Words have the real special effect, says Sir Derek
1998 Cannes Festival Interview
by the London Times in May, 1998

Sir Derek, 59, is in Cannes for the premiere of his latest film, Love is the Devil, a portrait of Francis Bacon. As one of Britain's foremost actors he has excited audiences with stage performances ranging from Mac Beth to Cyrano de Bergerac but his thoughts turned to the old Hollywood greats when he wanted to discuss how the importance of the spoken word has dwindled.

Although he agreed that films were "about photography", the writer's role had been undermined, he said, and poor enunciation from some actors now meant that audiences were struggling to hear what they were saying.

He noted the clarity with which Humphrey Bogart or Katherine Hepburn spoke, in contrast to today's generation: "There is a certain laziness in speech, which is considered how people talk. People do talk lazily. But when you are asking the public to listen to you - and to pay to listen to you - the least you can do is make yourself understood."

He expressed dismay that some drama schools are not teaching Shakespeare. It is through his plays that actors learn to deliver lines in a way that makes them accessible and poetic, projecting 30 yards to the top of the theatre as well as two yards to the people in the front row - while still making the drama just as "real" for everyone.

Although that vocal technique was not required by cinema, he added, actors such as Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart "knew how to use their voices". Unlike cinema, theatre actors cannot rely on background music to convey the emotion: actors have to "play" the emotion themselves - "not one note, but a whole orchestra". In film, he joked, they might even use someone else's voice if they did not like you.

"Now that they have discovered effects, they can't let them alone," he said. "Even actors won't be needed eventually. They will recreate Marilyn or Humphrey. It's really spooky." The reliance on effects was excluding the human factor from films: "They are keeping the eye interested rather than engaging the mind and the heart."

Emphasizing that he was making a general criticism, he mentioned how The Full Monty was indeed about people and relationships - "exactly what I love and admire".

Discussing the reluctance to shoot literary scripts, he recalled the years of struggling to convince film-makers to make a screen version of Breaking the Code, the powerful play about the breaking of the German Enigma code. Despite its success on stage, he found them wary of a script that was "full of long speeches". There was an assumption that audiences cannot cope with anything more than one-sentence phrases: "It's so patronizing to the audience. To get something literary made took as long as eight years." It was eventually filmed by the BBC's education and religious departments, although they relegated it to a 10.30pm screening. It went on to be recognized at the British Academy of Film and Television awards.

His next project, shooting in three weeks' time in Italy, is Up at the Villa, an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham story.

A literary script was, for Sir Derek, one of the appeals of the Bacon movie, written and directed by John Maybury and opening in Britain in September. "It is eminently sayable," he said.