In “The Remains of the Day”, Anthony Hopkins plays an entirely devoted butler who refuses to give in to his feelings for Emma Thompson. A complex and touching role, some aspects of which frightened the actor.
Today’s Remains : an impossible love story
Superb adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterpiece, Today’s Remains marked in 1993 the reunion between filmmaker James Ivory and actors Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, a year later Return to Howards End. The film begins in the late 1950s, when Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) writes to her former superior Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) and offers to come visit.
Along the way, the butler reminisces about the pre-war period when they knew each other at the Darlington estate, before the earl (James Fox) they work for found himself at the center of a scandal because of his support. to Adolf Hitler. Ignoring his political and moral positions, Stevens has always been fully devoted to his employer, devoting himself only to his profession. To the point of forgetting himself, curbing his emotions and missing out on a love affair with Miss Kenton. If his professional conscience has not disappeared over the years, it has nevertheless withered away, giving way to deep regrets.
Christopher Reeve, Ben Chaplin, Michael Lonsdale, Lena Headey and Hugh Grant complete the cast of the drama for which Anthony Hopkins receives the BAFTA for Best Actor. The actor was however not serene at the idea of accepting the role of Stevens, fearing not to be credible in the skin of a butler and of multiply the blunders in his attitude.
Advice from an expert
During the promotion of the feature film, Anthony Hopkins nevertheless ensures that the shooting was particularly pleasant, largely thanks to his complicity with Emma Thompson and his total confidence in James Ivory. The actor can also count on the advice of an expert.
Cyril Dickman, retired butler who served Elizabeth II in the halls of Buckingham Palace (he joined the royal family at only 15 years old), helps the actor to adopt the perfect gestures and the appropriate behavior. Modest vis-à-vis his contribution to the film, in which he appears during the final scene, he explains to the Chicago Grandstand in 1993:
I wouldn’t say I taught him what to do. I would say it was mutual.
Anthony Hopkins says for his part thathe “couldn’t have played this role without” the former butler and that he would have “got it all wrong”. He adds :
Cyril taught me simple rules: be polite, be efficient, be relaxed. The job requires great reflexes and extraordinary manners.
The actor specifies that Cyril Dickman also taught him how to enter a room “without knocking, but with discretion”. The director James Ivory declares for his part that the butler also needed a professional for “the towels and the glassware”, so much the hierarchy of the servants is precise and the functions are compartmentalized. A meticulousness that greatly contributes to the success of Remains of the daysince the rigor, the rigidity of Stevens as well as the functioning of the Darlington domain occupy a fundamental place in the plot and the emotional journey of the character.
