Rafael Sabatini was an Italian-English writer of romance and adventure novels.
In Which We Serve is a 1942 British patriotic war film directed by Noël Coward and David Lean. It was made during the Second World War with the assistance of the Ministry of Information.
Nathanael West was an American author and screenwriter. He is remembered for two darkly satirical novels: Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939), set respectively in the newspaper and Hollywood film industries.
Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an English author of thrillers, in particular spy novels, who introduced a new realism to the genre. He also worked as a screenwriter. Ambler used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.
Possession is a 2002 British-American romantic mystery drama film written and directed by Neil LaBute and starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. It is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by British author A. S. Byatt, who won the Booker Prize for it the year it was published.
Violette, Baroness Gardiner, known professionally as Muriel Box, was an English screenwriter and director, Britain's most prolific female director, having directed 12 feature films and one featurette. Her screenplay for The Seventh Veil won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Frank Sydney Box was a British film producer and screenwriter, and brother of British film producer Betty Box. In 1940, he founded the documentary film company Verity Films with Jay Lewis.
Philip Ives Dunne was a Hollywood screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox crafting well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the "Hollywood Blacklist" episode of the 1940s-1950s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Robe (1953) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
The Man in Grey is a 1943 British film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures, and is considered as the first of its "Gainsborough melodramas". It was directed by Leslie Arliss and produced by Edward Black from a screenplay by Leslie Arliss and Margaret Kennedy, adapted by Doreen Montgomery from the 1941 novel The Man in Grey by Eleanor Smith. The film's sets were designed by Walter Murton.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal), and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences.
Brighton Rock is a 1948 British gangster film noir directed by John Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough as violent gang leader Pinkie Brown, Carol Marsh as the innocent girl he marries, and Hermione Baddeley as an amateur sleuth investigating a murder he committed.
Madonna of the Seven Moons is a 1945 British drama film directed by Arthur Crabtree for Gainsborough Pictures and starring Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and Patricia Roc. The film was produced by Rubeigh James Minney, with cinematography from Jack Cox and screenplay by Roland Pertwee. It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas.
Christopher Columbus is a 1949 British biographical film starring Fredric March as Christopher Columbus and Florence Eldridge as Queen Isabella. It is loosely based on the 1941 novel Columbus by Rafael Sabatini with much of the screenplay rewritten by Sydney and Muriel Box.
Blanche Fury is a 1948 British Technicolor drama film directed by Marc Allégret and starring Valerie Hobson, Stewart Granger and Michael Gough. It was adapted from a 1939 novel by Joseph Shearing. In Victorian era England, two schemers will stop at nothing to acquire the Fury estate, even murder.
Fanny by Gaslight is a 1944 British drama film, produced by Gainsborough Pictures, set in the 1870s and adapted from a 1940 novel by Michael Sadleir.
Jassy is a 1947 British colour film historical melodrama set in the early 19th century, based on a novel by Norah Lofts. It is a Gainsborough melodrama, the only one to be made in Technicolor. It was the last "official" Gainsborough melodrama.
The Gainsborough melodramas were a sequence of films produced by the British film studio Gainsborough Pictures between 1943 and 1947 which conformed to a melodramatic style. The melodramas were not a film series but an unrelated sequence of films which had similar themes that were usually developed by the same film crew and frequently recurring actors who played similar characters in each. They were mostly based on popular books by female novelists and they encompassed costume, such as The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945) and modern-dress, such as Love Story (1944) and They Were Sisters (1945) settings. The popularity of the films with audiences peaked mid-1940s when most of the cinema audiences consisted of mainly women. The influence of the films led to other British producers releasing similarly themed works, such as The Seventh Veil (1945), Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945), Hungry Hill (1947), The White Unicorn (1947), Idol of Paris (1948), and The Reluctant Widow (1950) and often with the talent that made Gainsborough melodramas successful.
The Upturned Glass is a 1947 British film noir psychological thriller directed by Lawrence Huntington and starring James Mason, Rosamund John and Pamela Kellino. The screenplay concerns a leading brain surgeon who murders a woman he believes to be responsible for the death of the woman he loved.
They Were Sisters is a 1945 British melodrama film directed by Arthur Crabtree for Gainsborough Pictures and starring James Mason and Phyllis Calvert. The film was produced by Harold Huth, with cinematography from Jack Cox and screenplay by Roland Pertwee. They Were Sisters is noted for its frank, unsparing depiction of marital abuse at a time when the subject was rarely discussed openly. It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas.
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, opening the way for European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, were the first European contact with the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. He has been represented in many fictional and semi-fictional works, including plays, operas, films and TV, as well as literary works.
