This is another edition of Short Starts, where we present a weekly short film(s) from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. Many directors are embarrassed of their first film, especially if we count their student productions. That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to find a lot of “short starts” for this column. As we saw recently with Ridley Scott’s debut, however, the British Film Institute is to be thanked for preserving a number of early works by filmmakers from across the pond. Stephen Frears, whose latest great feature, Philomena, is now in theaters, is another example. The funny thing is that he seems like he’d rather that his first film, made in 1968, was lost and forgotten. Most directors would kill to have started off with something as smart and well-shot as The Burning, yet he claims he was clueless while making it, that...
- 11/24/2013
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Philip French speaks to Ridley Scott, Ken Russell, Gurinder Chadha, Shane Meadows and Stephen Frears about their debut pictures and detects the styles of the then-fledgling auteurs
Do artists discover a personal style and develop their themes gradually or are these to be found in embryonic form in their earliest works? There's no easy answer to this dual question. Take, for example, Ken Russell's Amelia and the Angel (1957), Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle (1965), Stephen Frears's The Burning (1967), Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But… (1989) and Shane Meadows's Where's the Money, Ronnie? (1995). All were made on shoestring budgets and each lasts less than half an hour.
First, presented with the directors' names and the credits concealed, would you be able to match up film and film-maker? I think most moviegoers could, which suggests there is something in these first movies that we would now recognise as characteristic. Second,...
Do artists discover a personal style and develop their themes gradually or are these to be found in embryonic form in their earliest works? There's no easy answer to this dual question. Take, for example, Ken Russell's Amelia and the Angel (1957), Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle (1965), Stephen Frears's The Burning (1967), Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But… (1989) and Shane Meadows's Where's the Money, Ronnie? (1995). All were made on shoestring budgets and each lasts less than half an hour.
First, presented with the directors' names and the credits concealed, would you be able to match up film and film-maker? I think most moviegoers could, which suggests there is something in these first movies that we would now recognise as characteristic. Second,...
- 9/25/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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