In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  The Russian special effects man in charge of all explosives had already worked six years on Bondarchuk’s massive War and Peace. It had taken so long to film that some of the older members of the cast had died and had to be replaced. This meant they had to begin shooting all over again. No wonder he walked about in a punch-drunk daze. One day we shot a scene where the English were to ride much too close to a French contingent who would take shots at us as we passed. I noticed our man had planted red flags to indicate where the explosions were to take place at intervals over a radius of some three or four hundred yards. “When do they go off?” I asked through my interpreter, an old lady called Melita. “After your horse has crossed each of them,” I was told. “You’re sure?” I tremulously asked. There were lots of “Da Da’s” and “Horrochos” and much effusive nodding of heads, so I felt temporarily reassured. Then someone yelled something that loosely resembled “Action” and off we went straight out of the frying pan into the you-know-what! Our crazed special effects friend with his strange sense of timing had set off each burst directly under my horse’s belly. Dear deaf old Stok, whose highest speed in ten years was probably no more than a trot, suddenly took off. My fiery-footed steed at full gallop had only one thing on his mind—the Grand National. There was no way to rein him in—he didn’t want to know. He had taken the lead and my little army were right behind barrelling after us. I gave up the reins and held onto his mane for dear life. We must have covered three miles at least through the smoke before old Stok decided to slow down. When we finally came to a halt and the smoke had cleared, I looked about. There was no sign of a film unit anywhere in sight—just endless rolling fields. Terence Alexander who played Lord Uxbridge, trying to calm his sputtering beast, called out, “We must be in fucking Transylvania by now!” When we finally did get back to the set, after much snorting and puffing from our exhausted four-legged friends, all we could see were a lot of empty chairs and old Melita and Kirby standing in a cloud of dust. The rest of the bastards had broken for lunch.

  Stok, my docile friend

  LUNCH WAS THE ONE COMFORT we managed to look forward to. Dino had seen to that. Fresh pasta and vino were flown in from Rome every other day. The Russian crew and actors couldn’t wait to demolish it as soon as it arrived. Poor things, they had never tasted anything like that in their lives; not only were they profoundly grateful, they were the happiest crew from the Urals to the Volga.

  The other comfort awaited us at the end of each day when the sun went down. Because the food at the dreaded inn was inedible and the dining room so disgusting, the main English contingent would repair to our suite where Elaine cooked us all dinner. This became a nightly routine. With next to no equipment and very makeshift utensils, she managed superbly on the smallest two-ring burner imaginable. When not on the battlefield with me, she would set her alarm for 5:00 a.m., go into town and take her place in the long queues of Russian peasant women waiting to fight over the last bit of meat or what was left of very anaemic-looking chicken. There were never any vegetables. Rich farm country though it was outside Uzhgorod, by law everything fresh had to be shipped straight to Moscow. The unfortunate local farmers who had worked so hard on their crops were left only mere scraps to live on. As there was sometimes no meat or chicken for weeks on end, Elaine would make us curried eggs, having successfully smuggled in some curry powder—how I’ll never know. She became known as St. Joan of the Bunsen Burner. Our dinner regulars included Jack Hawkins (Pic-ton), Michael Wilding (Ponsonby), plus Rupert Davies, Geoffrey Wickham, Ian Ogilvy (William De Lancey), Terence Alexander (Uxbridge), Donal Donnelly (captain of the Inniskillins), John Kirby, of course, and Willoughby “Willow” Grey, still resplendent in kilts and monocle. Most of them had turned into lonely bachelors whose wives or loved ones had refused to accompany them. Lucky me! It seemed I had the only girl in the world.

  One day Willow, Elaine and I went to see some assembled footage that the thoughtful American editor had put together. It all looked pretty impressive. Nannuzzi, who had been Visconti’s favourite cameraman, was photographing it brilliantly. The look was stupendous—like a series of Old Masters. But the battle scenes and the acting in general had a chaotic hysteria about them, and quite understandably. Rod Steiger, with no help coming from Bondarchuk, had decided to make Bonaparte’s well-known suffering from piles the main thrust of his character. It seemed it was piles that had motivated both his irascibility and his decline. Rod was a marvellous actor, but he could sometimes go too far and needed a strong director to rein him in. Because the script was so sparse, he would improvise constantly in front of the camera and as Bondarchuk never called “cut,” the cameras would roll on long after the scene was over. So suddenly, there was the Emperor Napoleon barking away in his treble tenor, “Where are my maps? And where’s the table?! How do you expect me to play the scene without my fucking table?!!”

  There were a couple of shots of us English on the hill and although we all looked fairly authentic, our dialogue was commonplace, uninspired and stilted. There was not the slightest suggestion that Wellington had his own special way of phrasing things, a uniquely oblique way of framing a command or a bon mot. There was also no indication of his depth as a man. I wanted him to be seen as he was—the austere patrician who kept his feelings in check, and the deeply emotional and humane creature who spent hours in his tent at night weeping over his losses on the field. I had tried to get them to suggest some of this on film, but it was useless, of course. After all, the driving force of an epic is spectacle and action, and very little else, I’m afraid. “Help me, Willow,” I said. “You know practically every recorded statement the Duke ever made. Let’s put them in the script, even if they are out of context. The writers have all gone; let’s give him back some of his wit and style.” Willow enthusiastically agreed and, to our amazement, “Bondars” accepted all the insertions we had proposed with a good grace—I don’t think he’d ever had much time for the original script anyway. But we reached a serious misunderstanding when it came to filming the well-known exchange between the wounded Uxbridge and the Duke on horseback:

  UXBRIDGE: By Gad sir, I’ve lost my leg.

  WELLINGTON: [looking down] By Gad sir, so you have. [They ride on.]

  The bravado of that understated conversation was so utterly British it understandably escaped the utterly Russian Mister Bondarchuk. Appalled at what he took to be bare-faced callousness, he called out in exasperation, “Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!” and proceeded to mime what he thought we must do: I would dismount, examine the leg, look into Uxbridge’s eyes with deep compassion, cradle him in my arms, lift him up ever so gingerly and, with head bowed carrying him thus, march slowly through the ranks. Filmically, it could certainly be visually telling but totally out of character and painfully melodramatic. And what time would there be in the heat of battle for such a charade? Terry, Willow and I spent the entire morning explaining that for the upper-crust Englishman to show emotion or sentiment at such a moment was simply not done and in order to rise above the situation, he must make light of it. Well, we won in the end, but I’m sure from the expression on Bondars’s face he had thoroughly washed his hands of the entire Anglo-Saxon race.

  THE RUSSIAN War and Peace as directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, though endlessly long like the book, was in my humble opinion a masterpiece. No other film version had come close to capturing the immense canvas of Tolstoy’s narrative. Sergei’s own very human performance of Pierre was itself worth the price of admission. Then again, the profound sensitivity Sergei had shown in his brilliantly poignant Ballad of a Soldier stays in the mind forever. But in Waterloo, he seemed distracted; there were too many languages involved—the script was in English, to him a foreign tongue—and there were so many cooks to spoil the broth that he began to mistrust anyone not in his camp. So it followed that an altercation took place which shook the very ranks and somehow cleared the air.

  Willow had spent days organizing the famous “five squares” placing the army in the exact f
ormations which Wellington, in one of his most strategic maneuvers, had executed: his men, bayonets drawn, facing outward in a line towards the enemy, in four different directions with a large space in the middle. There were five such squares on the battlefield. When Willow with Chemedurov’s assistance had accomplished this, the men assembled thus on the hills made a startling sight with their red uniforms and their silver bayonets shining in the sun. All was ready when Bondarchuk suddenly went into a snit and refused to shoot it. “It may be authentic, but it’s not cinema,” he screamed through an interpreter. I remember Willow patiently explaining that it would indeed be cinematic if the aerial shots they had planned were put to good use. Bondars, however, his supreme authority threatened by someone who had actually done his homework, dug in his heels and refused to continue unless everything was changed. “But this is correct,” Willow persisted. “This is how it happened. I can’t change it. I won’t change it.” Bondars glowered, slumped in his chair looking like an oversized baby bear. There was an awful silence until finally, with the utmost calm, Willow spoke up, “There is really no point in my being here at all if you won’t listen to anything I say!” With that, he walked off the set. The reflection of the sun bouncing off his monocle and his kilts blowing in the wind, he presented quite a figure as he marched with great military dignity past the camera crew, past the stuntmen on their horses, past the entire cavalry waiting silently, past all the foot soldiers, and in a gallant gesture of respect and support the three five-star Russian generals, having taken his side, fell in behind him.

  Willow, back at the hotel later that afternoon, still moved by the events of the day, told us that the generals had invited him to their tent where Chemedurov had joined them as interpreter. With great animation, they all began to discuss their own particular versions of Waterloo whilst toasting Willow with so much vodka that in a few hours no one was able to stand. Of course the “five squares” as originally arranged appear in all their glory on the screen and remain one of the film’s few memorable moments.

  A quiet day on the battlefield

  IT WAS NEAR the end of September now and the threat of the dreaded Russian winter loomed over our little garrison. Returning from the set one freezing afternoon, we were astounded to find our normally frigid hotel with the heating full on and warm as toast. I peeked into the unspeakable dining room. The tables were nicely set and there were open bottles of wine at each setting and I was told that there was plenty of meat, chicken, eggs, everything our hearts desired. Then someone explained—the Georgians had arrived! The actor playing Prince Blücher and his entourage had taken over the hotel. Sergo Zaqariadze was Russia’s greatest actor (People’s Artist Number One) and being Georgian and independent demanded first-class tip-top service. The wines on the table were Georgian, of course, which he had brought himself—rich, full, wonderful reds. Communism and its restrictions didn’t interest the Georgians in the slightest. In fact, for them, it simply didn’t exist. Nothing could stop the gregarious nature of their lifestyle. We took to them at once. Zaqariadze was the leading player at the famed Vakhtangov Theatre, had portrayed all the great roles in Shakespeare and Pushkin and was reputed to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, King Lear in any language. He was immensely tall, trim with flowing white hair and though pushing eighty, he could still stand straight up in his stirrups at full gallop.

  He of course played his part in Russian, which would be dubbed later into English. In his small but important scene at the end of the battle, sitting on his horse surveying the field, the great old actor showed us what mettle he was made of. Napoleon’s hat has been left behind and Blücher’s men bring it to him. In the script he is supposed to make one simple scathing remark. Instead, Zaqariadze, the cameras rolling, takes up the hat ceremoniously with the tip of his sword, holds it high in the air, then puts it on his head the wrong way around. Next he takes it off, turns it around several times, holds it upside down and shakes it to see if anything drops out. He then smells it, makes a face and takes a bite out of it. Chewing away at it thus, he finds the taste repellent, spits it out onto the ground and with one extravagant flourish flings it like a Frisbee into the ranks for his men to fight over. Sadly, this inspired comic improvisation, because it was so gloriously over the top and took far too long, was cut from the movie. Many believe historically that had it not been for the last-minute appearance of Prince Blücher and his Prussians, the English would not have won at Waterloo. That may or may not be true, but this Prince Blücher and his Georgians had certainly saved our English bacon at Uzhgorod by bringing us food, wine, comfort, warmth and a great deal of cheer. Just the sort of victory we thespians find so much easier to understand.

  ONE OF THE GREAT BLUNDERS in the history of war was the infamous abortive charge of Marechal Ney: a desperate bit of strategic recklessness which, as everyone knows, ended in disaster for the French. Cinematically, it was a huge undertaking involving at least six cameras, some aerial shots and several cranes. The smoke would fill the sky as usual from a great distance, and the charge, led by Dan O’Herlihy as Ney, would begin more than half a mile from where the English foot soldiers were waiting on the hill. Wellington and his party were not involved in this particular shot, so we all headed for the set, mounting one of the camera scaffolds in order to get a bird’s-eye view of the proceedings. Already one could see how hopelessly disorganized everything was and how potentially dangerous. To add to the confusion, there were only a handful of horses that were film-tough—most having been borrowed from the army for this specific shot, having had no time at all to properly train. The horses belonging to the American, English and German stuntmen knew how to fall by their riders’ leg commands—not painful. But the rest—the Cossacks, the Tartars and the Yugoslavians, all fantastic daredevil riders—had to employ the use of outmoded trip wires attached to the legs of the poor unsuspecting army horses. Very painful indeed! Suddenly everyone was called to their places and the explosions began in the distance. The horses started rearing. All at once, the guns were fired and the charge was under way.

  It began from so far away that through the heavy smoke they looked like ghosts flying across the field. In actuality, it was so much more frightening and real than it could ever be on the screen, for the naked eye could take in 180 degrees of live action, and we could literally smell the fear. As the riders neared the foot of the hill they came out of the smoke covering the ground at hellbent speed. Now the crack of the rifles was heard as the English started firing and when the French reached the summit they fell, rolling and tumbling over each other. Most of the horses miraculously made it through and got up relatively unscathed—all except one who was trying so hopelessly to get to its feet. When it finally succeeded all it could do was to stagger pathetically about, its neck broken, its head hanging at a strange angle. It was an army horse that belonged to one of the young soldiers, who was watching devastated from the sidelines. The youth could stand it no longer and burst through the barriers to get up the hill, but the assistants tried to stop him and force him back. “You’re in the shot—get back—you’re in the shot,” they yelled at him in Russian. The cameras were still filming, and, as usual, no one had called “cut.” Ignoring them, the soldier, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, fought his way clear and ran towards his horse, who looked at him with pleading eyes. The boy had no gun and knew he must act quickly, so he took out his knife, held the horse’s head, and before our very eyes and the still rolling cameras, he slit its throat in one swift movement, and the grateful horse sank to the ground. Now, finally, everything stopped—all was still. The field was in shock. The only sound came from the inconsolable young soldier who, with heart-wrenching sobs, fell on the still warm carcass of his dead friend.

  This extraordinary act of mercy brought a sober end to all the carelessness and recklessness of the day, and we walked away across the smoke-filled fields, stunned and speechless.

  IT WAS TIME for dear Jack Hawkins to leave. His character, the
eccentric General Picton with umbrella and top hat, had met his maker. We were all very sad to lose him, of course, but relieved for his sake. Though a strong man physically, he had not been looking at all well. His throat and lungs had to have been damaged from all the smoke pouring down them day after day. But he only joked about his crackle of a voice and the halting speech that came from the hole in his throat: “My t-t-timing has n-never been better.”

  John Kirby left the next day. He’d had such a miserable time. “I can’t take it anymore, I’m sorry.” I could see he was about to choke up. Elaine and I gave him a big hug and told him, “There’s nothing for you to do anyway—get the hell out of here,” and off he went back to Madrid. Ian Ogilvy, Rupert Davies and Donal Donnelly were the next to leave. Our little English contingent was looking very sparse indeed. In Russia, there was no commercial pressure as there is in the West. There was all the time in the world. Mosfilm seemed to have buckets of money—how ironic when the people were so poor. But it was now getting very late; we were way over our schedule and the winter was seriously about to set in—the dreaded Russian winter! Bondarchuk seemed to have lost all interest in the English end of the story. It was only too apparent that he had sided with the French. Being a Soviet, he could more easily identify with la République, and I was certain he was racking his brains to find some way for Rod Steiger to win the war. At any rate, he kept trundling off to Moscow to receive medals, orders, honorary doctorates as the “People’s Number One Director.” All filming was put on hold. We were at the end of our tether, Dino De Laurentiis even more irritated than we. All we did was just hang around, waiting—when were we ever going to get out of there?!

  Elaine and I had finally been blessed with a most efficient driver who knew the countryside like the back of his hand. He was in his late twenties, an outrageous character with a categorically unpronounceable name. We decided simply to call him Fred. Fred was from Transylvania and was as camp as a row of tents. He was slight, built somewhat like a girl, but was hilariously funny and tough as they come. He had to be, for he brazenly swished all over Uzhgorod, a town which insisted that in Russia homosexuality did not exist. He hardly spoke a word of English, but he fell in love with his new name. “I am Fred,” he would scream to all and sundry. “Fred come,” he would mince in; “Fred go,” he minced out. We called Fred our “little vampire”—when I told him about the legend of the male Albanian vampire who when he pays his victims a visit always wears high heels, I thought Fred was going to have hysterics. Our little vampire (who flirted with everyone in German, French and “Swinglish”) had in a sense taken over from Kirby. He would help Elaine with her shopping, and on our days off organize trips to other villages to see the countryside—no easy feat. To visit a village only ten kilometers away we had to take our passports and a letter of permission from the KGB. Ordinary Russians were not allowed to visit the next town at all, even if they had family there, unless they applied months in advance. Incredibly, they never showed their disappointment in any way.