On Sunday night, actor Ernest Borgnine died of kidney failure at the age of 95. He was accompanied by his wife and his children at Cedar-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
Of Italian origin, Borgnine began in the cinema at the beginning of the 50s, a decade in which he participated in such important films as 'From Here to Eternity' ('From Here to Eternity', Fred Zinnemann, 1953), 'Johnny Guitar ' (id, Nicholas Ray, 1954), 'Veracruz' (id, Robert Aldrich, 1954), 'Conspiracy of silence' ('Bad Day at Black Rock', John Sturges, 1955), and above all 'Marty' (id, Delbert Mann, 1955), one of the few films in which he had a leading role, and for which he won a well-deserved Oscar for best leading actor.
His peculiar face led him to play countless secondary characters, being one of those actors who ennobled, so to speak, the secondary characters, often managing to be above the main ones. Borgnine had the ability, destined only for a few, to give life to men full of sensitivity and kindness, or even the biggest son of a bitch one could find. After participating under the orders of directors such as Delmer Daves or Richard Fleischer, in the following decade he stood out in films such as 'Barabbas', again by Fleischer, 'The Flight of the Phoenix' ('The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965), 'Twelve from the gallows' ('The Dirty Dozen', 1967), both by Aldrich, who had him as one of his fetish actors, or the essential 'Wild Bunch' ('The Wild Bunch', Sam Peckinpah, 1969).
'The Poseidon Adventure' ('The Poseidon Adventure', Ronald Neame, 1972) —probably the best movie about catastrophes— and 'The Emperor of the North' ('Emperor of the North Pole', Robert Aldrich, 1973) were two of the most important works of the actor in the 70s, along with titles such as 'Convoy' (id, Sam Peckinpah, 1978) or 'The Black Hole' ('The Black Hole', Gary Nelson', 1979), film unfairly underrated sci-fi. In the 80s he stands out in the mythical '1997: Rescue in New York' ('Escape from New York', John Carpenter, 1981), and little by little the films in which he participates do not have the quality of titles of yesteryear, without a doubt in keeping with the new times in Hollywood.
One of his last jobs was in the passable 'Red' (id, Robert Schwentke, 2010), and I personally highlight his performance in the segment directed by Sean Penn for the film about the attacks on the Twin Towers '09-11-01', an 11-minute gem that impresses, among other things, with Borgnine's heartfelt interpretation.
