John Mills makes quiet courage believable without making it look easy. We rate him most highly as an ordinary man under pressure; the romantic Pip and the showier later parts are less persuasive uses of his gifts.
Fi1m perspective
As Pip in Great Expectations (1946), John Mills remains engaging even when the love story becomes difficult to believe. We rate him for that steadiness: he can hold our interest without insisting that every feeling be large or conspicuous. Yet his appeal is not enough to make the adult romance work, and the film makes that limitation unusually clear. David Lean gets more convincing awkwardness from the childhood scenes, with Jean Simmons's assured young Estella making the young Pip's uncertainty painful to watch.
We were frustrated by the adult pairing, because Mills and Valerie Hobson do not give us enough reason to feel the attachment the story requires. Walter Goehr's music supplies warmth that the performances do not always earn. Mills is not the sole difficulty here: Hobson's Estella is harder to understand, and his likeability still gives us someone to follow. The film remains an easy recommendation for us, though Mills's performance is only a partial success within it.
His 1940s stardom grew through war films as well as Pip, and the ordinary man under pressure became his most convincing territory. In Which We Serve (1942) and Ice Cold in Alex (1958) draw on his ability to make endurance credible; Captain Anson in the latter pushes that familiar courage towards neurosis. With Lean again in Hobson's Choice (1954), Willie Mossop allows his apparent meekness to develop into resolve. His understated playing can be dismissed as ordinary, but in these parts it gives the pressure time to register.
The movement towards more troubled men is clear in Tunes of Glory (1960), where he plays the repressed Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow opposite Alec Guinness. By the late 1960s, supporting and cameo roles were becoming more prominent, with Ryan's Daughter (1970) taking him into showier character work. That sort of display is less persuasive evidence of his ability than the precision of the quieter parts. For a second film after Great Expectations, choose Hobson's Choice, where Lean gives his modest manner a comic purpose.
Biography
Sir John Mills (born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills; 22 February 1908 – 23 April 2005) was an English actor whose career spanned seven decades. He appeared in more than 120 films, as well as numerous stage and television productions. After training as a dancer, he made his stage debut in 1929 and worked in revues and plays before entering films in the early 1930s.
Mills played Pip in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946). Other notable film roles include those in Ryan’s Daughter (1970), for which he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Gandhi (1982) and Bean (1997). He was appointed CBE in 1960 and knighted in 1976.
