Michael Caine: I'm retiring from film
Best of Today
BBC
4.0 • 837 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2023
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the summer of 2014, Bernard Jordan made global headlines. He had staged a “great escape” from his care home to join fellow war veterans on a beach in Normandy, commemorating their fallen comrades at the D-Day Landings 70th anniversary.
It was a story that captured the imagination of the world as Bernie embodied the defiant, “can-do” spirit of a generation that was fast disappearing. But of course, it wasn’t the whole story. It was an inspirational but sanitised retelling of one man’s need to come to terms with the lasting trauma of war.
That story is now in the cinemas in The Great Escaper, starring Sir Michael Caine and the late Glenda Jackson
Today's Martha Kearney speaks to Sir Michael and the film's director Oliver Parker.
Photo: Martha Kearney and Michael Caine)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.8 | Right, as soon as we've had some grub, |
| 0:08.5 | I'll take you for a spin along the front. |
| 0:10.9 | And when we get back, |
| 0:13.2 | I think they've got a male stripper for you. |
| 0:15.4 | What? |
| 0:16.6 | I made that last bit up. |
| 0:19.9 | I want to go to bounce. |
| 0:23.1 | What do you have about? |
| 0:24.5 | I couldn't leave you all on your own. |
| 0:27.0 | Unless you have to. |
| 0:31.3 | So I wanted to begin, first of all with you, Michael. |
| 0:33.2 | Just explained us the character of Bernie. |
| 0:36.4 | The character of Bernie is an old Cockney soldier, |
| 0:41.8 | which, funny enough, I am. But he fought in the Second World War, and I fought in the |
| 0:48.8 | Korea War, so it was an entirely different frame of mind. But it was same, really. |
| 0:56.2 | Funny enough, I'd retired when I was to send the strip, |
| 0:59.9 | and I'd turned it down three times. |
| 1:02.3 | But I kept falling in love with him every time I read it, and so I did it. |
| 1:06.9 | His character, what I really liked about him, |
| 1:09.7 | he's quietly rebellious, isn't he? |
| 1:12.4 | He doesn't want people to patronise him in the way that older people can so often be patronised. |
... |
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