Bartleby | |
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Directed by | Anthony Friedman |
Screenplay by | Rodney Carr-Smith Anthony Friedman |
Based on | "Bartleby, the Scrivener; A Story of Wall-street" by Herman Melville |
Produced by | Rodney Carr-Smith |
Starring | Paul Scofield John McEnery Thorley Walters |
Cinematography | Ian Wilson |
Edited by | John S. Smith |
Music by | Roger Webb |
Production companies | Pantheon Film Productions Amber Entertainment |
Distributed by | British Lion Film Corporation |
Release date |
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Running time | 78 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Bartleby is a 1970 British drama film directed by Anthony Friedman and starring Paul Scofield, John McEnery and Thorley Walters. [1] It is an adaptation of the short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener; A Story of Wall-street" by Herman Melville. The film relocates the narrative from New York in the 1850s to London in the 1970s. [2]
It was shot at Twickenham Studios and on location around London. The sets were designed by the art director Simon Holland.
Bartleby, a young audit clerk, is defeated by the pressures of modern life; he gradually opts out of all forms of social engagement and withdraws into his own world.
The TV Guide reviewer commented that "the film is brooding, slow, and annoying at times, but the vision of McEnery as Bartleby is not easily forgotten. Scofield...gives a supremely intelligent portrayal of a man caught between logic and emotion." [3]
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote about Bartleby- "a poor film but with superb acting in it". [4]
David Paul Scofield was an English actor. During a six-decade career, Scofield achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Academy Award, Emmy, and Tony for his work. Scofield established a reputation as one of the greatest Shakespearean performers. He declined the honour of a knighthood, but was appointed CBE in 1956 and became a CH in 2001.
Hamlet is a 1990 drama film based on the Shakespearean tragedy of the same name, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson as the eponymous character. The film also features Glenn Close, Alan Bates, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Dillane, and Nathaniel Parker. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy, the film was the first produced by Icon Productions, a company co-founded by Gibson.
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 musical comedy film starring the English rock band the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. Directed by Richard Lester, it was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The film portrays 36 hours in the lives of the group as they prepare for a television performance.
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, refusing with the words "I would prefer not to."
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 dystopian crime film adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian near-future Britain.
Billy Budd is a 1962 British historical drama-adventure film produced, directed, and co-written by Peter Ustinov. Adapted from Louis O. Coxe and Robert H. Chapman's stage play version of Herman Melville's short novel Billy Budd, it stars Terence Stamp as Billy Budd, Robert Ryan as John Claggart, and Ustinov as Captain Vere. In his feature film debut, Stamp was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and received a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Male Newcomer. The film was nominated for four BAFTAs.
Bartleby is the title character in Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener".
Thorley Swinstead Walters was an English character actor. He is probably best remembered for his comedy film roles such as in Two-Way Stretch and Carlton-Browne of the FO.
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Stanley Kauffmann was an American writer, editor, and critic of film and theater.
The People That Time Forgot is a 1977 British-American Technicolor adventure fantasy film based on the novel The People That Time Forgot (1918) and Out of Time's Abyss (1918) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was produced by Britain's Amicus Productions and directed by Kevin Connor. Like Connor's other two Burroughs-derived films, The Land That Time Forgot and At the Earth's Core, the film was distributed in the United States by American International Pictures.
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A Man for All Seasons is a 1966 British historical drama film directed and produced by Fred Zinnemann, adapted by Robert Bolt from his play of the same name. It depicts the final years of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England who refused both to sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII of England's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and to take an Oath of Supremacy declaring Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England.
The Piazza Tales is a collection of six short stories by American writer Herman Melville, published by Dix & Edwards in the United States in May 1856 and in Britain in June. Except for the newly written title story, "The Piazza," all of the stories had appeared in Putnam's Monthly between 1853 and 1855. The collection includes what have long been regarded as three of Melville's most important achievements in the genre of short fiction, "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "The Encantadas", his sketches of the Galápagos Islands.
John McEnery was an English actor and writer.
Joey Boy is a 1965 British comedy war film directed by Frank Launder and starring Harry H. Corbett, Stanley Baxter, Bill Fraser, Percy Herbert, Lance Percival, Reg Varney and Thorley Walters. The film was based on the 1959 novel by Eddie Chapman.
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Paul Baker is a British professor and linguist at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University, United Kingdom. His research focuses on corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, corpus-assisted discourse studies and language and identity. He is known for his research on the language of Polari. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts.