40 year old Pip?
Did anyone else hated to see a 40 year old man play a 21 year old man? I couldn't stop looking at his wrinkled forehead. Spoiled this great film for me.
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MovieChat Forums > Great Expectations (1947) Discussion > 40 year old Pip?
I agree, it's really incomprehensible to me that they'd cast a 40 year old guy to play a person who has just entered manhood.... it completely ruined the film for me - which I think is fair because its the poor casting job of the CENTRAL character..... errrr why?
shareI enjoyed the break from women in their late 30s and 40s playing college age girls. Basically looking like the mother of the character they are supposed to play. I see this role miscasting in movies up through the 1950s. After that, younger people seem to play every role, even older people.
Just goes to show you that the Hollywood focus on youth is not a new thing.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Not all movies are made in Hollywood. This is an English production.
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
He probably meant "Hollywood" as a generic term indicating the entire film-making industry, regardless of the geographic location of any specific production. Sort of like how most people say "Kleenex" to refer to a face tissue, even if the tissue they're using was actually manufactured by some other company.
shareIt kind of bugged me also. I did like him and I thought his acting was great but a story of a boy turning to a young gentlman should have a young gentleman as the character. I couldn't picture someone else playing Pip though.
shareI've watched a LOT of the old movies (though not recently so this is memory based) and remember (I'm 48 BTW) a lot of age problems in casting until say about about the 1970's. It was not about accurate looks but who was popular, great in the position, etc.
Sometimes though it was an actor who *looked* like a young child doing the job (more recent movies I think) which was more plausible but age variations from what is depicted is a movie norm!
I wish they didn't tell me he was a 40ish actor as I noticed it (kept looking, is he, yea, kinda...) and I don't remember noticing such things. Didn't ruin the movie for me thankfully! :-)
That was weird about that much age variation in this one but in Shakespeare (perhaps even Dickens) it's not the appearance or accuracy but doing a great job as the actor would be held to high standards (especially in England!), so that if there is not an "accurate" appearing actor they will have to miss-cast a fine acting but really off looking actor.
Of course nowadays if makeup doesn't fix the age appearance, digital effects *could*.
Yeah, he ruins the film for me too. I know John Mills is beloved in Britain, but I hate him in this movie. Not only too old, but his uncanny resemblence to Red Buttons is disturbing!
shareJust saw the movie for the first time and not even from the beginning. I did think he looked rather older than 21, but I overlooked that and went with the flow. The period costumes and hair-do's were enough of a distraction to mitigate his age appearance!!!
shareUntil the 1970s? They're still doing it. There's no shortage of adults in their late twenties playing teenagers these days.
Mills was a good enough actor that I liked him as Pip, and didn't mind about his age. But Hobson wasn't a good Estella. Not only did she not look right, but she grinned all the time. Estella shouldn't be going around grinning! I wish Jean Simmons could have played her at both ages, as Jennifer Jones did in "Portrait of Jennie."
Until the 1970s? They're still doing it. There's no shortage of adults in their late twenties playing teenagers these days.
And of course that's the only example in acting of an age range being portrayed by actors a different age. By the way, it's usually actors in their early 20s who are cast to portray teenagers, not late 20s. Late 20s actors are cast as teens no more often than (or not even as often) actual teens are cast as them. Funny how something like has to immediately come to mind when the topic at hand involves a middle aged man playing a character nearly twenty years younger. As if the average 23 year-old cast to play a 16 year-old is so comparable to that. share
"Not only too old, but his uncanny resemblence to Red Buttons is disturbing!"
Perhaps it might be better put that Red Buttons resembles John Mills, if he does because I haven't seen the likeness.
Red Buttons was an adequate performer but John Mills was one of the great screen actors, capable of playing a general, a private soldier or, perhaps arguably his greatest performance, the village idiot in Ryan's Daughter with equal conviction and belief.
Perhaps he was a bit old for Dickens' main character in this film but his superb performance easily outweighs that.
Alec Guinness was 32 when he played Herbert Pocket. It would be an interesting diversion to consider how the film might have differed had he and John Mills swapped roles. It would have been so unlikely though because AG was just starting out in films (he quickly made his mark playing Fagin in the next Dickens film, 'Oliver') whilst JM was an established leading actor, and John Mills would have been too old to play Herbert Pocket if he was too old to play Pip.
I note that when film makers decided to do a sort of re-make in the late 1990s they set the story in the present day, because there are just not the screen actors around these days capable of doing full justice to Dickens.
He was kind of old, yes, but not enough to ruin the film. Much worse was the dog who played the adult Estella. Yuk!
If we are to be brothers, let us be brothers for life, die together.
I felt that they could have done a lot better job casting the adult Pip. When he first appeared on screen I said to myself, "he looks like he's 35." After a couple of minutes I revised that upward.
Once I got used to his appearance I was able to ignore the elephant in the room and enjoy the movie, but I also felt that he came across far weaker than I would have expected, especially at the end when he's supposed to be taking charge. I have not read the novel, so it's possible that that is how Dickens intended the character to be.
As for his love interest, Jean Simmons was far more beautiful than the actress who played the character as an adult. She did make a believable older mother, though.
"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."
Inches of makeup were not going to cover up that glaring casting error. While Mills acting was good, I can not help feeling that Sir Alec Guiness (although quirky looking) could have hit a home run with that lead role. I second the miscasting of Ellena, in appearance, but more importantly she lacked any of the vengeful spite of the younger actress.
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The casting of the young Pip and Estella were so brilliant and spot-on that their older selves were bound to disappoint. Still, there's no excuse for casting an old, matronly actress like Valerie Hobson as the firebrand Estella, or a fey, big-headed 38-year-old (John Mills, who should have been cast as Pumblechook) as the 21-year-old Pip. For me, it trashes the film. You feel like you've been sucker-punched.
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Agreed, Marissa.
shareValerie Hobson may have been twenty-nine, but she certainly looked older. And, as others wrote, she DID look matronly, she DID grin too much, she DID lack the vengeful spite of the younger actress, and she was NOT a great beauty, as one would expect Estella to be. I, too, wish Jean Simmons, who was not only beautiful but who acted the part perfectly, had played both parts of the role.
And yes, the middle-aged and worn-looking John Mills was a distraction and disappointment in the role of the adult Pip, especially, as Writ in Water wrote, after the brilliant and spot-on younger Pip. "Incredibly handsome"? Not to my eyes, and I, too, like older men.
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Oh yeah. John Mills allthough a fine actor wasn't very good in the role- all you have to do is contrast him to Alec Guinness and the other character actors- and it's hard to ignore the fact that he's middle aged. It's always a shock to see him as the adult Pip.
Valerie Hobson doesn't work too well, either. Jean Simmons could wipe her off the screen even as a kid.
Pauline Kael said "Jean Simmons is the young girl, Estella, and then Valerie Hobson takes over the part, though it's inconceivable that one could grow into the other, and despite Hobson's dignity and beauty something seems to be lost. "
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Well, I didn't think John Mills was that bad but I didn't care for Valerie Hobson. Even though she really wasn't that old, she really wasn't the great beauty that you expect Estella to be.
"A man's kiss is his signature" -- Mae West
"He's incredibly handsome"? "It's a movie first"? So much of that post is bizarre but I'll try to ignore it. :D
I agree that casting was based on actors' popularity, not so much on finding the absolutely right person for the role. That can be the only explanation for casting bland much-too-old John Mills and bland much-too-old Valerie Hobson. I just kept looking at Mills and the lines in his face and thinking: "What???" Completely ridiculous and yes, it did take me out of the film as I kept wondering what they were thinking when they cast him. Pip is a legendary character from a legendary book (Book First, Movie Later!) and people have an image of him as a young man approaching maturity, not a middle-aged guy with facial lines.
Alec Guinness was freaky looking in this film. What was going on with that strange wig he was wearing? He also was too old for the part of Pip.
That kind of odd, inappropriate casting detracts a lot from a film because the viewer is constantly aware of the disparity between the character's supposed age and the actor's age.
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"PLUS they don't actually specify ages in this movie do they?"
Ummm, yes they do. Remember the scene where Pip "comes of age," aka turns 21?
I don't understand your argument at all. How would it have been unbelievable to cast actors of the proper age, as described in the book?
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Yes. It was really annoying.
shareThe movie was perfect.. just the way i had imagined in my head.. even kept dialogues more or less same...but when pip grew up.. uh-oh..
why they coiuldnt get a young guy to play pip.. ethan hawk made perfect looking Pip.. but i hated the modern version.. I didnt like the old lady portreying Estella too....Herbert was perfect though:-)
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Didn't ruin the film for me, but it has to be one of the most epic casting funk-ups of all time :P
I thought Obi-Wan Kenobi (I jest :P ) was perfect as Herbert Pocket though! Jean Simmons was excellently cast, as was Martita Hunt, Valerie Hobson was a little old but everyone else was well cast apart from the most important character!
I don't care how good an actor Sir John Mills was, there was no way he was passing for anything younger than 35 and Pip was supposed to be between 18 and 25 when he played him!
Oh christy