The Extent of
Bogarde’s Talent

Bogarde’s range and versatility as an actor were remarkable. He shifted with ease from spiv to hero, soulful Spanish gardener to anguished homosexual barrister, dying old composer to conflicted ex-concentration camp Nazi, sadistic Spanish bandit in erotic black leather to schizophrenic Russian owner of a chocolate factory.

His quick eye for mannerisms and his instinctive ease in using them, as well as a facile gift in accents, also made portraying multiple characters in a movie look deceptively easy on screen. During Esther Waters, Ian Dalrymple made him play a scene six or seven ways, a difficult lesson in acting, but one which gave him valuable flexibility in future roles. Years later, when Visconti asked him to do several versions of a scene in The Damned, he amazed the director with the ease at which he did them. (Snakes and Ladders, 263) He shifted characters in the blink of an eye in The Woman in Question, (1950); played three different characters in Libel (1959); two in The Mind Benders, (1963); went from officer Leigh Fermor to the dashing Philidem, Fermor’s other identity on Crete, resplendent in authentic Cretan dress in Ill Met By Moonlight; became with uncanny ease each hallucinated version of the son in Providence (1977); and slowly disintegrated into madness as the tortured split personality of Hermann in Despair (1978).