Red, White, and Zero
Composed of three shorts – Ride of the Valkyrie, The White Bus, and Red and Blue – from three of Britain’s most-celebrated directors - Lindsay Anderson, Peter Brook, and Tony Richardson. Comic legend Zero Mostel stars as an opera singer (in full costume) navigating the London transport network as he attempts to reach Covent Garden in 'Ride of the Valkyrie'. Scripted by Shelagh Delaney, 'The White Bus' blends realism, drama, and poetry as a despondent young woman travels home to the North of England. And Vanessa Redgrave stars in Tony Richardson’s romantic reverie and musical featurette 'Red and Blue'. Produced in 1967, but ultimately shelved.
Also Directed by Tony Richardson
Hank Marshall is a tough, square-jawed, straitlaced Army engineer and nuclear science expert, assigned to help conduct weapons-testing in 1950's America. Hank has become a thorn in the side of the Army, though, for a couple of very different reasons. He is an outspoken opponent of atmospheric testing, though his superiors hold contrary views and want to squelch his concerns...and his reports. The other problem is his wife, Carly. She is voluptuous and volatile, wreaking havoc in his personal life and stirring up intrigue at each new Army base.
Newly arrived in Hollywood from England, Dennis Barlow finds he has to arrange his uncle's interment at the highly-organised and very profitable Whispering Glades funeral parlour. His fancy is caught by one of their cosmeticians, Aimee Thanatogenos. But he has three problems - the strict rules of owner Blessed Reverand Glenworthy, the rivalry of embalmer Mr Joyboy, and the shame of now working himself at The Happy Hunting Ground pets' memorial home. It features John Gielgud as a gay director; Liberace as a fastidious and gay casket salesperson; and Tab Hunter.
Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Christian virtue and true love resist her lusting passes just as well as the many ladies who fancy her footman, she fires the boy. He's found and nursed by an innkeeper's maid, which stirs lusts there, again besides his honorable conduct, but is found by the good parson.
A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.
Archie Rice, an old-time British vaudeville performer sinking into final defeat, schemes to stay in show business.
A dramatized account of a Victorian cause célèbre, written by John Osborne and concerning the true story of the last person in England to be tried for blasphemy. Richard Burton plays John George Holyoake, a social reformer who goes on trial for speaking in public about his atheist views. Rachel Roberts plays his wife, and the programme is introduced by Face to Face inquisitor John Freeman.
The singular life of Beryl Markham - renowned aviatrix, author and adventurer
Tom loves Sophie and Sophie loves Tom. But Tom and Sophie are of differering classes. Can they find a way through the mayhem to be true to love?
The film talks about a family that weathers all sorts of disasters and keeps going in spite of it all. It is noted for its wonderful assortment of oddball characters.
Focuses on a working class girl who is struggling to create a life for herself with her gay co-worker after becoming pregnant from a one-night stand with a black sailor.
Also Directed by Peter Brook
Peter Brook's take on the Shakespeare classic.
Adaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffith as the Beggar.
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
With hindsight, we can see exactly how wrong the labels given to Samuel Beckett have been, since it has been said that his writing was sad, negative and desperate. Nowadays, it can be said that several of his pieces submerge us in the reality of human existence, but with an element of humor - and it is this humor that has saved us. Beckett rejects every theory, every core belief, looking for the truth. He observes people amid the darkness and takes them into what is vast and unknown about life, so they can discover their truth by taking a look at themselves and others. Like Beckett, we share their uncertainty, their search, their pain. This theatrical reflection by the masters of European theater, Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, incorporates parts of Fragments, a piece premiered in 2008 and filmed in 2015 and which contains the short plays Rough For Theater I, Rockaby, Act Without Words II and Neither.
A wealthy and bored woman (Moreau) is witness of a murder in affection and meets another witness (Belmondo). She asks him about the history of the victim and falls in love with him.
In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.
Amidst a nuclear war, a plane carrying a group of schoolboys crash lands on a deserted island. With no adult survivors, the boys are forced to fend for themselves. At first they cooperate, but when the they split into two separate camps -- one led by the pragmatic Ralph and the other by militaristic Jack -- their society falls into disarray, leading to a disturbing examination of human nature and a chilling conclusion.
An opera singer, dressed in full costume and dress, must navigate through the busy city streets to get to the theater in time for his performance. Filmed for the shelved portmanteau film 'Red, White and Zero' in 1967.
Live performance at Théâtre de l’Archevêché du Festival d’art lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence 2002. Daniel Harding conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Choeur de l'Académie Européenne de Musique. Directed for stage by Peter Brook.
Also Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Satire about a traditional English boys' boarding school, where social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. But three Lower Sixth students, leader Mick Travis, Wallace and Johnny decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.
This sprawling, surrealist musical serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in modern Britain.
Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, and African cannibal dictator and sinister human experiments.
A documentary about the history of the Free Cinema movement, made by one of it's greatest proponents, Lindsay Anderson, to commemorate British Film Year in 1985. Produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Unlike Richard Attenborough's celebratory episode of the same series, or Alan Parker's more aggressive show, which was balanced between celebrating the greats and attacking Parker's bugbears, Greenaway and Jarman and the BFI, Anderson's show accentuates the negative, painting an image of a British cinema in terminal artistic decline and trashing the ambitions and approach of British Film Year itself. It's mordantly funny and very savage.
Best known for their radio staples "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and "Careless Whisper," the seminal 80s pop group Wham! (George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley) shot Wham! In China: Foreign Skies circa 1985. In the resulting film, the group performs 12 numbers, including the aforementioned hits, "Ray Of Sunshine," "Blue," and "Young Guns (Go for It!)".
Won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary Short of 1954. The subject deals with the children at The Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, Kent. The hearing-handicapped children are shown painstakingly learning what words are through exercises and games, practicing lip-reading and finally speech. Richard Burton's calm and sometimes-poetic narration adds to the heartwarming cheerfulness and courage of the children.
David Storey's adaptation of his award winning play for the BBC's Play for Today series.
Jimmy is a self-loathing and frustrated musician who works at a candy shop. He takes out his rage on his long suffering wife and his business partner and best friend, who lives next door. Jimmy's marital problems come to a head when his wife discovers that she's pregnant and one of her friends, an actress, comes to stay with them. Based on the play, the story takes place in England in the 1950's.
Award winning director Lindsay Anderson subverts the mockumentary genre and presents to the audience a detailed and humored account of what truly means to be Lindsay Anderson.
Two aged sisters reflect on life and the past during a late summer day in Maine.