British Cinema Essay Research Paper On January free essay sample

British Cinema Essay, Research Paper On January 14, 1896, at England s Royal Photographic Society, American-born lensman and discoverer Birt Acres held a public showing of gesture images he d made in 1895, utilizing a camera he d designed with Robert William Paul ( based on the Edison Kinetoscope ) ; Acres movies included Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race and Rough Sea At Dover. The following month, Frenchman F? licen Trewey, the Lumi? rhenium Brothers London representative, gave England s first movie plan to bear down admittance, with short docudramas and glances of music-hall performing artists. Subsequently that twelvemonth, Acres made comedies and a play, The Arrest Of A Pickpocket, but by 1900 returned to contriving. Paul kept with movie until 1910, largely bring forthing trick-photography trunkss like those of Georges M? Li? s, such as The Twins Tea Party ( 1897 ) . In 1899 he built England s first indoor movie studio and made such inventive phantasies as Ocean trip To The Arctic ( 1903 ) and The? Motorist ( 1906 ) . We will write a custom essay sample on British Cinema Essay Research Paper On January or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page George Albert Smith, who besides produced M? Li? s-style comedies, used inventions such as close-ups, in Grandma s Reading Glass ( 1900 ) , and colour: He patented the Kinemacolor procedure with American-born Charles Urban in 1906, which was used in his Kinemacolor Puzzle ( 1909 ) and Urban s The Durbar At Delhi ( 1911 ) . In the early 1900s, Scottish-born producer/director James Williamson made complete play such as Attack On A Chinese Mission Station ( 1900 ) and Fire ( 1902 ) . Music-hall amusing Alf Collins became a skilled manager in the redaction and camerawork of such movies as The Pickpocket ( 1903 ) . Cecil Hepworth, a former helper to Acres, produced the polished and extremely popular Rescued By Rover ( 1905, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon ) , in which he starred with his household ( and their Canis familiaris! ) . William George Barker produced England s first two-reeler in 1911: Henry VIII, directed by Louis N. Parker, with phase histrion Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Scottish manager Arthur Vivian followed with a three-reel Rob Roy. In 1912 Hepworth produced the four-reel Oliver Twist, directed by Thomas Bentley, and Wilfred Loy directed the five-reel Lorna Doone ; the following twelvemonth, Barker produced a six-reel East Lynne, and Hepworth and Bentley their eight-reel David Copperfield Despite these progresss, British movie was already in problem. By 1910, Europe and Hollywood dominated the market, with domestic productions consisting merely 15 per centum of the movies shown in England. The war further hurt the industry, despite such noteworthy productions as the first Sherlock Holmes narrative, A Study In Scarlet ( 1914 ) , and the Feuillade-style consecutive Ultus # 8212 ; The Man From The Dead ( 1916 ) , both directed by George Pearson. After the war, Pearson made a star of teenage Betty Balfour, whom he introduced in the hit sentimental comedies Nothing Else Matters ( 1920 ) and Squibs ( 1921 ) ; they continued to work together in the 1920s. Hep worth, nevertheless, had his last successes with such movies as Alf s Button ( 1920 ) and Comin Thro The Rye ( 1922 ) . Michael Balcon became a manufacturer with the international hit Woman To Woman ( 1923 ) , directed by Graham Cutts and starring Hollywood s Betty Compson ; Cutts subsequently scored directing phase star Ivor Novello in Balcon s The Rat ( 1925 ) and The Triumph Of The Rat ( 1926 ) . Balcon besides launched the calling of Cutts helper, who would go one of England s greatest film makers: Alfred Hitchcock. However, merely their 3rd coaction, the Jack The Ripper thriller The Lodger ( 1926, besides with Novello ) , looked in front to the manner and dazes of Hitchcock s talking pictures. Producer/director Herbert Wilcox had hits with Nell Gwynn ( 1926 ) , starring Dorothy Gish, and Dawn ( 1928 ) with Sybil Thorndike. Yet by 1926 a mere five per centum of movies shown in England were British-made. The authorities set a quota system that forced theatres to exhibit an inc reasing sum of British movies. The jump-start afforded by this statute law, nevertheless, worked against the industry in the 1930s, when cheap and uninspired quota band aids filled British film # 8212 ; and emptied them. Hitchcock directed the first British talking picture, Blackmail ( 1929 ) , and used sound creatively ; besides impressive were his mystery Murder ( 1930 ) and his provocative black comedy Rich And Strange ( 1932 ) . Anthony Asquith, who d been co-writer and associate manager on the fashionable movie-industry comedy/drama Shooting Stars ( 1928 ) , used sound good in his first talking pictures, the romantic-triangle play A Cottage On Dartmoor ( 1930 ) and the war movie Tell England ( 1931, co-directed with Geoffrey Barkas ) . Most early sound movies, nevertheless, brought small imaginativeness to the engineering. Magyar producer/director Alexander Korda, who came to England in 1932, made several quota band aids before hiting an international hit with the munificent biopic The Private Life Of Henry VIII ( 1933 ) starring Charles Laughton. Korda produced several major movies in the 30s, including The Scarlet Pimpernel ( 1934 ) with Leslie Howard ; Sanders Of The River ( 1935 ) , directed by his brother Zolt? N ; and the H.G. Wells version Thingss To Come ( 1936 ) , directed by William Cameron Menzies. Korda besides directed Laughton in their authoritative biopic Rembrandt ( 1936 ) . Michael Balcon produced many darling movies in these old ages, including the Jessie Matthews musicals Evergreen ( 1934 ) and First A Girl ( 1935 ) with manager Victor Saville ; Robert Flaherty s authoritative documental Man Of Aran ( 1934 ) ; the Boris Karloff horror tales The Ghoul ( 1933 ) and The Man Who Changed His Mind ( 1936 ) ; and Will Hay s 1936 comedies Where There s A Will and Windbag The Sailor, both directed by William Beaudine. Balcon besides produced four of Hitchcock s authoritative undercover agent movies: The Man Who Knew Too Much ( 1934 ) , The 39 Stairss ( 1935 ) , Secret Agent ( 1936 ) , and Sabotage ( 1936 ) . Hitchcock went on to direct the thriller Young And Innocent ( 1937 ) , the superb undercover agent enigma The Lady Vanishes ( 1938 ) , and Jamaica Inn ( 1939 ) with Laughton before go forthing to work in Hollywood. The terminal of the decennary saw the release of Asquith s Shaw version Pygmalion ( 1938 ) , Zolt? n Korda s arousal escapade tale The Four Feathers ( 1939 ) , and the A.J. Cronin version The Stars Look Down ( 1939 ) , directed by Carol Reed. But the industry was fall ining under the crush of profitless quota band aids and began to cut back on production. With the start of World War II, all movie resources went to the war attempt. Michael Powell, who d made the realistic escapade tale The Edge of The World ( 1937 ) , directed the Nazi-espionage play The Spy In Black ( 1939, aka U-Boat 29 ) . Producer Alexander Korda brought in Powell on The Lion Has Wings ( 1939, co-directed with Brian Desmond Hurst and A drian Brunel ) , a morale-booster of British air power, and the authoritative phantasy The Thief Of Bagdad ( 1940, co-directed with Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan ) . With author Emeric Pressburger, Powell made the behind-enemy-lines play 49th Parallel ( 1941 ) and One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing ( 1942 ) ; together they produced, wrote, and directed a controversial narrative of a British officer s long calling, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp ( 1943 ) . David Lean went from editor to manager, sharing the helming undertakings with Noel Coward, who was besides author, manufacturer, and star of In Which We Serve ( 1942 ) , a authoritative anthem to the British naval forces. Other noteworthy wartime movies include the semi-documentary Next Of Kin ( 1942 ) , directed by Thorold Dickinson ; Balcon s production of Nazis ranger in England, Went The Day Well? ( 1942 ) , directed by Alberto Cavalcanti ; The First Of The Few ( 1942 ) , about the shaper of the Spitfire plane, and the last mov ie of actor/director Leslie Howard ; Asquith s airfield-personnel play The Way To The Stars ( 1945 ) ; and two expressions at civilian life, Millions Like Us ( 1943 ) , written and directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and The Way Ahead ( 1944 ) , directed by Carol Reed. Equally loyal in spirit was actor/director Laurence Olivier s stirring Henry V ( 1944 ) . Respite from the war came in the Shaw version Major Barbara ( 1941 ) , directed by Gabriel Pascal ; Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger s pilgrims journey play A Canterbury Tale ( 1944 ) and their romantic narrative I Know Where I m Traveling ( 1945 ) ; David Lean s movies of the Noel Coward plays This Happy Breed ( 1944 ) , Blithe Spirit ( 1945 ) , and Brief Encounter ( 1945 ) ; and Balcon s authoritative horror anthology Dead Of Night ( 1945 ) .After the war, Powell and Pressburger created three of the best loved of all British movies: the fantasy/drama A Matter Of Life And Death ( 1946, aka Stairway To Heaven ) , w ith its test held in Eden ; the fashionable convent psychodrama Black Narcissus ( 1947 ) ; and the landmark concert dance movie The Red Shoes ( 1948 ) with Moira Shearer. David Lean outdid himself with two authoritative versions of Charles Dickens , Great Expectations ( 1946 ) and Oliver Twist ( 1948 ) , both starring Alec Guinness. Carol Reed, now a producer/director, made the movies that are the footing of his repute: the authoritative narrative of a fleeting Irish Rebel, Odd Man Out ( 1947 ) with James Mason ; the Graham Greene version The Fallen Idol ( 1948 ) with Ralph Richardson ; and the black-market thriller in postwar Vienna, The Third Man ( 1949 ) , scripted by Greene and starring Orson Welles. Olivier had another hit with the Bard, starring in and directing Hamlet ( 1948 ) . Balcon s best productions included the comedy Whiskey Galore! ( 1949, aka Tight Little Island ) , directed by Alexander Mackendrick, with Scots island-dwellers scrambling to salve whisky from a sinki ng ship, and two movies directed by Robert Hamer: the escaped-convict play It Always Rains On Sunday ( 1947 ) and the black comedy Kind Hearts And Coronets ( 1949 ) , with Alec Guinness as eight household members/victims.Balcon s last major movies of the fiftiess were his comedies with Guinness. Charles Crichton directed the caper satire The Lavender Hill Mob ( 1951 ) ; Mackendrick helmed The Man In The White Suit ( 1951 ) , in which Guinness terrors industry by contriving a suit that wo nt deteriorate, and The Ladykillers ( 1955 ) , with Guinness taking a battalion of liquidators who ca nt dispose of one small old lady. Powell and Pressburger s work became more fickle but boasted such of import rubrics as The Tales Of Hoffman ( 1951 ) , a production of Offenbach s opera, and their last two coactions, the war actioners The Battle Of The River Plate ( 1956, aka Pursuit Of The Graf Spee ) and Ill Met By Moonlight ( 1957, aka Night Ambush ) . David Lean continued doing major plants: Th e Sound Barrier ( 1952, aka Interrupting The Sound Barrier ) , an history of the innovation of jet planes, written by Terence Rattigan ; the sly 1890s comedy Hobson s Choice ( 1954 ) with Charles Laughton ; Summer Madness ( 1955, aka Summertime ) , written by Lean and H.E. Bates, with Katharine Hepburn as a old maid who falls in love with a married adult male while holidaying in Venice ; and the international box-office knock The Bridge On The River Kwai ( 1957 ) , with Alec Guinness as the British POW who leads his work forces to construct a span for their hated Nipponese capturers. Other major British movies of the 50s include the terrorist thriller Seven Days To Noon ( 1950 ) and the labor-union sarcasm I m All Right, Jack ( 1959 ) with Peter Sellers, both directed by John Boulting and produced by his twin brother Ray ; The Horse s Mouth ( 1958 ) , with Guinness authoritative portraiture of the bizarre creative person ; Olivier s movie of Shakespeare s Richard III ( 1955 ) and h is comedy with Marilyn Monroe, The Prince And The Showgirl ( 1957 ) , written by Terence Rattigan ; Carol Reed s Joseph Conrad version, Outcast Of The Islands ( 1951 ) , and The Man Between ( 1953 ) , set in postwar Berlin ; Asquith s versions of the Rattigan plays The Winslow Boy ( 1950 ) and The Browning Version ( 1951 ) , and his movie of Oscar Wilde s The Importance Of Being Earnest ( 1952 ) ; manager Peter Brook s first movie, The Beggar s Opera ( 1953 ) , a production of the John Gay opera ; A Night To Remember ( 1958 ) , a powerful history of the sinking of the Titanic, directed by Roy Ward Baker ; and manager Jack Clayton s first movie, Room At The Top ( 1958 ) , a expression at the corporate outlook in England. Several long-running comedy series besides started in the fiftiess. Frank Launder wrote, produced, and directed the school comedy The Happiest Days Of Your Life ( 1950 ) , originating his natural state St. Trinian s series, with Alastair Sim as the headmistress of a school filled with diabolic misss # 8212 ; most notably The Belles Of St. Trinian s ( 1954 ) . The medical-school comedy Doctor In The House ( 1954 ) , directed by Ralph Thomas, put six more physicians into pattern over the following 10 old ages, played largely by Dirk Bogarde. Thomas brother Gerald directed the low-budget and philistine Carry On Sergeant ( 1958 ) and launched a series of wide Carry On comedies for the following 20 old ages. Turning to a different genre, Hammer Films became the most successful movie studio in British history with cheap but slick horror movies, get downing with The Curse Of Frankenstein ( 1957 ) and The Horror Of Dracula ( 1958 ) , directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Michael Powell turned to horror in 1960 with the serial-killer shocker Peeping Tom. Today considered a authoritative, the movie was a fiscal and critical floating-point operation. Powell worked merely periodically thenceforth, and although Pre ssburger scripted his They re A Eldritch Mob ( 1966 ) and The Boy Who Turned Yellow ( 1972 ) , the old thaumaturgy did nt re-ignite. Carol Reed, working progressively in the United States, besides failed to recapture his earlier success, despite the acclamation given his movie of the musical Oliver! ( 1968 ) . Antony Asquith, again with Rattigan, had his last hurrah with the multi-episode drama The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964). David Lean, now working with writer Robert Bolt, stuck to exotic epics. He completed only two films in the 60s, but they were huge financial successes as well as two of Leans best: Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), a biopic of T.E. Lawrence, which made a star of Peter OToole, and Doctor Zhivago (1965), a romantic adaptation of Boris Pasternaks novel of the Russian revolution. Both Peter Brook and Jack Clayton did some of their finest work in the 60s. Brook made his best-known films: Lord Of The Flies (1963), an adaptation of William Goldings allegory in which a group of boys on a desert island revert to savagery, and Marat/Sade (1967), from the play by Peter Weiss, with the Marquis de Sade critiquing post-Revolutionary France (and contemporary Europe) by staging a play in the insane asylum thats also his prison. Claytons The Innocents (1961) was a chilling adaptation of Henry Jame s The Turn Of The Screw, and his Our Mothers House (1967) with Dirk Bogarde was a touching and disturbing tale of children living on their own after the death of their parents. American-born director Joseph Losey, blacklisted during the McCarthy era, settled in England in the mid 1950s; with writer Harold Pinter, he made the films for which he is best known: The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1971), all chilling assaults on the upper class. American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick settled in England in 1961 and made three of his best films: the Nabokov adaptation Lolita (1962) with James Mason and Peter Sellers; the doomsday satire Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964), also with Sellers; and the science-fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The British theaters realism and social commentary in the late 50s emerged in cinema with director Tony Richardsons first features, Look Back In Anger (1959) with Richard Burton and Th e Entertainer (1960) with Laurence Olivier, both from plays by John Osborne. Richardson also made two strong looks at lower-class British life, A Taste Of Honey (1961) from the Shelagh Delaney play, and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962), a reform-school drama by writer Alan Sillitoe. His first international hit was the landmark bawdy comedy Tom Jones (1963), from Henry Fieldings novel, which made a star of Albert Finney. Richardsons other 60s films include the striking psychodrama Mademoiselle (1966) with Jeanne Moreau, written by Jean Genet, and a blistering look at military incompetence, The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1968). Other directors worked in the same Angry Young Man vein and went on to other types of stories. Karl Reisz made the working-class drama Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1960) as well as the hip black comedy Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966) and the Isadora Duncan biopic Isadora (1968, aka The Loves Of Isadora). John Schlesinger de buted with A Kind Of Loving (1962), an unexpected-pregnancy drama, and Billy Liar (1963), a comic look at a young man who lives in a fantasy world; he followed with an acclaimed look at upper-class emptiness, Darling (1965), and an adaptation of Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd (1967), both with Julie Christie, before his international hit with the American-made drama of street hustlers, Midnight Cowboy (1969). Lindsay Andersons first feature was This Sporting Life (1963), a brutal look at a rugby player, written by David Storey; he later scored with If †¦ (1968) a black comedy of a boys-school uprising. Ken Loach kept the faith and starting with Poor Cow (1967) has made realistic films of the disenfranchised, often with non-professional actors: Kes (1969), Looks And Smiles, 1982). Writer/director Mike Leigh also shares this sensibility, with such striking working-class dramas as High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993), and Secrets And Lies (1996). In 1960 , actor-turned-writer Bryan Forbes scripted the caper film The League Of Gentlemen, directed by Basil Dearden, and the labor drama The Angry Silence, directed by Guy Green and starring Richard Attenborough. With Attenborough producing, Forbes debuted as a director with Whistle Down The Wind (1961), in which three school children shelter a criminal whom they think is Jesus Christ. Forbes followed by writing and directing the boarding-house drama The L-Shaped Room (1962); the kidnaping thriller Seance On A Wet Afternoon (1964), starring Attenborough and Kim Stanley; the Japanese POW drama King Rat (1965); and an offbeat drama of old age, The Whisperers (1967) with Edith Evans. American-born Richard Lester began directing films in England with the zany short The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film (1960), starring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan from televisions The Goon Show. Lester followed with three funny and fast-paced rock musicals which defined swinging London of the 60s: Its Trad, Dad! (1962, aka Ring-A-Ding Rhythm), his first feature, and two landmark films with the Beatles, A Hard Days Night (1964) and Help! (1965). Lesters other important 60s work includes the farce The Knack †¦ And How To Get It (1965), the Stephen Sondheim musical A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1966), the antiwar satire How I Won The War (1967) with John Lennon, the comedy/drama Petulia (1968), and the post-World War III comedy The Bed Sitting Room (1969). The most original and controversial of the 1960s filmmakers was Ken Russell. His first two features, the modest farce French Dressing (1963) and the spy thriller Billion Dollar Brain (1967), hinted at what was to come, but his television biopics of Isadora Duncan (Isadora: The Biggest Dancer In The World, 1966), Dante Rossetti (Dantes Inferno, 1967), and Frederick Delius (Song Of Summer, 1968) were pure Russell: provocative blends of nature painting, hallucinatory fantasy, and black comedy. His breakthro ugh feature, the erotic D.H. Lawrence adaptation Women In Love (1969), made stars of both Russell and actress Glenda Jackson, and he began making his most extreme and memorable films: The Music Lovers (1970), a Tchaikovsky biopic he called the story of a homosexual who marries a nymphomaniac, with Jackson and Richard Chamberlain; the phantasmagoric look at possession and religious madness in 17th-century France, The Devils (1971); the charming Busby Berkeley-style musical The Boy Friend (1971); biopics of the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Savage Messiah, 1972) and the great post-romantic composer Gustav Mahler (Mahler, 1974); a dazzling rock opera of The Whos Tommy (1975), starring Roger Daltrey and Ann-Margret; the anti-Wagner diatribe Lisztomania (1975) with Daltrey as Franz Liszt; and Valentino (1977), a biopic of the silent-screen legend, starring Rudolf Nureyev. Derek Jarman, whod designed the bizarre sets for The Devils, began making his own features in the 70s: a homoerotic drama of St. Sebastian, Sebastiane (1976), with the dialogue in subtitled Latin; the classic vision of punk England, Jubilee (1978); and a stylish Shakespeare adaptation, The Tempest (1979). Actor Richard Attenborough began directing with the surreal antiwar musical Oh! What A Lovely War (1969), and had box-office hits with his war epics Young Winston (1972) and A Bridge Too Far (1977). Cinematographer Nicolas Roeg became a director by sharing the helming of Performance (1970) with its writer, Donald Cammell; this psychodrama of rockers and gangsters, starring Mick Jagger and James Fox, made Roegs career, and he had critical hits with his ensuing films: the Australian outback drama Walkabout (1971), the scary and erotic Dont Look Now (1973), and the unusual science-fictioner The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), written by Paul Mayersburg and starring David Bowie. The writers and stars of the television comedy series Monty Pythons Flying Circus — Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Ter ry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin — began making films with And Now For Something Completely Different (1972), which re-created their best TV routines. Their original follow-ups are some of the funniest films ever made: the Arthurian send-up Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1974); a satire set in the time of Christ, The Life Of Brian (1979); and a potpourri of comic mayhem, Monty Pythons The Meaning Of Life (1983). Independent filmmaker Terence Davies made the powerful, semi-autobiographical short Children in 1976; he followed with Madonna And Child (1980) and Death And Transfiguration (1983), two more accounts of his protagonists struggle with homosexuality, and all three are now shown collectively as The Terence Davies Trilogy. An elliptical storyteller and a poet of nostalgia and loss, Davies made the features Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1993), two further journeys into autobiography, and The Neon Bible (1996) with Gena R owlands, an adaptation of the John Kennedy Toole novel. Scotlands Bill Forsyth wrote and directed That Sinking Feeling (1979), a clever caper satire in which kids steal sinks from a warehouse. Gregorys Girl (1981), his comedy of teen love, was a hit in the States and led to Local Hero (1983), a classic satire of Americans hunting for oil in Scotland. After Comfort And Joy (1984), his comedy of warring ice-cream makers, Forsyth made American films — Housekeeping (1987) with Christine Lahti, Breaking In (1989), written by John Sayles, and Being Human (1994) with Robin Williams — but they all lacked the unique quality of his earlier work. David Lean may have flopped with his overblown romantic drama Ryans Daughter (1970), but his last film, the E.M. Forester adaptation A Passage To India (1984), lived up to his reputation. Peter Brook made the accomplished King Lear (1971) with Paul Scofield; a Gurdjieff biopic, Meetings With Remarkable Men (1979); and an epic rendition o f Hindu cosmology, The Mahabharata (1990). Stanley Kubrick also kept making major films: his version of Anthony Burgess dystopia, A Clockwork Orange (1971); a lavish Thackeray adaptation, Barry Lyndon (1975); the Stephen King horror tale The Shining (1980); and a brutal look at the Vietnam War, Full Metal Jacket (1987). Other filmmakers, however, went into decline during these years. Tony Richardsons best work was behind him, despite such films as the Edward Albee adaptation A Delicate Balance (1973) and a second Fielding comedy, Joseph Andrews (1977) with Ann-Margret and Peter Firth. Jack Clayton made the American flops The Great Gatsby (1974) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). Bryan Forbes stalled with The Raging Moon (1971) and didnt reassert himself with The Stepford Wives (1975) or International Velvet (1978). Lester had hits with The Three Musketeers (1974) and The Four Musketeers (1975), and made the beloved tale of Robin Hoods last days, Robin And Marian (1976) with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn; his later work has been mostly unimportant American films such as Superman II (1980). Since his landmark bisexual drama Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), written by Penelope Gilliat, John Schlesinger has disappeared into such American genre films as The Believers (1987) and Pacific Heights (1990). Attenborough had an international smash with his epic biopic Gandhi (1982), but A Chorus Line (1985) and Chaplin (1992) were less impressive. Nicolas Roegs recent films have also been erratic, but his look at American fame, Insignificance (1985), the surreal Track 29 (1988), written by Dennis Potter, and his Roald Dahl adaptation The Witches (1990) offer some of his best work. Potter, a celebrated television writer, also scripted the unsettling Brimstone And Treacle (1982); Dreamchild (1985), a look at Lewis Carrolls Alice; and Blackeyes (1990), which he also directed. Derek Jarman continued to do outstanding and original work: his non-narrative features The An gelic Conversation (1985), The Last of England (1987), and The Garden (1990); the stylish biopics Caravaggio (1986) and Wittgenstein (1993); a powerful adaptation of Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (1991); and the minimalist Blue (1993), finished a few months before his death from AIDS. Russells notable latter-day work includes the American films Altered States (1980) and Crimes Of Passion (1984); his reinvention of Oscar Wilde, Salomes Last Dance (1988); the horror tale The Lair Of The White Worm (1988); another Lawrence adaptation, The Rainbow (1989); and unique television films on composers Ralph Vaughn Williams, Anton Bruckner, and Sir Arnold Bax. Director Stephen Frears established himself with a touching look at race relations and gay love, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), and a biopic of playwright Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears (1987). Mike Figgis showed promise writing and directing the moody dramas Stormy Monday (1988) and Liebestraum (1991). Peter Greenaway is admired for hi s stylish and sexy art films The Draughtsmans Contract (1983), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1989), and Prosperos Books (1991). Irish-born director Neil Jordan has won acclaim for his dramas mixing romance and violence: the crime film Mona Lisa (1986), the terrorism tale The Crying Game (1992), and a biopic of the Irish politician Michael Collins (1996). Englands film industry has survived crisis after crisis thanks to this continuous, seemingly inexhaustible pool of filmmaking talent, generation after generation — the sun will never set on the British cinema.