Stuart's NiteFassbinder Foundation bio:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (May 31, 1945 - June 10, 1982) was born into a cultured bourgeois family in the small Bavarian spa town Bad Wörishofen. Raised by his mother as an only child, the boy had only sporadic contact with his father, a doctor, after the divorce of his parents when he was five. Educated at a Rudolf Steiner elementary school and subsequently in Munich and Augsburg, the city of Bert Brecht, he left school before passing any final examinations. A cinema addict ("five times a week, often three films a day") from a very early age, not least because his mother needed peace and quiet for her work as a translator, "the cinema was the family life I never had at home."
Fassbinder made his first short films at the age of twenty, persuading a male lover to finance them in exchange for leading roles. He also applied for a place at the Berlin Film School (dffb), but was refused.
Only after these amateur directing-scripting-acting efforts did Fassbinder take lessons with a professional acting studio, where he met Hanna Schygulla, his most important actress, who thanks to him became an international star. It was through Schygulla that Fassbinder turned his interest to the theatre.
In 1967 Fassbinder joined the Munich action-theater. He directed, acted in, and adapted anti-establishment plays for a tightly knit group of young professionals, among them Peer Raben and Kurt Raab, who along with Schygulla and Hermann, became the most important members of his cinematic stock company. Jean-Marie Straub directed the action-theater in an eight-minute version of Bruckner's Krankheit der Jugend , using part of this stage production in his short film DER BRÄUTIGAM, DIE KOMÖDIANTIN UND DER ZUHÄLTER (1968), with Fassbinder as the pimp. In 1968 Fassbinder directed the first play written by himself, Katzelmacher , a twenty-minute highly choreographed encounter between Bavarian villagers and a foreign worker from Greece, who with scarcely a word of German, becomes the object of intense racial, sexual, and political hatred among the men, while exerting a strangely troubling fascination on the women. A few weeks later, in May 1968, the Action theater was disbanded after its theatre was wrecked by one of its founders, jealous of Fassbinder's growing power within the group. It promptly reformed under Fassbinder's command as the antiteater, which pursued an equally radical and frequently provocative production policy.
By 1976 Fassbinder had become an international star. Prizes at major film festivals, premieres and retrospectives in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and a first critical study on his work appearing in London had made him a familiar name among cinephiles and campus audiences the world over. He rented a house in Paris and could be seen in gay bars in New York, earning him cult hero status but also a controversial reputation in and out of his films. Art house circuits avidly took up his films: because he had so many to his credit by the time he was 'discovered' with FEAR EATS THE SOUL, the rerelease of his earlier films, together with the steady stream of new work, made his extraordinary productivity seem even more phenomenal.
His flamboyant and at the same time seedy life-style, his openly displayed and well advertised homosexuality, and at the same time life and love to women, the scandals, public outrages and bouts of self-pity ensured that in Germany itself Fassbinder was permanently in the news, making calculatedly provocative remarks in interviews, which nonetheless were usually shrewd and to the point. His work often received mixed notices from the national critics, many of whom only began to take Fassbinder seriously after the foreign press had hailed him as a genius.
In 1972 Fassbinder began his collaboration with a highly experienced and successful producer at West Germany's most prestigious television network, Peter Märtesheimer of WDR. Under Märtesheimer's influence, Fassbinder turned with even more determination to recognizably German subject matter. Together they made, among others, the television series EIGHT HOURS DO NOT MAKE A DAY, and in 1978 cowrote THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN , Fassbinder's commercially most profitable film and the first in his post-war German trilogy (the other two were LOLA and VERONIKA VOSS). For many foreign critics, his crowning achievement was the 14-part television adaptation of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz , much maligned by the domestic press. Although for VERONIKA VOSS Fassbinder received the Golden Bear at the 1982 Berlin Film Festival, a much-coveted Oscar nomination eluded him. As had often been noted, Fassbinder was the engine and motor (the "heart" in Wolfram Schütte's words) of the New German Cinema. His sudden death from a vicious combination of drugs and sleeping pills in June 1982 symbolically marked the end of the most exciting and experimental period the German cinema had known since the 1920s.
Pamela's NiteRoddy Doyle (1958-) via The Guardian
"I still live in the same neighbourhood where I grew up, and I still have to face the milkman and the neighbours if they don't like what I write. "
Birthplace
Dublin, Ireland
Education
University College, Dublin
Other jobs
He was originally a teacher in his old school; his students were the inspiration for his self-published first novel, The Commitments. He didn't give up teaching until the day Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha came out.
Did you know?
He swears that his first novel, the promisingly titled Your Granny Was a Hunger Striker, will never see the light of day.
Critical verdict
Critically and popularly acclaimed for his Barrytown trilogy, a Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (he had already been shortlisted for The Van) drew some anti-populist sneers - and sold more copies than any other winner. Doyle was the Dublin northsider's pride and joy, until a brutally frank film about domestic abuse (Family, later developed on page as the extraordinary The Woman who Walked into Doors) was seen as over-dramatised betrayal.
Recommended works
Doyle's greatest portrayals of dignity in degradation are Jimmy Rabbitte coping with unemployment in The Van and alcoholic, abused Paula, Doyle's only first-person narrator, in The Woman who Walked into Doors.
Influences
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha pays homage to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (compare the opening lines).
Now read on
Frank McCourt; Patrick McCabe
Adaptations
The Barrytown trilogy has been committed to celluloid; first was The Commitments (dir. Alan Parker), adapted by the duo behind 70s comedy Porridge and The Likely Lads as an exuberant musical with a simple storyline and plenty of jokes. Stephen Frears directed The Snapper and The Van, with screenplays by Doyle; the mood is more bittersweet and understated, but retains the authenticity of the books. Doyle has also written two plays, War (1989), about a pub quiz, and Brownbread (1993), in which a bishop is kidnapped.
Stuart's NiteScreenonline:
For their third collaboration, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were engaged by the Ministry of Information to make a propaganda film. 49th Parallel (1941; The Invaders in the US), was a concerted attempt to influence opinion in neutral America into supporting their government's entry into the war.
Pressburger proved an enthusiastic propagandist. As he later said, "Goebbels considered himself an expert on propaganda, but I thought I'd show him a thing or two." This is despite the fact that Pressburger's own status in Britain at the time was as an 'enemy alien'. On returning from Canada he found himself imprisoned and threatened with deportation, until Powell and the MOI intervened.
Pressburger's script, which won him an Academy Award for Best Original Story, charts the progress of a German U-boat crew stranded in Canada after the sinking of their craft off Hudson Bay. As the six crew members, led by the unflappable Corporal Hirth (Eric Portman), struggle to reach the neutral territory of the United States, they encounter a series of opponents, who serve to contrast Canada's democracy and ethnic diversity with the Nazis' moral bankruptcy.
The ruthless Hirth is a far cry from the more sympathetically portrayed German officer played by Conrad Veidt in Powell and Pressburger's earlier Spy in Black (1939). Unburdened by doubts in himself or in his philosophy, he has no patience with weakness or sensitivity. But his arrogance is his undoing, for he repeatedly underestimates his opponents. The other Nazis each have their own distinct characters, and there is even a 'good Nazi', which attracted some criticism at the time.
German actress Elisabeth Bergner, the only woman in a leading role, jumped ship after shooting a few scenes in Canada; it became clear she had only signed on to get to America. Fortunately, she was very effectively replaced by the unknown Glynis Johns. Two other stars, Laurence Olivier and Raymond Massey, almost pulled out, and the MOI threatened to pull the plug due to budget overspend. When Hollywood giants David O. Selznick and Samuel Goldwyn showed an interest, however, J. Arthur Rank stepped in and provided the rest of the money. He - and the Treasury - made their money back comfortably: a success at home, the film became the biggest British hit to date in American cinemas.
49th Parallel was the first of two collaborations between Powell and Pressburger and the already highly regarded editor David Lean.
Peter's NiteCaroline Millar via Screenonline:
The opening sequence of stark, leafless trees outlined against a cold English sky suggests the clinical austerity of 1960s Britain and hints at the cold manipulations that follow. The first shot of Barrett, leaving Thomas Crapper Sanitary Engineers (presumably his previous workplace), slyly insinuates the theme of the film as the 'flushing away' of the old order. His clipped appearance and punctuality tells us he means business, while the first shot of Tony (a 'businessman') finds him vulnerable, asleep in a chair.
The drama revolves around issues of both class and gender, and the relationship between the two. While Barrett slowly insinuates himself in the house and manipulates his master by slyly rearranging the decor, it is through sex (in the shape of his alluring and sexually permissive 'sister', Vera (Sarah Miles)) that he finally brings about Tony's downfall. The calculating allure of Vera, in contrast to the stuffy, over-bred Susan (Wendy Craig), cuts through the class barriers and brings Tony down to the same level as his servant. Soon the boundaries between master and servant break down, as Tony succumbs to the will of his stronger adversary.
Belonging to an era of filmmaking which for the first time dealt explicitly with issues never before seen on screen, The Servant (in common with many of the contemporary British New Wave) is also artistically ambitious. Several scenes (particularly those between Tony, Barrett and Susan) are seen through the distortion of the big, round, convex mirror which sits on the living room wall, reflecting the unnatural, misformed relationships between the people in the room. Each shot is directed with precision, often framing Susan or Vera between Tony and Barrett, or positioning one of the two men close to the camera while his rival lingers in the background.
Tom Sutpen via brightlights:
Although Pinter was a contemporary of John Osborne and Arnold Wesker — and was often cited as an essential figure in the “Angry Young Man” school of British theater those men had largely forged — his work resembled theirs only superficially. While Osborne’s plays, for example, couldn’t have been more direct about their social concerns, Pinter’s were obscure to the point of abstraction. If he was “angry” about anything, it was impossible to determine what he was angry about. His work was simply never concerned with the larger issues of society, and the only politics he routinely confronted were those in the language of human interaction, He was endlessly preoccupied with the treacheries inherent in the most time-worn relations. In fact, it was the only theme he returned to again and again: the subtle determination of some to undermine and destroy one another while maintaining a façade of order and civility. In this respect, his screenplay for The Servant is one of his greatest works, the equal of anything he wrote for the stage. With his devastating economy of dialogue and explication, he unblinkingly chronicles the savage destruction of one man’s will at the hands of another; not the half-bright social parable of some critics’ dreams. This, and not a barely existent subtext, is what makes The Servant such a disturbing film.
Viewers and critics who sought to drown The Servant in sociopolitical syrup were avoiding the obvious. There is something indeed tragic about the decline of this upper-class twit that failed to register with more class-conscious critics. In the final sequence, when Susan sees for herself the sodden, hopeless laudanum freak Tony has become, and flees from what she suddenly realizes was always Barrett’s house, she clings to a tree and weeps uncontrollably. And along with her, we can’t help but feel that, despite Tony’s basic lack of character, something has been irretrievably lost. But anyone who imagined that some fundamental reversal had taken place between Barrett and Tony at the end needed glasses. Barrett is no more the “working-class hero” of The Servant than Tony is. Though Barrett has laid waste to Tony’s will more thoroughly than if he'd murdered him, he’s still the man’s servant. He continues to cook the meals, fix the drinks, answer the doorbell, lock up at night. He has attained an enduring power over Tony, and can now indulge himself with the impunity of a Tiberius. But it is a limited power. A power achieved only by performing his duties, by pleasing his employer.
