Guy Hamilton, who quietly built an impressive career filled with 007 capers, war adventures and Agatha Christie thrillers, has died aged 93. The British film-maker, who got his start as Carol Reed’s assistant on pictures including The Third Man, had a career that spanned more than 30 years. Here are some of his key films:
An Inspector Calls
Hamilton’s career was filled with big-screen adaptations and this 1954 drama has remained one of the most warmly regarded. Based on the play by JB Priestley, it starred Alastair Sim as a man interrupting a middle-class dinner party to quiz an aristocratic family about a young woman who is believed to have taken her own life. It is brief but effective and, with Hamilton’s confident direction, never feels stagey.
Goldfinger
After turning down the chance to direct Bond’s first outing Dr No, Hamilton suffered a setback when his Oliver Reed thriller The Party’s Over was heavily censored, leading to his name being taken off it. Soon after, he decided to give 007 a try. He directed the first Bond film with a budget that equivalent to those of the previous two instalments combined), leading the series to financial and critical success.
Funeral in Berlin
In 1966, Hamilton got involved with another spy franchise with Funeral in Berlin. This sequel to The Ipcress File followed Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer to Germany. Caine claimed that Hamilton made on-set changes to the script based on his own experiences during the second world war, giving the film a rich authenticity.
Battle of Britain
Hamilton collaborated with Caine again for this 1969 war drama, which was a chance to work with one of his biggest ever budgets. It wasn’t commercially successful, but remained a fan favourite, thanks to a starry cast including Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer and Susannah York. It was one of the director’s many films that focused on or included themes relating to war.
Live and Let Die
Hamilton worked with Roger Moore on the eighth Bond film, released in 1973. It was another box office hit, making $161.8m worldwide from a $7m budget, and is the most viewed broadcast film in UK TV history with more than 23 million viewers. An “incredibly saddened” Moore paid tribute to Hamilton on Twitter.
Force 10 from Navarone
The film-maker returned to the war genre in 1978 for a loose adaptation of Alistair MacLean’s novel. The film was also a sequel to The Guns of Navarone in 1961. The original actors were deemed too old for the parts in Force 10, so Hamilton recruited a new cast, which included Harrison Ford, Robert Shaw and Edward Fox, and made such significant changes to the source material that MacLean turned the screenplay into a new book.
The Mirror Crack’d
Hamilton’s ability to bring the best out of large star-studded casts was exemplified yet again in the first of two Agatha Christie adaptations he filmed. He assembled Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Geraldine Chaplin and Edward Fox for this 1980 Miss Marple mystery, despite the fact he was never “totally enamoured” with Christie’s work.
