Word: directorate
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like an inverted pyramid, all pacifist literature rests upon a single point: as W. H. Auden put it, "We must love one another or die." In How I Won the War, Director Richard Lestersharpens the point pictorially but blunts it philosophically by focusing on a platoon of World War II tommies hellbent on a suicide mission-building an officers' cricket field behind enemy lines in North Africa...
Shortly before How I Won the War opened in Germany, Director Richard Lester attended preview screenings before student audiences in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. Afterward, he debated the film on the stage with politicians and writers. The results, he remembers, were sometimes quite startling. "One politician began shouting that 'the film is an insult to my English comrades in arms who fought bravely against us, at which point the students in the audience began chanting 'Sieg Heil!' in unison." Such outbursts were the sweet sounds of success for Lester. "Getting these points of view...
Although he now lives in a London suburb, Lester was born in Philadelphia, where he entered first grade at the age of three ("I was bright then, and it's been downhill since"). By 22, he had left a director's job at a local television station to tour Europe and Africa on $2 a day, coming to rest later at the BBC. There he was assigned to Peter Sellers' memorable madcap comedy series, The Goon Show, which in spirit at least resembled Lester's later movies. "We did sketches that had no beginnings...
...into daylight with the two Beatles' extravaganzas, which gave the impression of being acted on flying trapezes and established Lester's image as the blithe spirit of the surreal. They also made his fame. "When I lie dying," he says, "the Evening Standard will headline BEATLES' DIRECTOR IN DEATH DRAMA, but I don't mind...
Aided by the fluent camerawork of Robert Frank and Etienne Becker, Rooks served as his own writer, director and star, turning himself inside out on the screen. He traces his course from mixed-up rich man's son along a dizzying downward spiral, through some hard-edged therapy at a Paris sanatorium, and toward the bright end of self-realization. Rooks sees most of his life from a hospital bed in a series of intricate overlapping flashbacks that add up to a collage of visions, ranging from drug-inspired distortion to moments of near lucidity. A razor-sharp editing...