Alec Guinness: In The Frame Collection DVD | Movie Mail UK

Film Description

6 classic films that demonstrate the incredible versatility of one of cinema's most versatile actors.

Comprises: Our Man In Havana (Carol Reed, 1959)

Alec Guinness plays Jim Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman short of money. He accepts a lucrative offer and becomes Agent 59200/5, MI6's man in Havana. To keep the job, he pretends to recruit sub-agents and sends fake stories to keep his paymaster happy. Then his fictional agents begin to die real deaths. Based on Graham Greene's novel, this was the final collaboration between Greene and director Carol Reed.

HMS Defiant (Lewis Gilbert, 1962)

Cromwell (Ken Hughes, 1970)

England is torn apart by civil war in this classic all star production.

The Bridge On The River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)

Multiple Oscar-winning film of British prisoners in a Japanese P.O.W. camp who build the eponymous bridge that might eventually be used to assist Japanese troop movement. Guinness is at his best as the single-minded Colonel slowly driven mad, Holden is the American officer who plans to destroy the bridge. A fascinating psychological battle of wills.

Murder By Death (Robert Moore, 1976)

Neil Simon's screenplay is a clever spoof on murder mysteries in which eccentric millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) invites the world's greatest detectives to his home and challenges them to solve the perfect murder. Among the sleuths that try to solve the case are Milo Perrier (James Coco), Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith), and Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers), all of whom are easy-to-guess but altogether sharp parodies of beloved literary characters.

The Prisoner (Peter Glenville, 1955)

Set in an unnamed Cold war-era totalitarian state, Guinness is the Cardinal tortured for his beliefs, Hawkins the inquisitor. An intense piece, well delivered by its leads.