The Great Escaper was nearly never made. What were the chances of enlisting two Oscar-winning actors, re-creating D-day in southern England, and contending with pandemic lockdowns—all on a $10 million budget?
The answer lies with a former trash collector, screenwriter William Ivory, and a onetime children’s-television host, co-producer Douglas Rae. In June 2014, Rae awoke to headlines about a 90-year-old World War II veteran, Bernard Jenkins, who had escaped from his nursing home to make his way, alone, across the English Channel for the 70th commemoration of D-day in Normandy.
Edinburgh-born Rae, who began his career as a journalist on the popular kids’ TV program Magpie, knew a good story when he saw one. “I was busy producing Becoming Jane and the film of Brideshead Revisited, but I tucked it away in my memory bank,” he says.
Early in the pandemic, that memory was re-ignited by the 99-year-old retired captain Tom Moore, another feisty old soldier, who marched lengths in his garden to raise money for the National Health Service. On the morning of his 100th birthday, the sum had exceeded $36 million, and he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle. Rae and his co-producer, Robert Bernstein, were more determined than ever to capture the magic of the generation who never took no for an answer.
“Making a film is the art of the impossible,” says Rae. “And the chances of finding two willing, world-class actors aged around 90 with two Oscars each were very remote.”
Michael Caine, now 90, and Glenda Jackson, a stripling of 87, were the obvious choices. “Anthony Hopkins, at 83, was far too young,” he says. The star power was vital to raise the money to make the film, and their ages were essential for its authenticity. Ivory crafted a jewel of a screenplay, which Rae sent to Caine. “He said, ‘Are there any sex scenes in this film? My contract says no nudity, but I’ll make an exception for you if you get me an arse double.’”
Caine also said, “You know I have two Oscars? Well, Jack Nicholson has three. Know what I mean?” Rae got the memo, but, truthfully, The Great Escaper belongs to the late Glenda Jackson, who plays Bernard’s wife, Irene, with humility and humor.
The third wheel on this wagon of master craftsmen is John Standing, who has worked mainly in theater. (He played opposite Maggie Smith in Noël Coward’s Private Lives, a smash on Broadway directed by John Gielgud.) The 89-year-old actor had worked with Caine in the 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed, and both had served in the armed forces. (Caine fought in the Korean War.)
“Michael is a consummate movie actor; he comes across gangbusters in The Great Escaper,” says Standing, who portrays Arthur, the haunted officer who befriends Caine on the boat across the English Channel. Ivory based the character on his father and uncle, who flew Lancaster bombers.
Even though the cast was assembled, the film was written, and the director, Oliver Parker (Johnny English Reborn and The Importance of Being Earnest), was ready to go, The Great Escaper hung in the balance for several years.
Coronavirus lockdowns continued, and no one was getting any younger. Caine was crippled with back pain, and $360,000 of the small budget went to insure the actors.
Finally, last autumn, the cameras rolled for six weeks in southern England, where the cast lived in a pub. The D-day landings, which originally involved 7,000 ships and 195,000 naval personnel, were re-created with one landing craft and two tanks in a car park at the Camber Sands beach, in East Sussex. The scene was hosed down by the local fire brigade to mimic the waves and rain. Rae cornered the market in French flags to decorate Sussex villages as Normandy, and the American war graves in Cambridgeshire were substituted for the Bayeux War Cemetery.
To film the scenes at sea, Parker commandeered the bar of a cross-channel ferry. “We couldn’t even get off the ferry for a cup of coffee in France because of bloody Brexit permits,” says Standing. “That was the worst bit.”
It was a happy time, tinged with mischief. Jackson snuck off for cigarettes, Caine took naps after lunch, and Standing played Woodoku on his mobile phone.
Triumphantly, the actors completed most of their scenes in one take. “A straight take is an honest take,” says Rae. “Michael has just one rule: ‘Love the camera, and when doing close-ups, don’t blink.”
Even though The Great Escaper explores the winter of life, ultimately, says Standing, “it’s about bravery and guilt.” At a recent screening, the twentysomething young woman sitting beside me was so moved that she was sobbing. “The truthfulness is in the performances,” says Rae. “Just remember: don’t blink.”
Victoria Mather is a London-based travel writer and editor who has contributed to Tatler, The Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, and Vanity Fair