It’s hard to think of another actor who could do more with syllables than Maggie Smith. Language was a universal tool for her.

Her characters crashed on consonants, as if landing a plane in the midst of an engine burst, or stretched out vowels in defiance of various laws of nature. Silence was a deadly weapon in her hands. Her pauses could swallow up the surrounding conversation. More powerful than any joke was the space she left for anticipating not only what she would say, but what she would say How she might say it.

Dame Maggie, who died in London on Friday aged 89, was trained as a repertory stage actor in an English system rooted in Shakespeare and prepared for versatility. Her astonishing range, as evidenced by a stage and film career that crossed generations, genres and levels of culture, had one common denominator: a reverence for the written word. Her gifts – and they were rightly legendary – turned the dialogue on the page into verbal music.

If comedy was more native to her than tragedy, it was because she understood that life knew no separation between the two. Grief and loss have not canceled out the sheer absurdity of human behavior. She reveled in the indomitable nature of our whims and whims, in their ability to survive even a blatant catastrophe. Each of us will eventually be erased, but our unique textures are unrepeatable. She honored those traces while ironically capturing their indefensible triviality.

I have only seen Smith on stage in New York once, the last time she was on Broadway, in Peter Shaffer’s “Lettice and Lovage” in 1990. I was a student at the time and I can still remember the atmosphere of excitement surrounding the production feel. Audiences flocked to the Ethel Barrymore Theater to see a comic virtuoso in full battle. Watching Smith throw verbal grenades with her co-star Margaret Tyzack was like watching Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova trade forehands at Wimbledon.

The play, about a fanciful tour guide to a dull and stately English country house who comes into conflict with a factually picky official at the historic property, was almost inconsequential. What remains is the grating byplay, the mounting exasperation, the tango of opposing temperaments finding fleeting common ground. Shaffer provided just enough to unleash the formidable arsenal of two savvy veterans.

Maggie Smith, seen during the rehearsal for ‘Night and Day’ in 1979, has died at the age of 89.

(Ray Howard/Associated Press)

Smith won an Oscar for her leading role in 1969’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” about a larger-than-life teacher at an Edinburgh girls’ school who sets out to free the minds of her students with romantic ideas that prove dangerous if not fascist. Based on Muriel Spark’s indelible novel, the film was a perfect vehicle for Smith’s theatrical charm and seductive wizardry.

She was at her best on screen when she could take the stage with her. Her first Oscar nomination was for playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello and her subsequent nominations were all for characters whose theatricality was a way of existence. She earned a second Oscar for her stellar supporting role in Herbert Ross’ 1978 film “California Suite,” in which she played an egotistical British actress who has come to Los Angeles with her husband to attend the Academy Awards as her marriage is on the rocks walked. Smith makes a complete meal of Neil Simon’s savage sketch.

Smith rose to international fame for her work in “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” films, a fame she treated like a wary visitor. Playing a sour-tongued widow or a master teacher of witchcraft came naturally to her, but what excited her about acting was its transformative freedom. An actor contains multitudes, and Smith knew there were legions within her.

Aristocrats with autocratic ways were fun to play, but mainstream sports characters could be just as impressive. She excelled on stage and screen in Alan Bennett’s “The Lady in the Van,” playing a crotchety hustler with an imperious sense of entitlement. Another work by Bennett, ‘Bed Among the Lentils’, part of his monologue series ‘Talking Heads’, filmed for BBC Television, gave Smith the opportunity to play the wife of a lonely minister with an increasingly apparent drinking problem and desires that do not be like that. easy to grasp.

Balancing pathos and quirky humor in portraits of women pushed to the limits of their capabilities – something she perfected in the 1987 film ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’ – has always been her forte. She realized that there is nothing more dramatic than human contradiction, the clash and rumbling of self-image and public perception.

Consider the haughtiness of her unforgettable widow in “Gosford Park,” set against the backdrop of the character’s dire financial situation. Satire works best when you’re immersed in embarrassing realities.

Smith had the Geraldine Page quality of bringing the street to the screen or stage, as if someone living an everyday life had snuck in through the casting back door. That these were two of the most technically accomplished actors of modern times is a testament to their genius. A product of the classical British tradition, Smith had the lightning eloquence of Shakespeare as his guide. Her timing was unparalleled, but what made it so was the truth she revealed in the gap that forms before thoughts and feelings finally release themselves into words.