How did Martin Scorsese allow Ben Kingsley to relive a cherished childhood memory?
We all have that one film we watched as a kid and will forever have a connection to. Usually, it’s something heartwarming or fantastical that taught us how to really feel something or the true meaning of life. Sometimes, we or our parents keep this well documented so we can go on watching it forever, but sometimes, whether due to the fog of memory or technological advancement, those movies seem lost forever.
Sometimes, a cinematic great might help us rekindle our long-lost film love, or at least that’s what Martin Scorsese was able to do for Ben Kingsley. Somewhere along the line, while working together on Shutter Island and Hugo, the actor and director got talking about films from their childhood, and Kingley’s pick was a little-known British-Italian film called Never Take No For an Answer.
When asked about his film inspirations by HeyUGuys, Kingsley cited the film as the reason he knew he would be an actor, “Four! I was four when I went into the cinema, and it was extraordinary… The film is made… in the ’50s, and it takes place in post-war Italy.” He explained that the film follows a little boy, who looked extraordinarily like him as a child, orphaned in the war and left with nothing but a donkey, with whom he runs a haulage business. When the donkey falls ill, the little boy travels to Rome to get a pardon from the pope to allow his donkey to die in the church.
“It’s like an odyssey, like a Greek odyssey.. the last shot in the movie is the boy leading his donkey through the hole they bash through the masonry… I was uncontrollable. ‘Never take no for an answer.’ it’s going to be on my gravestone!” Clearly, it’s one of those films that truly touched Kingsley’s soul as a child.
And, of course, when Kingsley told Scorsese about this touching moment, he took it incredibly seriously. As any true lover of cinema should. “Within a week of telling Marty about this film, he’s given me the DVD. So now I can watch it and cry all over again,” Kingsley explained. This isn’t the least surprising given Scorsese reputation as a true film obsessive.
Scorsese’s dedication to preserving film as an art won him a Robert Osborne Award for the preservation of cinema at the 2018 TCM Film Festival. He is renowned for championing independent filmmakers, not only through praise and foundations but also through producing films by little-known up-and-coming filmmakers. Even Kingsley stated that he had about “40,000 films on a big computer in his hotel room”.
So, really, it’s not that surprising that the iconic director was able to rekindle Kingsley with his favourite childhood film within a week. Knowing Scorsese, he was already in possession of the obscure film and simply had to figure out where he might have stored it among the rest of his insane collection.
