It is VERY difficult to properly 'act' Oscar Wilde's delicious 'zingers' and good old George was the ONLY actor I have ever heard who made them sound natural and believable. He wasn't afraid to be truly corrupt and a little scary - most actors say the Wilde epigrams with a 'naughty boy' manner that gets irritating.
shareI found myself being amazed at the way Sanders delivered his lines. I could barely keep up with the machine gun style of delivery. But the witticisms were so quick and acerbic I was laughing well past the point of delivery and missing the subsequent dialogue.
Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. H.L. Mencken
He is great in All About Eve as well!
shareYes. He was great in All about Eve, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Rebecca, and just about everything I've ever seen him in. He was always great at being the cad or the detached sarcastic one. I have to say that I think his goodness in Village of the Damned was quite a change. Actually very nice.
It's sad that he felt that life just wasn't worth living. Such a remarkably talented man.
I have to say that I think his goodness in Village of the Damned was quite a change.Sanders was great as a good guy in Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Lodger (1944), and Hangover Square (1945) so I don't see VOTD as much of a change really. Sanders has such a great, authoritative voice (maybe behind only Welles and Laughton, probably equal with Mason and Rickman) it's kind of a shame that one of the main ways such verbal forcefuless plays on screen is as a threat, as a power of a cad/villain (Sanders would be picking up paychecks as Loki these days). share
I suppose what I meant about a change is the character of the character he played. The ones he plated so well were the scoundrels. In Village of the Damned, he plays a kind and loving husband and father.
shareWell if you're going to bring up George Sanders and those stupid (yet fun) "Thor" movies...
Wouldn't Sanders have made a great Odin? We'd see where Loki got his bitchy mouth!
@Otter. I guess, realistically, that the Sanders we all have in our heads is a little old for Loki and a little young for Odin... so maybe my point is best put as just that Sanders was such a monologuing talent that current comic book films would certainly find very lucrative work for him if he were around.
shareExactly! He WAS Oscar Wilde!
shareI read Wilde's novel before I saw the movie, and whenever that character spoke I imagined Sanders speaking the lines. It's as if Wilde knew that someday there would be a George Sanders to play him.
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