John Schlesinger - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)
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John Schlesinger - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography
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John Schlesinger - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Director, Actor, Writer, Producer.
February 16, 1926, London - July 25, 2003, Los Angeles - One of the filmmakers who shaped British cinema in the post-war period, actor, screenwriter and producer.
In 1943 he was drafted into the army, where he became interested in experimental theater and entertained his colleagues with a show of tricks. After the war, he studied English literature at Oxford. In the late 1950s. filmed documentaries for the BBC. His documentary The End Station (1961) about the everyday life of Waterloo Station was a highlight at the Venice Festival.
In the early 1960s, Schlesinger directed his first feature films, A Kind of Loving (1962; The Golden Bear of the Berlin Festival) and Billy Liar (1963). These pictures began his long-term collaboration with actors Alan Bates and Julie Christie. Schlesinger's portrayal of working class everyday life in the north of England has received rave reviews from the British Film Academy. Thematically adjacent to these films is the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd (1967).
After capturing the culture of "swinging London" in Darling (1965), the openly homosexual director turned to the topic of same-sex love (formerly taboo) in his most famous films Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Sunday Damned Sunday "(1971). The first of these highly social films earned him an Oscar for Best Director and the Order of the British Empire. The apathy that gripped English society in the early 1970s, Schlesinger subtly reflected in the film "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" (Sunday, Bloody Sunday, 1971), which can be taken as a metaphorical picture of a bitter awakening after the boom of the 1960s, when the British suddenly saw that they live in a seedy country where people agree "at least half a piece." The film tells the story of the experiences of an elderly homosexual doctor and an intelligent young woman who, as it turns out, share one lover, eventually abandoning both and leaving for America.
Shortly before this, the director himself had gone to the United States, where he shot his most famous film Midnight Cowboy (1969). The theme of compensation for disappointments in life in the warmth of interpersonal relations was impressively embodied by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in the roles of two loser vagabonds, rejected by the big city. Largely thanks to Hoffman, success accompanied the political thriller "Marathon Man" (Marathon Man, 1976). The masterly film adaptation of N. West's brutal 1930s Hollywood satire "The Day Of The Locust" (1975) proved too academic for box office success.
Since the 1980s, Schlesinger has been making films in a variety of genres: the BBC TV drama Englishman Abroad (1984) about the meeting in Moscow of former spy Guy Burgess from Kim Philby's group with Coral Brown, an actress of the theater. Old Vic ", mystical thriller" The Believers "(The Believers, 1987); the melodrama Madame Sousatzka (1988) - the story of the teaching and upbringing of a Hindu teenager by an eccentric pianist (Shirley McLain - Golden Globe Award, Venice IFF prize for Best Actress); thrillers "Pacific Heights" (1990), "Innocent" (Innocent, 1993); the comedy "The Next Best Thing" (2000) with Madonna and Rupert Everett in the lead roles.
For the last thirty years of his life, Schlesinger, who did not hide his sexual orientation, lived in the California town of Palm Springs with photographer Michael Childers.
