Shuttlecock | |
---|---|
![]() film poster | |
Directed by | Andrew Piddington |
Written by |
|
Based on | The novel of the same name by Graham Swift |
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | |
Edited by |
|
Music by | |
Production companies |
|
Release date |
|
Running time | 85 minutes |
Countries |
|
Language | English |
Shuttlecock is a 1993 French-British thriller film directed by Andrew Piddington and starring Alan Bates, Lambert Wilson and Kenneth Haigh. [1] It is based on the 1981 novel Shuttlecock by Graham Swift. [2] [3]
Major James Prentis (Alan Bates) is a British spy of World War II and war hero [4] who goes under the code name of "Shuttlecock". Alienated from his family and children, he ends up in a mental institution in Lisbon, Portugal, where he eventually decides to publish his memoirs 20 years after the war. His son, John (Lambert Wilson), becomes increasingly alarmed with the enigmatic Dr. Quinn (Kenneth Haigh), the director of the institution, and concludes after reading his father's memoirs that Quinn is responsible for his father's mental decline.
The production for the film was marred with problems, which resulted in a long delay in release. [5] Producer Graham Leader acquired the rights to the film in the late 1980s after a meeting with Graham Swift, the writer of the novel, and paid $7,500 for the rights over two years. [5] Tim Rose Price, the writer of several BBC dramas, agreed to write the script, and worked on a script with Leader throughout 1989. Jon Amiel agreed to direct. Producers Leader and Charles Ardan approached Channel 4 and British Screen to finance the picture; Channel 4 [6] agreed to shout $900,000, payable when the film was completed, and British Screen offered just over $500,000, if Leader could attract a co-producer on the European continent who could finance $1.5 million. [5] Leader had searched for financing in the United States, but was turned down by the likes of Orion Classics and Avenue Pictures, who wanted the characters and settings Americanized. French independent French company Les Productions Belles Rives eventually agreed to partly finance the film. [5] After one of France's largest film labs conceded to provide materials and film-processing services, a shortfall of $225,000 still remained. [5]
The film was shot on location in Lisbon, Portugal over six weeks at the end of 1990 and beginning of 1991, with a French, English and Portuguese crew. Producer Leader described the filming for Shuttlecock as "highly unorganized chaos", and the actors were surrounded with confusion on set. [5] Financing was halted during the filming when a French bank which had loaned the money for production "decided to take its fees out of the loan rather than out of the profits from the film". To get themselves out of difficulty, producers Leader, Piddington and Rose put half of their fees for it back into the film. [5] A British investor turned up during the filming, promising to provide financing, but a New Zealand heiress froze all of his bank accounts before anything was signed. Filming was wrapped up in January 1991 in London, before post-production began at Pinewood Studios. [5] The total budget eventually amounted to around $3 million. [5]
The film was screened at the San Sebastian Film Festival, shortly after a rushed job with adding Spanish subtitles, where it failed to win the $250,000 Golden Shell Award and any others, making it ineligible for Cannes. Further editing to the film over the next six months was done, but the producers failed to attract a distributor. [5] There was optimism for a time that it would be released at the Hamptons International Film Festival, but it amounted to nothing. [5] Financing for the film was eventually derived mainly from Channel 4, Les Productions Belles Rives, and KM Films, [7] and a plethora of other associate producers such as Sea Lion Films, Gigantic Pictures, Minerva Productions, and distributors such as Alliance Communications, Le Monde Entertainment, and Movie Screen Entertainment. [8]
The film received a mixed response from critics. Variety praised the film's acting and directing but stated that its "theatrical prospects seem iffy." [5] The cinematography of the film was praised by some critics. Sight & Sound magazine wrote that "Andrew Piddington approaches his material in a resourceful way." [9] Richard Schickel, the film critic for Time , reportedly approved of the film when he first viewed it, but several years later described it as "a bit on the plodding side" and as "the kind of film that would have two weeks in the theater and then go straight to video." [5] The New York Times considered the film to be a disaster, writing:
"Shuttlecock" is a film for which things went very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it makes a kind of negative case study for anyone thinking of investing in or producing an independent film. Its troubled history is a whole-earth catalogue of bad decisions, strategic miscalculations, painful rejections, misunderstandings and lots of old-fashioned bad luck. It is the film story that independent producers pray they will never live through. [5]
However, when the film was screened on 6 January 1994 on Channel 4 as part of its series "Film on Four", the Sunday Telegraph named the film its "TV Pick of the Week," referring to it as "a film with things to say and a muscular yet sensitive way of saying them." [5]
The film has been remade under the title "Sins of a Father", reported the New York Times Feb. 1, 2015.
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer whose career spanned five decades. In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Tom Jones.
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director and producer, best known for Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Oliver! (1968), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director.
Verity Ann Lambert was an English television and film producer.
Sydney Cecil Newman was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. After his return to Canada in 1970, Newman was appointed Acting Director of the Broadcast Programs Branch for the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) and then head of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He also occupied senior positions at the Canadian Film Development Corporation and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and acted as an advisor to the Secretary of State.
Michael Richard Jackson is a British television producer and executive. He was one of only three people to have been Controller of both BBC1 and BBC2, the main television channels of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and for being the first media studies graduate to reach a senior level in the British media. He was also the Chief Executive of British television station, Channel 4, between 1997 and 2001. In 2018, he co-founded Two Cities TV, with Wall to Wall Media founder and ex-CEO Alex Graham
Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing many films made in the United Kingdom. The company's first production was Walter, directed by Stephen Frears, which was released in 1982. It is especially known for its gritty, kitchen sink-style films and period drama.
The Cannon Group, Inc. was an American group of companies, including Cannon Films, which produced films from 1967 to 1994. The extensive group also owned, amongst others, a large international cinema chain and a video film company that invested heavily in the video market, buying the international video rights to several classic film libraries. Some of their best known films include Joe (1970), Runaway Train (1985) and Street Smart (1987), all of which were Oscar-nominated.
Genevieve is a 1953 British comedy film produced and directed by Henry Cornelius and written by William Rose. It stars John Gregson, Dinah Sheridan, Kenneth More and Kay Kendall as two couples comedically involved in a veteran automobile rally.
EMI Films was a British film studio and distributor. A subsidiary of the EMI conglomerate, the corporate name was not used throughout the entire period of EMI's involvement in the film industry, from 1969 to 1986, but the company's brief connection with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Anglo-EMI, the division under Nat Cohen, and the later company as part of the Thorn EMI conglomerate are outlined here.
The Horror of Frankenstein is a 1970 British horror film by Hammer Film Productions that is both a semi-parody and semi-remake of the 1957 film The Curse of Frankenstein, of Hammer's Frankenstein series. It was produced and directed by Jimmy Sangster, starring Ralph Bates, Kate O'Mara, Veronica Carlson and David Prowse as the monster. It was the only film in the Frankenstein series which did not star Peter Cushing. The original music score was composed by Malcolm Williamson.
The Go-Between is a 1971 British period romantic drama film directed by Joseph Losey. Its screenplay, by Harold Pinter, is an adaptation of the 1953 novel The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley. The film stars Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave and Dominic Guard. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
Storm Over the Nile is a 1955 British adventure film adaptation of the 1902 novel The Four Feathers, directed by Terence Young and Zoltan Korda. The film not only extensively used footage of the action scenes from the 1939 film version stretched into CinemaScope, but is a shot-for-shot, almost line-for-line remake of the earlier film, which was also directed by Korda. Several pieces of music by the original composer Miklos Rozsa were also utilized. It featured Anthony Steel, Laurence Harvey, James Robertson Justice, Mary Ure, Ian Carmichael, Michael Hordern and Christopher Lee. The film was shot on location in the Sudan.
David Edward Rose was a British television producer and commissioning editor.
Simon and Laura is a 1955 British comedy film directed by Muriel Box and starring Peter Finch and Kay Kendall.
Colin Vaines is a British film and Emmy-winning television producer whose credits include The Unforgivable, starring Sandra Bullock, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, Gangs of New York, Coriolanus, The Young Victoria, and The Rum Diary.
Shuttlecock was Graham Swift's second novel, a psychological thriller published in 1981 by Allen Lane. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1983 and released as a film in 1993.
Robert Sidaway is an English writer, producer, director and actor. His credits as writer or producer for film and television include Rainbow (1996), Battle of the Brave (2004), Best Of British (1987–94) and Into The Rainbow / The Wonder (2017).
Andrew J. Piddington is an English film and television director, screenwriter, and producer.
The North Water is a 2021 five-part television miniseries based on Ian McGuire's 2016 novel of the same name directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Colin Farrell and Jack O'Connell. An international co-production between British public broadcaster BBC, and Canadian English-language public broadcaster CBC Television, in association with Canadian premium television channel Super Channel and CBC Television's French-language counterpart ICI Radio-Canada Télé, the series first premiered in the United States on AMC+ on 15 July 2021 before premiering in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 10 September 2021 and in Canada on Super Channel Fuse a week later on 19 September, followed by a nationwide broadcast in the country on CBC Television in English and ICI Radio-Canada Télé in French, with video on demand availabilty on the CBC Gem and ICI TOU.TV services in both respective languages.