1975 Screen International for Aces High

"I'll fight to Sustain my price." by Quentin Falk

    After a succession of contemporary film roles, the past has finally caught up with Malcolm McDowell. First as the rotten Harry Flashman in 19th Century Europe, next as a First War flying ace in EMI's "Aces High" and now in a pro-Second War drama, "The Voyage". (Voyage of the Damned - Alex)
    We talked as he was putting the final touches to his "Aces High" characterization. McDowell as a stiff-upper-lip hero?
    "You've got to remember that it's very much a period film set at a time when people used to believe in their country and God - things like that which are very unfashionable now. So that, in a sense made them a bit stiff-upper-lip. Then it all progressed a bit. They lost an awful lot of men and so you got a much more professional approach. Even in training over Salisbury Plain they used to lose about four pilots a day. There's an ace called Albert Ball, one of the first of the British aces, and he wasn't really stiff-upper-lip at all although he had all the qualifications - ex-public school, joined up 'cos he wanted to fight the Hun'. He was a very simple man who just liked to tend his garden."
    It somehow seems more than just coincidence that McDowell has been in arguably the three most Important British films of the last decade.
    When he read the scripts of "if.…", "O Lucky Man!" and "A Clockwork Orange" was it just "work"?
    "If you're an actor, you have to work. I don't think money ever really comes into it, at least not with me. Though I must say I'll fight to sustain my market price. As far as I'm concerned I like to be in films that I personally like. In fact I don't go so much on the scripts any more but rather on the people who are going to make the film."
    "Lucky Man" was cut heavily for general release. Did this worry him?
    "It saddened me up a point. But I'm afraid this is the mentality - it's the very delicate balance between the art form of film-making and the industry. You have to give way on certain points or else you'd never be able to raise the huge sums that enable you to carry on working."
    Are all the concessions on the artistic side?
    "No, I don't think they are. After all, Warner's gave us $2 1/2m to make 'O Lucky Man'. That was a brave move on their part. "Not too brave but fairly brave. Of course, I would have loved it if we could have gone to Nat Cohen and got the money from him - nothing would have pleased me more. If I'm going to make films in England, I'd prefer the English to reap the benefits. That's really the ideal situation."
    Inevitably perhaps one asks him about the aftermath of "A Clockwork Orange". Has it worried him at all?
    "No, I haven 't been worried at all. I've absolutely a clear conscience. To my mind the film has a very valid statement to make. If there are people who are totally freaked out by the film and want to beat people up, then that's unfortunate. It's something we never even thought about. After all the book has been around for ten years; it's just a shame more people don't read."
    Hawking around: There was a time when McDowell was to be seen in darkest Wardour Street trying to set up a project with director Mike Hodges.
    "According to the financial people who 'know' it's not an obviously commercial picture but then I remember when they were first hawking round 'The French Connection'".
    Is he interested in more personal control of projects? "It used to interest me a lot more than it does now. I got very disheartened with the whole thing after trudging round with ideas and getting nowhere with them.
    "I prefer now for someone to send me the script then I'll meet the director, do the movie and leave it. I'm coming round to that attitude more and more which is not the best kind of attitude, I know."