Time for Sir Peter: On the 100th Birthday of Our Founder

April 12, 2021

2021 is a very special year for the Peter Ustinov Foundation. On April 16, Sir Peter Ustinov would have turned 100 years old. For this occasion, he leads the list of anniversaries in the arts section of the first 2021 issue of DIE ZEIT. Attached is a beautiful tribute to Sir Peter.

Peter Ustinov: The Benevolent Bear

By Peter Kuemmel

December 31, 2020, 8:49 PM DIE ZEIT No. 1/2021

Sir Peter Ustinov countered petty wrath with his wit: As a global citizen and comedian. He would have been capable of holding Europe together single-handedly.

On April 16, 2021, we celebrate the 100th birthday of a man who could have saved the fragile European ideas and state structures by his very person, had he still lived. He spoke countless languages, had Russian, French, German, Swiss, Italian, and Ethiopian roots. He was a man of the world, almost inevitably: a comedian.

Peter Ustinov was the only child of a Russian Frenchwoman and a German Russian. He grew up in London, where his father, Jona von Ustinov, who had been a pilot in the German army during World War I, now worked as an agent for the British intelligence service. Often alone, Peter invented invisible companions and found that one could procure company by speaking in foreign voices. Later, he was capable of conducting entire symphony orchestras consisting solely of himself.

He realized that the most beautiful path to freedom is the foreign language. The sheer number of languages was fascinating! Ustinov wanted to understand them all. For him, they were games, costumes, possibilities for self-expansion.

His solo evenings offered essences of mentalities, based on seamless transformation. The son of Jona von Ustinov was by nature at least a double agent—at the middle of a sentence, he could leave behind language and homeland and reappear as a completely different person: as a conceited Brit, an explosive Russian, or a stubborn German.

He was a baroque figure who pursued his talents in all directions—a knighted actor, director, playwright, two-time Oscar winner, novelist, university chancellor, comedian, diplomat, philanthropist, lifesaver.

In England between the wars, he was an elite student, but a poor one and of German descent—he experienced the snobbery and arrogance that, turned into the scenic, became the drive of his comedy. The level of aggression with which he had been expelled from communities fueled his parodies: thus, creating recoil comedy. The child of a spy himself spied on people, namely those who entrenched themselves behind rank, status, wealth, and contempt. Society, as portrayed by Peter Ustinov, was a silly system of haughty condescenders and panting climbers.

He himself quickly became a social focal point. Two Oscars (for his role as a slave trader in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960), and as a bumbling crook in Jules Dassin’s Topkapi (1964)) brought him world fame, his portrayal of Emperor Nero in Quo Vadis (1951) had already been unforgettable. But the famous man never forgot what he once was. He showed the suspicion of a man who expects to be expelled at any moment, even towards societies that had gathered just to celebrate him. He blinked suspiciously around the room and was only relaxed when he could play—and disappear into other characters. Although he didn’t really merge with those he portrayed; he more humorously devoured them like a good bear, adopting their peculiarities, preserving the movements of the prey he had engulfed. He filled himself up with foreign life. And gained access to all social spheres: by playing them. He grasped beyond people to animals, which he portrayed with reverence, and to things (door hinges, car engines, musical instruments), which he not only imitated but seemed to embody. He wanted to understand everything, to speak from everything that surrounded him.

He founded a foundation that facilitates access to education and wealth for disadvantaged children. He served as an ambassador for UNICEF in the remotest parts of the world. He protected every being he portrayed against prejudice.

In 1961, he filmed Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd, directing and playing the role of an English warship captain named Vere. This Vere orders the execution of the kindest and most benign man on his ship because the law demands it. Billy Budd is a masterful film with an unforgettable conclusion: The crew watches the hanging of Billy Budd in horror, then paralysis turns into hatred towards the superiors—a mutiny threatens. Yet now, a cannon shot from an unnoticed French ship crosses over, causing the aggression on board to discharge differently: against the approaching enemy. Rarely has a tipping point been so convincingly staged. Ustinov teaches us in Billy Budd that we need war to control the hatred within our own ranks. From which it follows: Those who want to prevent war must start with the smallest thing, the wrath towards the next person. Ustinov set his whole life against wrath. In 2004, he died. Such wit has not been seen since.