Chichester Cinema at New Park
RATTIGAN AND THE SCREEN
Illustrated talk by Michael Darlow
Best known as a playwright, Rattigan was for some thirty years one of the most highly paid screenwriters in the world. He wrote more than 20 films and was twice nominated for an Oscar. Michael Darlow surveys his screen work and analyses, with the help of extracts from a selection of Rattigan’s contribution to film and the relationship between his writing for stage and screen. Among the extracts he will look at are the classic ‘The Way to the Stars’, ‘The Sound Barrier’ and ‘The VIPs’, which resulted from Rattigan being trapped in the VIP Lounge at Heathrow when it was fogged in. Darlow will examine Rattigan’s screen adaptations of his own stage plays and the impact of opening them out for the screen, including ‘The Prince and The Showgirl’, directed by Olivier and starring Marilyn Monroe, the 1948 Anthony Asquith film of ‘The Winslow Boy’ - a play Darlow himself directed with Emma Thompson and Ian Richardson for BBC TV in 1989. Among Rattigan’s original TV work, Darlow will look at ‘The Final Test’, which incorporated live action of a test match and real cricketers like Dennis Compton, Len Hutton and Jim Laker. Darlow will also outline Rattigan’s attitude to the ‘cult of the director’ and what he regarded as the undue credit given to film directors at the expense of writers, actors and technicians.
(In the Studio – Tickets £5)
Michael Darlow is the Biographer of Terence Rattigan, writer and award winning TV director and producer who has also worked in the theatre. His books include ‘Terence Rattigan – The Man and His Work’ and has worked with many leading actors including Anthony Hopkins, Diana Rigg, Peggy Ashcroft, Leo McKern, John Hurt, Derek Jacobi, Emma Thompson and Judi Dench.
NB. Preceeding this talk there will be a complete screening of JOURNEY TOGETHER, introduced by Michael Darlow.
Screening as part of:
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