John Boorman (b.1933) started out as a documentarian and among a group of television-trained directors who matriculated to the cinema in the Sixties. Since then, in the vain of Schlesinger, Boorman has divided his career between Britain (and later Ireland) and the United States. His first feature, 1965's Catch Us If You Can, starring the Dave Clark Five, was one of several films that exploited the international success of British pop music. Infinitely less frenetic than Richard Lester's Beatles romps. It is a soft satire on advertising. It's disdain for modern urban living and affectionate exploration of the British landscape harked affinities with Ealing comedy.
By contrast, Point Blank (1967) featuring Lee Marvin, was a thoroughly American gangster film with a potent narrative drive and forceful presentation of violence;as in the systematic wrecking of a car by its driver. Its elliptical presentation of the story and its visual experiments suggested nouvelle vague influences, chiefly that of Alain Resnais. Hell in the Pacific (1968) was an unconventional war movie with only two characters, an American soldier (Marvin) and a Japanese (Toshiro Mifune) on an island. Leo the Last (1970) would represent a return to Britain in its depiction of racially mixed inner London as seen through the eyes of an European aristocrat (Marcello Mastroianni) who owns a mansion set in a slum, However the film had a decided Fellini feel rather than being a social-problem picture. Boorman's most successful film, Deliverance was set in the Appalachian mountains but otherwise recalled the vigorous narrative and stark tone of Point Blank in its portrayal of four city-dwellers in grotesquely violent conflict with the primitive locals.
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| Shoulda went on a surfin' safari instead, dammit. |
After this, Boorman setting in Ireland and turned to fantasy with 1974's Zardoz, a science fiction film and Exorcist II, The Heretic (1977), a horror film. Both are uneven in quality, technically ambitious and hazy in ideas. In the Eighties. Boorman made Excalibur (1981) a visually arresting adventure story based on the King Arthur legends; he also acted as executive producer for Neil Jordan's fine feature debut Angel (1983).
In loving memory of Burt Reynolds (1936-2018)