Guy Hamilton came to England in 1940 and started out as assistant director
to eminent filmmakers like Carol
Reed on The
Fallen Idol (1948) and The
Third Man (1949), and John Huston on The African Queen (1951) before
taking control himself. Some of his earliest films were the Alastair
Sim led An Inspector Calls (1954) and
PoW drama The Colditz
Story (1955).
He mostly directed thrillers of an elaborate and modish kind, such
as the second Harry Palmer espionage thriller Funeral in Berlin (1966),
and four James Bond films including the classic Goldfinger
(1964) with Sean Connery and Roger
Moore in Live and Let
Die (1973). When he has strayed from this territory the results
have not always been satisfactory. The Party's Over (1964) ran into
serious censorship problems, preventing it from being seen by a wide
audience. The Battle
of Britain (1969) was one of his most elaborate and costly works,
but by no means the best.
