Art made during Covid––more specifically during quarantine and before / at the very beginning of the vaccine rollout––will surely hold an added weight as history is written. In those very hard times, what did we write? What did we read? What did we watch? T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, directed by Sophie Fiennes and performed by her brother Ralph, is a decidedly worthwhile artifact of this precarious time.
An adaptation of the series of four poems written just before––and then during––World War II by Eliot, the film is an elevated recording of the stage performance Ralph Fiennes took on in 2021. Fiennes himself is credited with the stage direction, his sister with the film direction, both working well. Hildegard Bechtler’s production design is spare yet effective, the lighting by Tim Lutkin pointed and emotional. The camera remains mostly stationary, though the editing jostles between full-frame wides and quietly intense close-ups.
An adaptation of the series of four poems written just before––and then during––World War II by Eliot, the film is an elevated recording of the stage performance Ralph Fiennes took on in 2021. Fiennes himself is credited with the stage direction, his sister with the film direction, both working well. Hildegard Bechtler’s production design is spare yet effective, the lighting by Tim Lutkin pointed and emotional. The camera remains mostly stationary, though the editing jostles between full-frame wides and quietly intense close-ups.
- 5/2/2023
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
Sophie Fiennes on Ralph Fiennes starring and staging T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: “The thing that Ralph does brilliantly is the distribution in the space of the ideas. How he places them.”
In the second instalment with Sophie Fiennes we discuss her superb and faithful capturing of Ralph Fiennes’ stage production of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Helen Gardner’s The Art Of T.S. Eliot, Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami, Samuel Beckett, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Elizabethan and Metaphysical poetry.
Sophie Fiennes with Anne-Katrin Titze on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “I possibly wouldn’t have been as interested in becoming a filmmaker if I hadn’t had become acquainted with that poem at a very early age.”
Within days of speaking with Sophie, by chance every film I happened to watch contained a quote from the Nobel Prize-winning poet.
In the second instalment with Sophie Fiennes we discuss her superb and faithful capturing of Ralph Fiennes’ stage production of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Helen Gardner’s The Art Of T.S. Eliot, Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami, Samuel Beckett, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Elizabethan and Metaphysical poetry.
Sophie Fiennes with Anne-Katrin Titze on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “I possibly wouldn’t have been as interested in becoming a filmmaker if I hadn’t had become acquainted with that poem at a very early age.”
Within days of speaking with Sophie, by chance every film I happened to watch contained a quote from the Nobel Prize-winning poet.
- 4/25/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
There has always been something otherworldly about Ts Eliot, a spectral quality deeply in accord with cinema. Francis Ford Coppola knew to include in Apocalypse Now (1979) a scene in which Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) reads parts of Eliot’s The Hollow Men, that in the epigraph (“Mistah Kurtz – he dead”) quotes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the basis of the film. Dennis Hopper, playing the photojournalist, paraphrases the poem’s famous last line.
Sophie Fiennes’ superb and faithful capturing of her brother Ralph Fiennes’ stage production of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets yields wonderfully thoughtful camera movements and angles (cinematography by Mike Eley) and also takes us out of the theater space to breathe the same landscapes Eliot so unmatchedly described in Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding. He was always already there. “And...
Sophie Fiennes’ superb and faithful capturing of her brother Ralph Fiennes’ stage production of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets yields wonderfully thoughtful camera movements and angles (cinematography by Mike Eley) and also takes us out of the theater space to breathe the same landscapes Eliot so unmatchedly described in Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding. He was always already there. “And...
- 4/23/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Exclusive: Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner Ralph Fiennes’ hit London stage production Four Quartets is getting a screen version directed by his sister Sophie Fiennes (The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema).
WestEnd Films is launching international sales on the project at the upcoming Cannes market.
Early in the pandemic, No Time to Die, Harry Potter and Schindler’s List star Fiennes set himself the challenge of committing T.S. Eliot’s classic poem Four Quartets to memory. The result was an acclaimed stage version which ran to packed houses across England and at the Harold Pinter Theater in London.
Written by Eliot in the shadow of the Second World War, the ever-relevant poem is a searching examination of who – and what – we are.
The idea for the film, which is currently in post, was developed alongside the rehearsals for the stage production. Martin Rosenbaum (The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology), Shani Hinton (Grace...
WestEnd Films is launching international sales on the project at the upcoming Cannes market.
Early in the pandemic, No Time to Die, Harry Potter and Schindler’s List star Fiennes set himself the challenge of committing T.S. Eliot’s classic poem Four Quartets to memory. The result was an acclaimed stage version which ran to packed houses across England and at the Harold Pinter Theater in London.
Written by Eliot in the shadow of the Second World War, the ever-relevant poem is a searching examination of who – and what – we are.
The idea for the film, which is currently in post, was developed alongside the rehearsals for the stage production. Martin Rosenbaum (The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology), Shani Hinton (Grace...
- 5/6/2022
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
To hell with harmony: “Mood Music” is all dischord. The first play in more than five years by Joe Penhall (“Mindhunter”) presents a sharp dissection of power in the music industry. A horribly watchable, bitterly enjoyable black comedy debuting at the Old Vic, it sets a manipulative middle-aged male mogul against an impressionable young female singer-songwriter in his charge. To call their dispute a case of creative differences would be to describe a war of attrition as a slight spat.
Ben Chaplin’s Bernard is a platinum-selling producer and a gold-plated s—. His latest find, Seána Kerslake’s Cat, is a rising star with one of the most exciting voices he’s ever heard. Or so he tells her. It helps that female artists come cheaper than their male counterparts, that they sell more and demand less. His job is to turn her songs into hits, applying his experience and expertise,...
Ben Chaplin’s Bernard is a platinum-selling producer and a gold-plated s—. His latest find, Seána Kerslake’s Cat, is a rising star with one of the most exciting voices he’s ever heard. Or so he tells her. It helps that female artists come cheaper than their male counterparts, that they sell more and demand less. His job is to turn her songs into hits, applying his experience and expertise,...
- 5/4/2018
- by Matt Trueman
- Variety Film + TV
The complete list of nominees for this year's Olivier awards, celebrating the best of British theatre, dance and opera
Best actor
Rupert Everett – The Judas Kiss
James McAvoy – Macbeth
Mark Rylance – Twelfth Night
Rafe Spall – Constellations
Luke Treadaway – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Best actress
Helen Mirren – The Audience
Hattie Morahan – A Doll's House
Billie Piper – The Effect
Kristin Scott Thomas – Old Times
Best actor in a supporting role
Paul Chahidi – Twelfth Night
Richard McCabe – The Audience
Adrian Scarborough – Hedda Gabler
Kyle Soller – Long Day's Journey Into Night
Best actress in a supporting role
Janie Dee – Nsfw
Anastasia Hille – The Effect
Cush Jumbo – Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse)
Helen McCrory – The Last of the Haussmans
Nicola Walker – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mastercard best new play
Constellations
The Audience
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
This House
Best director
Stephen Daldry...
Best actor
Rupert Everett – The Judas Kiss
James McAvoy – Macbeth
Mark Rylance – Twelfth Night
Rafe Spall – Constellations
Luke Treadaway – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Best actress
Helen Mirren – The Audience
Hattie Morahan – A Doll's House
Billie Piper – The Effect
Kristin Scott Thomas – Old Times
Best actor in a supporting role
Paul Chahidi – Twelfth Night
Richard McCabe – The Audience
Adrian Scarborough – Hedda Gabler
Kyle Soller – Long Day's Journey Into Night
Best actress in a supporting role
Janie Dee – Nsfw
Anastasia Hille – The Effect
Cush Jumbo – Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse)
Helen McCrory – The Last of the Haussmans
Nicola Walker – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mastercard best new play
Constellations
The Audience
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
This House
Best director
Stephen Daldry...
- 3/26/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Donmar Warehouse, London
Best known for movies such as Atonement and Anna Karenina, Joe Wright has finally got round to directing his first play, and, appropriately, he has chosen Pinero's warm-hearted tribute, written in 1898, to the theatrical medium itself. But, while it makes a perfectly amiable evening, Wright can't help pushing Pinero's faithful re-creation of a past theatrical age to the edge of caricature.
Pinero's play deals with class, change and the enduring power of theatre. It starts by showing Rose Trelawny, the darling of 1860s Sadler's Wells, quitting the stage to marry into the gentry. But once ensconced in Cavendish Square, where she's very much on trial with her fiance's grandfather and great-aunt, she's appalled by the stifling tyranny of upper-class life. Sacrificing her lover, she goes back to the boards only to find her talent has evaporated. Her one hope would seem to lie with an emerging playwright,...
Best known for movies such as Atonement and Anna Karenina, Joe Wright has finally got round to directing his first play, and, appropriately, he has chosen Pinero's warm-hearted tribute, written in 1898, to the theatrical medium itself. But, while it makes a perfectly amiable evening, Wright can't help pushing Pinero's faithful re-creation of a past theatrical age to the edge of caricature.
Pinero's play deals with class, change and the enduring power of theatre. It starts by showing Rose Trelawny, the darling of 1860s Sadler's Wells, quitting the stage to marry into the gentry. But once ensconced in Cavendish Square, where she's very much on trial with her fiance's grandfather and great-aunt, she's appalled by the stifling tyranny of upper-class life. Sacrificing her lover, she goes back to the boards only to find her talent has evaporated. Her one hope would seem to lie with an emerging playwright,...
- 2/27/2013
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
Thea Sharrocks production of Sunshine Boys continues at the Savoy Theatre for a strictly limited run until 28 July 2012, having opened last night, May 17. The Sunshine Boys is designed by Hildegard Bechtler with lighting by Neil Austin, music by Adrian Johnston and sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph. Joining Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths as the ageing vaudevillian team Willie Clark and Al Lewis in Neil Simons award-winning comedy The Sunshine Boys are Rebecca Blackstone Miss Mackintosh, Nick Blakeley Eddie, Peter Cadden Voice of TV Director, Johnnie Fiori Registered Nurse, Adam Levy Ben Silverman and William Maxwell Patient. Check out photos from opening night below...
- 5/18/2012
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Thea Sharrock's production of The Sunshine Boys begins previews at the Savoy Theatre from 27 April with press night on 17 May. The Sunshine Boys, which is booking for a strictly limited run until 28 July 2012, is designed by Hildegard Bechtler with lighting by Neil Austin, music by Adrian Johnston and sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph. Joining Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths as the ageing vaudevillian team Willie Clark and Al Lewis in Neil Simon's award-winning comedy The Sunshine Boys are Rebecca Blackstone Miss Mackintosh, Nick Blakeley Eddie, Peter Cadden Voice of TV Director, Johnnie Fiori Registered Nurse, Adam Levy Ben Silverman and William Maxwell Patient.Check out photos of the duo in rehearsal below...
- 4/12/2012
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Joining Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths as the ageing vaudevillian team Willie Clark and Al Lewis in Neil Simon's award-winning comedy The Sunshine Boys are Rebecca Blackstone Miss Mackintosh, Nick Blakeley Eddie, Peter Cadden Voice of TV Director, Johnnie Fiori Registered Nurse, Adam Levy Ben Silverman and William Maxwell Patient. Thea Sharrock's production, which begins rehearsals today, previews at the Savoy Theatre from 27 April with press night on 17 May. The Sunshine Boys, which is booking for a strictly limited run until 28 July 2012, is designed by Hildegard Bechtler with lighting by Neil Austin, music by Adrian Johnston and sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph.Check out a photo of the duo in action below...
- 3/19/2012
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Just announced is official word that Thea Sharrock is set to direct Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths as the ageing vaudevillian team Willie Clark and Al Lewis in Neil Simons award-wining comedy, The Sunshine Boys. Previewing from 27 April with press night on 17 May, The Sunshine Boys is booking at the Savoy Theatre for a strictly limited run until 28 July 2012. The Sunshine Boys has designs by Hildegard Bechtler with lighting by Neil Austin and sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph. Further casting will be announced shortly.
- 1/30/2012
- by BWW
- BroadwayWorld.com
Coliseum; Barbican; Linbury Studio; Queen Elizabeth Hall, all London
Based on column inches and lurid images alone, never mind the incalculable online torrent, the big event this week was Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera. After squawks over the company's recent choice of directors from outside opera, it was a pleasure to witness a superbly staged, ingenious production from opera novice Terry Gilliam, best known as a Hollywood director and genius ex-Python animator. If you want to use film in opera, and most now do, Gilliam shows you how.
Musical standards, with Edward Gardner in the pit, were secure though not vintage, and Berlioz's infinitely delicate score survived just about intact despite being zipped into an all-in-one concept and tumbling out wittily for a choreographic Treaty of Versailles and a dance of the gas masks. The iconography – the 1936 Olympics, Kristallnacht, a glimpse of the Obersalzberg – pinned us...
Based on column inches and lurid images alone, never mind the incalculable online torrent, the big event this week was Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera. After squawks over the company's recent choice of directors from outside opera, it was a pleasure to witness a superbly staged, ingenious production from opera novice Terry Gilliam, best known as a Hollywood director and genius ex-Python animator. If you want to use film in opera, and most now do, Gilliam shows you how.
Musical standards, with Edward Gardner in the pit, were secure though not vintage, and Berlioz's infinitely delicate score survived just about intact despite being zipped into an all-in-one concept and tumbling out wittily for a choreographic Treaty of Versailles and a dance of the gas masks. The iconography – the 1936 Olympics, Kristallnacht, a glimpse of the Obersalzberg – pinned us...
- 5/14/2011
- by Fiona Maddocks
- The Guardian - Film News
From cartoons to animation to films and now opera. Terry Gilliam is to direct a new production of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust.
A former member of the Monty Python comedy group, Gilliam is best known as the director of such cult films as Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and, most recently, 2009's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
In his latest venture, he will direct The Damnation of Faust for English National Opera (Eno), based at the London Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, London. It opens on May 6.
Eno says the opera is the "perfect vehicle" for Gilliam's rich imagination.
In a new promotional video interview, he shares his thoughts on the upcoming production. The short film is included below, along with a full press release.
Here's the full press release:
Eno stages a new production of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust...
A former member of the Monty Python comedy group, Gilliam is best known as the director of such cult films as Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and, most recently, 2009's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
In his latest venture, he will direct The Damnation of Faust for English National Opera (Eno), based at the London Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, London. It opens on May 6.
Eno says the opera is the "perfect vehicle" for Gilliam's rich imagination.
In a new promotional video interview, he shares his thoughts on the upcoming production. The short film is included below, along with a full press release.
Here's the full press release:
Eno stages a new production of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust...
- 3/10/2011
- by David Bentley
- The Geek Files
Following his recent peep behind the curtain of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Terry Gilliam has turned his talents to a short film with The Legend of Hallowdega as well as directing Arcade Fire at Madison Square Gardens.
While the figure of Don Quixote looms on the horizon the director has just announced that one of his future projects will be making his opera directing debut with Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust for the Eno.
The production will run for 10 performances in May and June this year and is certain to be a treat for fans of Gilliam’s work, as the director explains below, there is an operatic feel to many of his works, he also teases us with Brazil: The Opera, which I’d pay to see every night I suspect. Here’s the man himself talking up Berlioz,
Here’s the press release and which...
While the figure of Don Quixote looms on the horizon the director has just announced that one of his future projects will be making his opera directing debut with Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust for the Eno.
The production will run for 10 performances in May and June this year and is certain to be a treat for fans of Gilliam’s work, as the director explains below, there is an operatic feel to many of his works, he also teases us with Brazil: The Opera, which I’d pay to see every night I suspect. Here’s the man himself talking up Berlioz,
Here’s the press release and which...
- 3/2/2011
- by Jon Lyus
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
David Leveaux will direct a cast including Samantha Bond, Nancy Carroll, Jessie Cave, Neil Pearson, Dan Stevens and Ed Stoppard in a new production of Tom Stoppard's multi award-winning play Arcadia. Previewing at the Duke of York's Theatre from 27 May, with press night on 11 June, Arcadia is currently booking until 12 September 2009. Set designs are by Hildegard Bechtler, costume design is by Amy Roberts, lighting is by Paul Anderson and sound is by Simon Baker. Arcadia will be presented in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions, Robert G. Bartner and Roger Berlind.
- 3/20/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
The works of Henrik Ibsen provide unique challenges for modern theater companies. This may be because of the complexities of his characters or the difficulties of getting an appealing translation of the playwright's original Norwegian prose. Happily the Roundabout Theater has faced both of these challenges and is currently presenting a compelling production of Hedda Gabler at their elegant American Airlines Theater. Audiences realize they are about to witness something special when they see Hildegard Bechtler's atmospheric set bathed in the subtle and effective lighting of Natasha Katz. However, it is when Michael Cerveris makes his initial entrance that the audience realizes what an exceptional evening this Hedda Gabler will be. Playing the intellectual writer Jorgen Tesman, Cerveris eschews a dour portrayal of an academic in favor of a character who is robust and certainly in love with his new bride, Hedda, who is stunningly portrayed in this version by Mary-Louise Parker.
- 1/25/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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