was not Reed’s favourite cup of tea. And so it went on for about four months until the great Carol Reed packed up his tent and disappeared.

“The Outcast of the Islands” was not a financial success, but it was an artistic triumph and gave some of us the opportunity of knowing fairly intimately the character of perhaps the greatest British film director of modem times. His humility was his greatest virtue. Who would have thought that here was the man who made such classics as “Odd Man Out,” “Night Train to Munich,” “The Third Man” and “The Fallen Idol T.’ In 1968 he won an Oscar for his first musical, “Oliver,” as the best movie in 1968. In whatever he did, there was a touch of class. May he have peace wherever he is.

(Excerpted from The Good Among The Best first published in 1976)