Shirley Anne Field gave vulnerable women intelligence and a distinctive husky voice. We value her warmth in supporting roles, though the films too often gave her less to do than the early promise deserved.
Fi1m perspective
Shirley Anne Field could make a young woman seem vulnerable and still capable of sizing up the person opposite her. Her husky voice was distinctive, but the intelligence behind it mattered more than the sound. Her 1960 breakthrough came with Tina in The Entertainer and Doreen in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, opposite Laurence Olivier and Albert Finney respectively. Those parts placed her in the British New Wave, where she could be appealing without seeming easily fooled.
Lunch Hour (1962) gave her a sustained part as a young woman in a clandestine affair, with room for more emotional detail. Substantial film roles became scarcer after the mid-1960s, and she was largely absent from major films in the 1970s. The return to character parts from the mid-1980s brought opportunities to work within ensembles. We would have liked more films to give her the space that Lunch Hour did.
In My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), she plays Rachel, the mistress of Saeed Jaffrey's character. We were moved by Field's Rachel: her warmth makes the mistress worth caring about in a film with plenty of other people competing for our attention. Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi make the desire for money as understandable as the desire for love, and Field fits their generous view of people. The crowded subplots occasionally get in the way, but the performances make the extra company welcome.
In Hear My Song (1991), her Cathleen Doyle gives us another reason to look beyond the early ingenues. It is a substantial later role in Peter Chelsom's generous comedy about the search for a singer, though our enthusiasm for the film rests chiefly on Adrian Dunbar's nerve and Ned Beatty's steadiness. Chelsom pushes the sentiment too hard, and we would not recommend it without that warning. Start with My Beautiful Laundrette, then try Lunch Hour to see what happens when she is given more time.
