Norman Spencer, the British producer, production manager and screenwriter who worked alongside famed director David Lean on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, has died. He was 110.
Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.
Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.
Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).
He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...
Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.
Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.
Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).
He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...
- 9/5/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Explore where to stream the best films of 2023.
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...
- 11/3/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
"You lie all the time to everyone. You scare me." Greenwich Entertainment has revealed a new official US trailer for a French thriller titled Madeleine Collins, starring the wonderfully talented actress Virginie Efira. This one originally premiered at film festivals back in 2021, opening in France later in 2021, though it has taken two more years to finally show up in the US for a proper release. Judith leads a double life: two lovers, two sons in France and one daughter in Switzerland. Entangled in secrets and lies, her lives begin to shatter. Reviews say the film features the "elegance and suspense of Hitchcock." Starring Virginie Efira as the woman with many lives, Jacqueline Bisset, Nadav Lapid, Nathalie Boutefeu, Quim Gutiérrez, and Bruno Salomone. Reviews also say this is a "stunning portrait of a monster," that is "not a mystery but a character study as a mystery." This one looks like it gets intense!
- 6/23/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
It’s over six years since the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that ruptured the country’s national consciousness and political agenda, but the events are only gaining currency for European filmmakers. This year’s Berlin festival brought us Isaki Lacesta’s “One Year, One Night,” an impressionistic reflection on survivor’s guilt in the long-term wake of the Bataclan nightclub massacre; at Cannes this year, Cedric Jimenez’s thriller “November” takes a more procedural approach to the aftermath. Another Cannes selection, Alice Winocour’s fictionalized but plainly Bataclan-inspired “Paris Memories,” effectively splits the difference, delving into a survivor’s damaged psyche following a mass restaurant shooting in Paris, but giving her a linear, investigative course of healing, as she tracks down sympathetic strangers to help disentangle her memories of that night.
It’s a modest film with a heart very much on its torn sleeve, given force and ballast...
It’s a modest film with a heart very much on its torn sleeve, given force and ballast...
- 5/22/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
“Madeleine Collins,” a psychological thriller headlined by “Benedetta” star and Venice jury member Virginie Efira, has been sold by Charades to a raft of buyers. The movie had world premiere in the Venice Days section on Saturday and was warmly received by critics across the board.
Helmed by Antoine Barraud, “Madeleine Collins” stars Efira as Judith, a successful translator who leads a double life between Switzerland and France with two different men with whom she has children. As her balancing act starts to collapse, Judith decides to run away from it all, leading her situation to spiral out of control. Quim Gutiérrez, Bruno Salomone and Nadav Lapid, the Israeli helmer of Cannes-prize winner “Ahed’s Knee,” star opposite Efira.
Charades has sold the movie to Spain (Alfa Pictures), former Yugoslavia (Megacom), South Korea (Moby Dick), Portugal (Lusomundo), Indonesia (Falcon), Taiwan (Benchmark) and Cis (Exponenta). The movie has distribution in place for France,...
Helmed by Antoine Barraud, “Madeleine Collins” stars Efira as Judith, a successful translator who leads a double life between Switzerland and France with two different men with whom she has children. As her balancing act starts to collapse, Judith decides to run away from it all, leading her situation to spiral out of control. Quim Gutiérrez, Bruno Salomone and Nadav Lapid, the Israeli helmer of Cannes-prize winner “Ahed’s Knee,” star opposite Efira.
Charades has sold the movie to Spain (Alfa Pictures), former Yugoslavia (Megacom), South Korea (Moby Dick), Portugal (Lusomundo), Indonesia (Falcon), Taiwan (Benchmark) and Cis (Exponenta). The movie has distribution in place for France,...
- 9/6/2021
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Beginning with a dizzying one-shot that follows Judith – or is it Margot? – around a high-end clothing store before a fainting spell upends her shopping trip, Antoine Barraud’s “Madeleine Collins” is a laser-focused character study that literalizes a double-life, following Judith (a calculated Virginie Efira) as she attempts to balance seemingly having two husbands, two sets of children, two complete lives. Wisely withholding key information about how Judith came into this situation until the very end, Barraud’s film effectively grafts the tropes of Hitchcockian thriller onto a domestic portrait of a woman’s life spiraling out of control.
Continue reading ‘Madeleine Collins’ Starring Virginie Efira Is A Knotty Exploration of A Dual Life [Venice Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Madeleine Collins’ Starring Virginie Efira Is A Knotty Exploration of A Dual Life [Venice Review] at The Playlist.
- 9/4/2021
- by Christian Gallichio
- The Playlist
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“A British Right Stuff”
By Raymond Benson
There exists a period in the career of the great David Lean in which several of his pictures are today more or less forgotten, especially in the U.S. After the one-two double punch of Brief Encounter and Great Expectations in the mid-40s, Lean directed several pictures that were less than stellar in terms of popularity and critical acclaim before he hit a spectacular stride with Hobson’s Choice, Summertime, and The Bridge on the River Kwai in the mid-50s.
Nestled neatly in this middle period is The Sound Barrier (titled Breaking the Sound Barrier in the U.S.), released in 1952. Despite doing very decent box office on both sides of the Atlantic, the film isn’t one that comes to mind when considering Lean’s genius.
It's the story of how the sound barrier...
“A British Right Stuff”
By Raymond Benson
There exists a period in the career of the great David Lean in which several of his pictures are today more or less forgotten, especially in the U.S. After the one-two double punch of Brief Encounter and Great Expectations in the mid-40s, Lean directed several pictures that were less than stellar in terms of popularity and critical acclaim before he hit a spectacular stride with Hobson’s Choice, Summertime, and The Bridge on the River Kwai in the mid-50s.
Nestled neatly in this middle period is The Sound Barrier (titled Breaking the Sound Barrier in the U.S.), released in 1952. Despite doing very decent box office on both sides of the Atlantic, the film isn’t one that comes to mind when considering Lean’s genius.
It's the story of how the sound barrier...
- 5/12/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Régis Roinsard’s film stars Virginie Efira, Romain Duris, Grégory Gadebois and Solan Machado-Graner; it is being produced by Curiosa and Jpg, and will be sold by StudioCanal. After having kicked off on 14 January, the shoot for En attendant Bojangles (lit. “Waiting for Bojangles”) by Régis Roinsard will wrap on 13 March. The third feature by the filmmaker, following Populaire and The Translators (which came out in France on 29 January), stars Belgium’s Virginie Efira, Romain Duris (nominated for the César Award for Best Actor in 2019 for...
Charades, the sales company behind the Oscar-nominated animated film “I Lost My Body,” has boarded three new French films, “Madeleine Collins” with Virginie Efira, as well as the comedies “Felicita” and “The Speech.”
Charades will be introducing the three titles at the UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, an industry showcase of local movies kicking off on Jan. 16.
“Madeleine Collins” is a psychological drama directed by Antoine Barraud and headlined by Efira, the popular Belgian actress of Justine Triet’s “Victoria” and “Sibyl,” as well as Paul Verhoeven’s anticipated “Benedetta.”
Efira (pictured) stars in “Madeleine Collins” as Judith who leads a double life between Switzerland and France. In one country, she lives with Abdel with whom she raises a little girl, and in another country she lives with Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Judith gets slowly embroiled in a web of lies and secrets, leading her balancing act to explode dangerously.
Charades will be introducing the three titles at the UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, an industry showcase of local movies kicking off on Jan. 16.
“Madeleine Collins” is a psychological drama directed by Antoine Barraud and headlined by Efira, the popular Belgian actress of Justine Triet’s “Victoria” and “Sibyl,” as well as Paul Verhoeven’s anticipated “Benedetta.”
Efira (pictured) stars in “Madeleine Collins” as Judith who leads a double life between Switzerland and France. In one country, she lives with Abdel with whom she raises a little girl, and in another country she lives with Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Judith gets slowly embroiled in a web of lies and secrets, leading her balancing act to explode dangerously.
- 1/15/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...
- 2/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Alec Guinness movies: Pre-’Star Wars’ Guinness runs the gamut from Dickens’ Fagin to Japanese businessman romancing Rosalind Russell Alec Guinness is Turner Classic Movies’ “Summer Under the Stars” star on Saturday, August 3, 2013. The bad news: No Alec Guinness TCM premieres or lesser-known Guinness movies, e.g., A Run for Your Money, Last Holiday, Malta Story, The Prisoner, Star Wars (kidding). The good news: Alec Guinness movies are always welcome, even when the movies themselves are unworthy of his talents — and there were quite a few of those — or when Guinness forces his characters to fit his persona (instead of the other way around), so that we’re watching Alec Guinness play Alec Guinness playing some role or other, instead of, for instance, a Japanese businessman who happens to be both Star Trek‘s George Takei’s father and Rosalind Russell’s platonic paramour. (TCM schedule: Alec Guiness movies.) (Photo: Alec Guinness ca.
- 8/3/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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Bronson Bronson made my Top 25 of 2009 coming in at #7 and it's a film I find immensely watchable and rewatchable. While a few people disagreed with my "A" review, they all loved Tom Hardy in the lead role. Be sure to check this one out. A Serious Man The Coen brothers' latest film also made my Top 25 of 2009 coming in at #25 and I also just recently reviewed the Blu-ray edition. My opinion says buy it, but you may want to give my review a read if you are on the fence. The Time Traveler's Wife I actually don't mind this movie all that much. When it comes to schmaltzy melodramas some can be overbearing and some can actually work... for the most part this one falls into the latter category. This one drew some negativity for the rather creepy idea...
Bronson Bronson made my Top 25 of 2009 coming in at #7 and it's a film I find immensely watchable and rewatchable. While a few people disagreed with my "A" review, they all loved Tom Hardy in the lead role. Be sure to check this one out. A Serious Man The Coen brothers' latest film also made my Top 25 of 2009 coming in at #25 and I also just recently reviewed the Blu-ray edition. My opinion says buy it, but you may want to give my review a read if you are on the fence. The Time Traveler's Wife I actually don't mind this movie all that much. When it comes to schmaltzy melodramas some can be overbearing and some can actually work... for the most part this one falls into the latter category. This one drew some negativity for the rather creepy idea...
- 2/9/2010
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
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