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Alec finds himself by imitating others. He is a superlative mimic. Like Charles Dickens, one of his favorite writers, he learns what a character is by imitating what he does; like Dickens, he sometimes mistakes caricature for characterization. He invariably begins a character by deciding what he would wear and how he would look—he works from the outside in. In the early stages of a part he is nervous and unsure of himself, prone to tantrums and small cries of "God, I'm inadequate" and piteous little interviews in which he offers to quit "for the good of the show." Nowadays he is somewhat more assured when shooting begins, but he used to do such a flip that Director Lean sometimes started the camera rolling while Alec thought he was still rehearsing. While building a part, Guinness shuts everything else out of his life. He lives his role all day, dreams it at night. In the grip of an unpleasant character, he will coldly rebuff his friends; in the mood of a charming one, he is "simply wizard and a ruddy dear" to people he detests.
Slowly, surely, Guinness devours his part. Like a cannibal, he gnaws away at the physical details. But what he is really after is the soul. When he gets it, the gestures are pushed aside like a cocoon, and a new existence emerges. Indeed, Alec's essential gift is not for creating characters, but existences. His people are all somehow like children, playing alone in corners, a life unto themselves. "His is the art of public solitude," says Critic Tynan. "He can seem unobserved."
Indirect Discourse. In Yeats's phrase, it is "the ceremony of innocence," the rite of existence, and Guinness celebrates it in all his roles. Since existence is a mystery, and cannot be seen or touched or understood like a common physical fact, he has developed a peculiarly orphic language of gesture and intonation. He almost never expresses an idea directly. He relies on his audience to understand the essence of a situation, to realize what the character feels and is; and so he takes more trouble to hide what he feels than to reveal it. It is more than the usual British understatement; it is a highly developed art of camouflage and a complex grammar of indirect discourse. Actor Guinness is probably the greatest living master of the invisible gesture and the unspoken word.
The essence of such an art is its humanity. It is life-size and it is contemporary. But the method has its limits. It is merely human, and cannot swell to greet the superhuman. Guinness can hardly hope to fulfill the classical heroic roles, the Hamlets and the Agamemnons. Existence in any case is too intimate a thing to be lobbed in full voice across the footlights, but the camera has the faculty to appreciate it. It is for the camera that Guinness seems fated to do his best work. In comedy he has shown what he can do wonderfully well—the little men with the monstrous obsessions, the secret lives of the wicked Walter Mittys. In Kwai and in The Prisoner he suggests that, as well as any living actor, he can interpret a specifically modern sort of hero—the man who is not meant to conquer the world but to battle within himself.