The Kenneth Branagh Season at the National Film Theatre

Official Press Release

FROM SHAKESPEARE TO HOLLYWOOD: KENNETH BRANAGH AT THE NFT
**thanks to Eliza McCann

In May 1999 the National Film Theatre will stage a major retrospective of the films and television work of celebrated actor/director Kenneth Branagh (2-31 May). On 23 May Kenneth Branagh will take part in The Guardian Interview at the NFT, following a special preview of his latest film, Woody Allen's Celebrity.

Kenneth Branagh is one of Britain's most prolific and exciting talents. He has proven himself at ease with popular drama and single-handedly re-invigorated Shakespeare for a modern audience, making possible such hits as Shakespeare in Love.

Born in Belfast in 1960, he found early success on the London stage in Julian Mitchell's award-winning play Another Country. He received great acclaim for his Ulster-set BBC Play for Today trilogy about the Troubles that began with Too Late to Talk to Billy in 1982.

Fortunes of War (1987), the BBC's epic seven-part adaptation of Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant trilogies, saw a consummate portrayal of Guy Pringle by Branagh in a lavish production that also starred Emma Thompson as Harriet Pringle.

In 1989 he came to international prominence with his stunning version of Henry V, a darker, more visceral and brutal take on Shakespeare than Laurence Olivier's 1944 adaptation.

Branagh's successful collaboration with the Bard has been repeated several times, in a lusty romp through Much Ado About Nothing (1993), his excellent performance as Iago in Othello (1995), In the Bleak Midwinter's (1995) hilarious look at the drama of doing Shakespeare and his triumphant full-length Hamlet (1997).

Kenneth Branagh has also made his name in Hollywood, directing and starring in the intricate neo-Noir Dead Again (1991) and a fiercely imaginative version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), and delivering a complex performance in the Robert Altman-John Grisham thriller The Gingerbread Man (1997).

Booking information: NFT Box Office open daily 11.30 am - 8.30pm tel: 0171 928 3232

Press Contact: NFT Press Office, Brian Robinson or Eliza McCann tel: 0171 815 1327 or 1330

Introduction in May programme
**thanks to Catherine K

KENNETH BRANAGH

A hugely experienced classicist with a populist bent, Kenneth Branagh has been applauded and reviled by the media in roughly equal measure. In 1989 he was awarded the New York Film Critics' Circle Best First Time Director for Henry V and in 1993 BAFTA bestowed the Michael Balcon Award for Outsatnding British Contribution to Cinema. By the time he had reached the age of 36 Branagh's films had made over £250m at the box office. Ironically, concurrent with these plaudits, he continued to endure in Britain the most vicious and incisive attacks from those who would prefer to dismiss his achievements as the enviable luck of an amateur.

But Branagh, like the criticism, endures. His ability to gather, nurture and inspire loyalty in a group of highly talented actors shows evidence of the profession's faith in his administrative and cultural integrity. He has a way of unavoidably translating his vast enthusiasm for acting into something approaching bravura. Moving confidently from stage to screen, from actor to director, his love of language and theatricality, combined with a fresh, intelligent approach to film-making, has brought Shakespeare to new, young and appreciative audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Latterly working on low-budget British comedies and big-budget Hollywood genre pictures, he has associated with the best - Woody Allen, Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola. His restless creative energy has led him to experiment with challenging and divergent roles, refusing, in his own words, 'to shrivel my soul' by playing safe.

This retrospective season gives audiences the opportunity to enjoy the full range of Branagh's work as actor, director, actor-director, producer and script-adaptor over ten years. It ranges from his portrayal on television of Guy Pringle, the charming but indiscriminate idealist in Olivia Manning's Levant and Balkan trilogies to the neurotic screenwriter in Woody Allen's Celebrity. Perhaps the secret of Branagh's continued success is his unchallenged commitment to the art and craft of filmmaking and acting. If he pays light heed to the critics who remain sceptical of his will to attempt so much, his attentiveness to a public with an appetite for good cinema ensures that a Branagh film is never less than satisfying and frequently richly rewarding. --Olwen Terris

Schedule
**thanks to Toni Slaven

Film and TV summaries
**thanks to Catherine K

High Season: Branagh made his feature film debut as a bumbling MI6 operative in this busy comedy set on the Greek island of Lindos. Mainly concerned with the 'colonising' effects of tourism on the island, the film features a multitudes of characters and comic sub-plots, all ably orchsetrated by Clare Peploe, making her feature film debut. The beautiful cinematography is the work of Chris Menges.

A Month in the Country: Set in Yorkshire in 1920, this adaptation by Simon Gray of the novel by J.L. Carr centres on two ex-servicemen who are set to work restoring a medieval church. Branagh brings considerable charm and warmth to his portrayal of the gay Charles Moon, and it is his relationship with the hetersexual Tom Birkin (Colin Firth) that gives the film its emotional anchor.

Henry V: Branagh's feature film debut as a director is a fearless and lucid interpretation of Shakespeare's play to which a starry cast brings a fine sense of ensemble playing. The battle scenes are squalid, while Branagh's delivery of the 'St Crispin's Day' speech and his carrying of the murdered boy across the carnage of Agincourt to the hymn 'Non Nobis' are reasons enough to see the film.

Dead Again: A homage by Branagh to the cycle of Freudian film noirs and melodramas produced by Hollywood in the '40s and '50s. Its clever script uses reincarnation as a way of redefining and updating the genres to the 1990s, and provides Branagh and Emma Thompson with dual roles. There is an excellent supporting cast, and a lush score by Patrick Doyle.

Peter's Friends: Six members of a university cabaret troupe gather for a New Year reunion party at a country house. With a firm nod to The Big Chill, disillusionment, recriminations, boredom and self-obsession rise to the surface. There are good one-liners and intelligent performances, especially from Hugh Laurie and Imedla Staunton. Branagh's third film as actor-director is a bitter-sweet comedy of failure.

Much Ado About Nothing: Beuatifully photographed in the seductive Tuscan landscape, Emma Thompson and Branagh as Beatrice and Benedick bring sensuality, wit and intelligence to Shakespeare's comedy. It is left to Richard Briers' arresting Leonato, moving from breezy cheerfulness to speechless rage, to bring the darker undertones to the surface.

Swing Kids: Branagh, in an uncredited role, gives a subtly shaded performance as a seemingly sympathetic Gestapo officer in this true story of a group of young men in '30s Germany who fell under the spell of Amercian jazz. The film charts the changes wrought on three friends whose love of the music by black and Jewish composers and performers inevitably fell foul of the Nazi regime.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Designed as a successor to the box-office hit Bram Stoker's Dracula, Branagh's big budget film eschews the former film's flamboyant approach, and is closer in spirit to Terence Fisher's cycle of Frankenstein films made for Hammer. Helena Bonham Carter stands out in an excellent performance as the ultimately tragic Elizabeth.

In The Bleak Midwinter: Waspish wit, vaudeville slapstick and a sentimental celebration of the theatrical tradition prevail in Branagh's film about a struggling actor and a troupe of eccentric thesps who stage a production of Hamlet in a village church over Christmas. The black and white photography is well suited to the brittle edge of the humour in this endearing working of the 'let's put on a show' theme.

Swan Song: A colloquial adaptation of a one-act play by Anton Chekhov, Branagh delicately handles this story of Svelovidov, an 88-year-old actor who finds a sympathetic ear and collaborator in Nikita, the prompter.

Hamlet: An epic adaptation of Shakespeare's play. It's long (textual fidelity at four hours) and wide (70mm), but Branagh delivers a performance both passionate and restrained. Served by an international starry cast (Ken Dodd as Yorick, Charlton Heston as the Player King and a superb Polonius from Richard Briers), this lavishly designed film lends a vigorous, fresh intelligence to the art of bringing the Bard to the screen.

Celebrity: An intoxicating comedy about the delicate matters of love and fame, Celebrity features Branagh slipping quite consciously into the schtick figure of Woody Allen as a divorced writer with sexual angst. It's a trademark persona, yet he inabits it to effect, while Judy Davis as the traumatised ex-wife hits new peaks in a brilliant career. A film of fluent discontinuities briskly shot in exhilarating monochrome.

Othello: Oliver Parker's debut feature makes full use of exotice Venetian locations and sumptuous lighting to bring the melodrama of Shakespeare's play of betrayal and jealousy to the screen. Laurence Fishburne as Othello is brooding and violent while Branagh as the embittered, enigmatic Iago addresses the camera directly in an intelligent performance of one of Shakespeare's most complex roles.

The Gingerbread Man: Set largely during a hurricane, Robert Altman's rewrite (as Al Hayes) of an original screenplay by John Girsham ensures that Branagh's lawyer is a much more believable and compromised figure than is usually found in the writer's work. Embeth Davidtz makes a strong impression as the femme fatale, while the Southern locale is brilliantly evoked by Chinese cinematographer Changwei Gu (making his debut in the West).

The Billy Trilogy: Set in Unionist Belfast, Graham Reid's trilogy of plays show a family pulled apart not by sectarian differences but by emotions they find it impossible to articulate. The betrayed husband (James Ellis), only able to express his tortured feelings through violence, clashes repeatedly with his fiery son, Billy (Branagh), while Brid Brennan, as the eldest daughter, endeavours to keep the family united. Although all three plays are concerned with the same group of characters, each develops individual themes and explores new aspects of their lives. Reid's ear for dialogue (helped by using Ulster actors), together with the strength of the acting and direction, adds up to a triumphant, if harrowing, achievement.

The Shadow of A Gunman: Branagh had long fancied doing Sean O'Casey's play, which is set in May 1920, with Ireland in the throes of Republicanism and Black and Tans roaming the Dublin streets, spreading terror. Unwittingly drawn into this political minefield are room-mates Donal Davoren (Branagh), a pretentious poet, and Seumus Shields (Stephen Rea), a pedlar. With telling performances from Bronagh Gallagher, James Ellis and John Kavanagh, the Shadow of A Gunman and its flawed heroes move from high farce to tragedy.

Fortunes of War: Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant trilogies explore the fate of individuals and personal relationships while the destinies of nations are in the balance. Alan Plater's script faithfully captures the books' liberal humanity and comic wit while James Cellan Jones' sure direction retains their literary quality. Kenneth Branagh perfectly captures Guy Pringle's complex nature - naive, generous, selfish, and intellectual - and is beautifully matched by Emma Thompson's long-suffering Harriet. But Ronald Pickup's infuriating yet charming incarnation of the crumpled aristocrat, Prince Yakimov, almost carries off the honours. Set at the outset of the Second World War in Romania, Greece, Yugoslavia and Egypt, this was the most expensive drama made by the BBC.

Ghosts: 'Ghosts is very modern, the precursor of a stream of plays delving into the pysche. It can seem Victorian and soft, though. Branagh's intensity helped me keep it unsentimental', said director Elijah Moshinsky. This production of Ibsen's play boasts a dazzling cast. In addition to Branagh there is Judi Dench as his mother, Mrs Alving, Michael Gambon (Pastor Mandos), Freddie Jones (Engstrand) and Natasha Richardson (Regina). Its continued relevance is underlined by the parallels between the fate of syphilis sufferes then and AIDS sufferers today.

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