Good director or bad director?

I quite like his films. It is hard to detect an underlying directorial calling card in his work, and some of it is frivolous. But I like him

Thoughts?

Good.

It's an insult to any creative person to have his or her career reduced to such a either/or equation.

Tony Richardson road the wave of the so-called English kitchen-sink new wave, with a preference for theatre-originated projects with strong performances.

Among his British contemporaries, I find him clearly inferior to Karel Reisz, Jack Clayton, Lindsay Anderson among others.

The Oscar wins for Tom Jones forever changed his career, for the worse. His next film - The Loved One - has its moments, but he made little of interest after that, certainly nothing of any consistency.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

quote:

Originally posted by seanflynn:
It's an insult to any creative person to have his or her career reduced to such a either/or equation.

Much better to take time and write a few paragraphs insulting him at length?

Feel free to post a defense of his post-The Loved One career if you'd like.

What I wrote was a brief analysis, not an insult. What you wrote was snarky and pithy, as well as inaccurate, as usual.

Oddly, I agree with you that his post-Loved One work is not his best, although Jessica Lange DID win an Oscar for Blue Sky.

Still, his earlier work, including Look Back in Anger; The Entertainer; A Taste of Honey; and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (kitchen sink realist works) are superb.

His later, lesser works do not cancel out his earlier ones, contrary to your insulting implications.

Once again, you just make stuff up.

And I think his early work is not at the level of A Room at the Top, Sons and Lovers, This Sporting Life or other Brit new wave films. That's an assessment, not an insult.

Calling it an insult, however, is.

The seeds of what went wrong in his career were found in his earlier better films - a slavish fidelity to the original material with little original creative input, a banal visual style, an overreliance on stereotypical characters, all extant in his early work, then more full-blown as issues later.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

I COULD KICK MYSELF for overlooking Mademoiselle (1966).

If you think that film is "banal, uncreative, stereotyped," then you my friend are sadly mistaken.

It is blessed with a great Jeanne Moreau performance, but I otherwise found it hollow and unsatisfying.

In any event, saying as I did that he made "little of interest" after The Loved One does, of course, mean than he made some films of interest after. Otherwise, I would have said "nothing of interest," which is not what I wrote.

Sean,
Dont want to be rude, but you wasted so many energies battle against an 16 years old guy.

Pucifer is 16?

quote:

Originally posted by JOSE:
Sean,
Dont want to be rude, but you wasted so many energies battle against an 16 years old guy.

Thank you for your delightfully garbled compliment, but it's been a few years since I was considered "jail bait."

I am just speculating here, but it's possible that after getting his two Oscars, it's like he had already reached the pinnacle and achieved the utmost, and there was no more motivation to do better. And it is also possible that his split with Vanessa Redgrave might have had some effect too. I mean, the timing is pretty coincidental.

His split with Redgrave came when he and Jeanne Moreau had an affair while making Medemoiselle a couple years later.

Richardson of course was bisexual, mainly gay in his later years (he died of AIDs). He certainly didn't fear strong women though (who also are the two greatest actresses of the last 50 years).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

I respect Moreau being put under that tent, but not really Redgrave. I love her, but I think she works more with presence than actual actorly innovation and creativity (which is her sisters' forte).

I'm actually thinking Kinuyo Tanaka, Bibi Andersson, Hanna Schygulla or Delphine Seyrig