Great Performances (TV Series) Laurence Olivier: A Life (1983) User Reviews

magnificent documentary/interview with one of the greats

[blanche-2 · 10/10 · 23 November 2005]

"Laurence Olivier: A Life" remains one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, right up there with a wonderful interview with Orson Welles I saw on TBS and never saw again.

Olivier is absolutely captivating as he talks about his life and career, which is punctuated with stills, clips, and interviews with his wife, Joan Plowright and actors John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. I confess that I had a little problem understanding Richardson.

Laurence Olivier displays self-deprecating humor as he tells some hilarious stories on himself - getting caught in his pant legs on stage, breaking his ankle while demonstrating a riding maneuver to Irishmen, and William Wyler laughing his head off at Olivier's snobbery toward film-making. In one interview with a colleague, when he realizes that he played a certain part in a play, he bursts out laughing at the thought of it. Most poignant is the careful way he speaks of his marriage to Vivien Leigh, which is juxtaposed with film footage and photos of this beautiful couple. "I won't say it was the happiest I've ever been, because I'm happy now...but it was a life." "Laurence Olivier: A Life" is truly a no-miss. It tells the story of a brilliant actor who was a charming, funny, private and flawed man. It is a positively riveting, living document.

A great overview of the accomplishments of an extraordinary man!

[Lady X · 10/10 · 15 February 2000]

During his long and celebrated career, Olivier brilliantly portrayed, on stage and screen, a greater variety of characters than any other actor, past or present. His tenacity and ambition are astonishing and admirable, and his versatility and talent are, in this writer's opinion, unmatched.

This interview, of Olivier himself, and of several friends and associates, at last gives us the opportunity to actually get to know a bit about his true personality and character, sans makeup, wig or costume, and only served to deepen my admiration and respect for the man.

He speaks articulately, and with a delightful, often self-deprecating, humor, about his career, from his first Shakespearean roles as a schoolboy in England, to his early roles in the legitimate theatre, and of his culture shock upon his arrival in Hollywood in the '30's.

He describes his initial, mutually antagonistic relationships with some of Hollywood's greatest movie producers and directors, and how they eventually succeeded in instilling, in this classically-trained theatrical purist, a love and respect for the medium of film and a recognition of its potential -- and of how that revelation eventually led to his own successes as an award-winning film producer and director.

The viewer gets an inkling as to the fortitude of the man, in his visions of bringing Shakespeare to the screen as it had never been done before, in discussions of his tribulations as director of the Old Vic, in his long-fought battle to finally bring to reality the National Theatre of England, and in his determination to continue working throughout his lifetime, despite financial and professional setbacks, and, in his later years, chronic, painful, debilitating illness.

Although I thought the interviewer was weak and ineffectual, the video itself, which includes photos and discussions of many of Olivier's theatrical roles, as well as excerpts from several of his films, is a great overview of the accomplishments of an extraordinary man!