The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee

Critical Perspective

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  Jon Spira (Elstree 1976) takes on a big subject here – and does remarkable justice to the long life, multiple on-screen and apparent career deaths (and, very movingly, his actual demise) and evolving legend of Sir Christopher Lee (1922-2015). … Spira makes him unabashedly the hero of his own story, more in the mode of the role he wanted but never played than the one for which he was lastingly famous. It’s sparing in its use of clips, though we get flashes of Lee’s charisma and magnetic personality within the range his height and breeding defined for him. He was, for obvious reasons, not often cast as ordinary people – but he was in the frame for Rasputin.