Stiffest Upper Lip
The passing of director Michael Anderson at age 98 this April in Vancouver closes another chapter of film history. Among the most notable members of a British generation who channelled their own WWII experiences into the classic war movies that defined the nation’s cinema and self-image during the next decades, Anderson also scored as a member of the select sub-group crossing over into major Hollywood blockbuster territory, bringing homegrown know-how, reserve, and classicist spirit to US productions, even as the classical studio era was coming to an end. The group’s elder, J. Lee Thompson, broke through with (1961) and died in 2002; its junior John Guillermin, whose prolonged Hollywood stint included hits like (1974), followed in 2015, and honorary member Lewis Gilbert, who never went to Tinseltown but achieved similar success as a
