January 13, 1995 | Some actors are content to rely on safe tricks and familiar tics as they grow older. Others — Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood — are more eager to take risks, to reinvent themselves. And in doing so, they become better, deeper actors.
Albert Finney must be counted in that second group. Consider the richness and variety of his recent work in The Playboys, Rich in Love, Miller’s Crossing and The Browning Version. Four different films, four different characters, four very different performances. And now he has another singular credit for his resume: His sweetly poignant performance as a lovelorn Dubliner in A Man of No Importance, a slight but captivating film that is transformed into something special by Finney’s participation.
Finney plays Alfie Byrne, a cheery bus conductor in Dublin in the early 1960s. Byrne is a middle-aged sprite who entertains his passengers with the writings and witticisms of his favorite author, Oscar Wilde. But Byrne is also a genuine innocent. He is blissfully unaware he may cause a scandal by staging Wilde’s notorious Salome in the local church hall. And he is quick to accept a newcomer on his route, Adele (Tara Fitzgerald), as the virginal princess she appears to be.
Directed by Suri Krishnamma and written by Barry Devlin, two veterans of British television, A Man of No Importance is very good at evoking specifics of time and place. That goes a long way toward explaining the urgency of Byrne’s need to deny his repressed homosexuality, even to himself. He may not fully understand the nature of his desires, but he is certain he must not act on his attraction to the handsome young driver of his bus (Rufus Sewell).
Indeed, the movie implies that Byrne is the one who’s really the virgin. When his horrified spinster sister (Brenda Fricker) accuses him of unholy perversity, he cries, more in sorrow than anger, “My hands are innocent of affection!”
Byrne’s outburst is all the more affecting in the context of a film where the drama is usually underplayed, emotions are subtly conveyed, and gentle humor is more evident than roiling passion. Things get out of hand late in the story when Byrne defiantly dresses as his literary idol and cruises the hunks at his neighborhood bar. (Not surprisingly, nothing good comes of this.) But this is the only sequence that rings false in an otherwise convincing story.
Finney is nothing short of wonderful, and he brings out the best in Fricker, Sewell and everyone around him. As Adele, Fitzgerald conveys both tender vulnerability and hard-earned experience. And Michael Gambon is hilariously cantankerous as Carney, the local butcher, who suspects the very worst of Byrne, and is insufferably smug when his suspicions are confirmed.
