Michael Caine retires from acting with “The Great Escaper”

Bernard Jordan (Michael Caine) in "The Great Escaper", 2023
Image credit: “The Great Escaper”, directed by Oliver Parker, produced by Pathé Pictures International, 2023.
Written by: Luis Freijo
During the last days the news have shaken British cinema: two-time Oscar winner Michael Caine has announced his retirement from acting at age 90, right after the release of The Great Escaper, where he stars alongside the recently passed Glenda Jackson. Some seventy years after Maurice Joseph Micklewhite invented the artistic name Michael Caine while looking at a poster of The Caine Mutiny, and six decades after he came to international recognition through his role in Zulu, the actor’s retirement signals the beginning of the passing of a long-lived and extremely prolific generation of British actors that also includes stars such as Maggie Smith or Judi Dench.
Caine has explained that he has been driven to the decision of retiring because the kind of roles that he can get are, logically, those of 85 to 90-year-old men, and the scarcity of such characters in contemporary British or US films makes it not worth fighting for prolonging his career. Since the reviews for The Great Escaper have been positive and his work as pensioner Bernard Jordan has been unanimously lauded, why not retire on a high point instead of toiling to get minor roles in other productions, argues Caine.
If The Great Escaper becomes the last role of Michael Caine’s long and fruitful career, it will indeed be a dignifying way to end it. The Great Escaper is based on the real story of Bernard Jordan, a British veteran of D-Day who, in 2014, escaped the nursing home where he resided with his wife Irene (Glenda Jackson) to attend on his own the 70th commemoration of the Normandy landings. While Irene, who has a heart condition and more reduced mobility than Bernard, waits at the retirement home alongside the concerned staff, Bernard has several encounters in France with an alcoholic RAF veteran, a group of former German soldiers and the grave of a comrade-in-arms who was killed during the landing, to then return to England, where he has become the day’s celebrity.
The film stands within two of the main thematic currents that feature in British cinema from the last decade and a half. First, the film reconstructs the memory of World War II as the foundational myth of post-empire Britain, especially prevalent in the country’s ethos since the vote to leave the European Union. Secondly, and to a degree in relation with the previous aspect, The Great Escaper rehearses a take on British (and, more specifically, English) identity that stems from the UK’s older citizens, those that were there during the traumatic years of the war. In this sense, the film can be included in a wider trend alongside features such as Red Joan, with Judi Dench, The Old Lady in the Van, with Maggie Smith, or The Duke and the recent The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, both starring Jim Broadbent.
There are two levels of interpreting the film that can be derived from these two themes. The first, and perhaps more superficial one, has to do with the political interpretation of World War II vis-à-vis contemporary British identity. Bernard goes to the D-Day commemoration because that is what he has to do, even if it entails a challenging trip for the functional capabilities of his age and worrying the staff of the retirement home. Crucially, he does so with the acquiescence of his wife Irene, who understands her husband’s duty and equates it with the duty he assumed as a sailor in the Navy seventy years prior. Bernard’s construction of masculinity is transposed as an ideal of the British identity that came out of the efforts of the war: resilient, dutiful, kind and resourceful. Despite his age, Bernard is able to undertake the trip and look after another fellow D-Day veteran (John Standing) and the younger Iraq ex-combatant Scott (Victor Oshin), both of which struggle with alcoholism as a result of their war experiences. In this sense, The Great Escaper proposes a conservative model of national identity, through this strained comparison between the dangerous duty of participating in World War II and the not so dangerous duty of attending the commemoration. Bernard resists it somewhat towards the end by insisting on his less than heroic role in the war and disliking the attention the media has given him, but eventually the film’s aesthetic, with general views that frame Bernard in the beach and in the military cemetery, tip the balance towards the World War II myth.
Perhaps more interesting for the purpose of AGE-C is the film’s focus on the day-to-day aspects of late old age through the performances of Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson. The first part of the film focuses not only on Bernard and Irene’s routine, but on the importance of that routine in order to maintain their functional capabilities to the maximum. Bernard enjoys a daily walk with his walking frame, has a cup of tea next to the beach and then goes up to the top floor of the home, where his apartment with Irene lies. The repetition of close-ups of Bernard’s feet going up the stairs, with his hands holding to the rails, and the shots taken from the walking frame highlight the difficulty of movement for Bernard and Irene and become genuine and realistic representations of old age on screen. These images, along with the focus on intimacy between Bernard and Irene and the performance of emotions related to separation and the proximity of death, take The Great Escaper beyond the narrower frame of nation-building.
In relation to Michael Caine’s resignation to the lack of roles for ninety-year-olds, it would be interesting to know the production history of The Great Escaper. How would the contracts of Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson look like? Would they include any clause to ensure their wellbeing while on set, or to provide contingencies and adequate insurance in case of any health issue? How did the artistic team adapt to the functional capabilities of the two actors? The passing of Glenda Jackson shortly after finishing the shooting and Michael Caine’s retirement speak of the difficulty of finding actors that can offer the detailed and nuanced performances featured in The Great Escaper. However, the choices of the film in representing the challenges and routines of late old age reaffirm the space that such works can have, and the need to study them from multidisciplinary perspectives by projects like AGE-C.
Written by: Luis Freijo
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