In the 1960s, there was a funny video ad for Italian vermouth with Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter, where the heroes all the time got into ridiculous situations and remained drenched in Cinzano from head to toe.
If you were told that the same author would film the film version of Pink Floyd's album The Wall, you would most likely twist your finger to your temple.
Yes, it was Alan William Parker, Commander of the British Empire.
He was at one time the chairman of the British Directors Guild.
He is also the founder of the British Film Committee.
An advanced Russian hipster of any age must know and love two of his films: "The Wall" and "Heart of an Angel".
If you know these pictures and at the same time make a smart face, then you can fuck off for a rare intellectual.
One thing pleases: Alan Parker has never been any kind of intellectual. He did not go with his old mother to all the sessions in post-war London. He was not sitting with girls and cigarettes in a Parisian cinematheque and was not going to abolish damned capitalism. He was never a movie fan. He is, in fact, a typical proletarian who went to work in the advertising business. Not even because of the money, but only because there are a lot of pretty girls there. And pretty quickly, from a boy in the post office of an advertising firm, he turned into a copywriter. Because I really wanted to write and wrote a lot of essays and advertising scripts while working in this very post office. And in 1968 he already shot his first commercials. And they even won industry awards.
And even in those years, British cinema was at the perigee of its existence.
Therefore, all the prominent future filmmakers: Tony Scott ("True Love"), Ridley Scott ("Alien"), Adrian Line ("9½ weeks"), Hugh Hudson ("Chariots of Fire") - they all worked in advertising at this time.
A time when, in the words of Parker himself, "there was no cinema in Britain."
In 1971, Parker wrote a script about high school love, and from it the film "Melody", directed by Varis Hussein, was made.
Those who taught the history of Doctor Who know who he is.
After that, he wrote a script for himself - "No Offense" (1973) - and he shot it himself, and with his own money, since no one was going to help the newcomer with funding.
A painting about love in the midst of war.
Moreover, a very specific piece of the war ("London Blitz", when the Germans bombed the capital for 57 days in a row).
The fact is that Parker himself was born on one of these days in the same place. And this military theme, in fact, then comes around in the "Wall", which he will take up in 1981. He is just a representative of that very generation of 1942-1944, which carried with him the whole brunt of the national traumatic syndrome. And most amazingly, it was this generation that made English art much more important than ever - great musicians (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger), actors and directors. They all seemed to work out all the vitality of the surviving children of the war.
The film, meanwhile, impressed BBC producers and was bought to show a few years later.
Parker was invited to a temporary job at the BBC: to direct the film "The Evacuees" (1975), based on a real war story - the fate of Manchester children.
Written by Jack Rosenthal, the one who wrote the 129 Coronation Street episodes.
The film received a BAFTA as Best Television Drama.
And then Emmy.
Not bad for a beginner, I suppose.
Basically, Alan Parker is a director with little or no development.
It seems that from the very first film, he got on some rails and flooded into the bright distance at exactly the same speed.
Another thing is that for some reason his bar was immediately very steep.
Perhaps this is a sign of super-craftsmanship.
No throwing - everything is about the same level.
Until my death.
His first film is generally believed to be Bugsy Malone (1976). He says he wanted to make a film that would be fun for both adults and children. This is a parody of a gangster American movie in which all the roles are played by children (including very young Jodie Foster and Scott Bayo). The action takes place in New York during the Prohibition years. Classic layout. There are hints of specific gangsters from that era. Well, Bugsy is the nickname of the famous Jewish bandit Ben Siegel, who, according to mythology, is one of the founders of modern Las Vegas. And yes, he hated being called Bugsy.
When Parker met Jodie Foster, she intended to star in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but at the age of 12, she impressed the director with her seriousness and amazing knowledge of film technology: she could discuss aspects of work with the cameraman.
As we know, Foster's career went well.
Parker's first feature film did the trick too - two Oscar nominations, five BAFTA awards, three Golden Globe nominations and a Cannes nomination for Best Film.
The soundtrack for the film received many awards.
This is the merit of Paul Williams - Parker snatched him after the commercial failure of Brian de Palma's Phantom of Paradise, for whom Williams wrote the music.
Williams is generally a weird guy.
For example, he wrote the lyrics to one of the most beautiful songs ever - We've Only Just Begun, which sounds in everyone's ears with the voice of Karen Carpenter (The Carpenters).
But not music.
It is rather strange that adults are singing for children in the frame.
Two years later, the film "Midnight Express" was released based on the autobiographical book of Billy Hayes, who was thrown into a Turkish prison for 2 kg of hashish.
Hayes received four years, although he expected less, filed an appeal and received 30 years in return.
As you already understood, both the book and the movie are extremely different from "Bugsy Malone".
One detail: the script was written by Oliver Stone, who won an Oscar for it.
Parker portrayed the Turks as the most perfect animals in such a way that even the author of the book, and after him Oliver Stone, was indignant.
Nevertheless, the film won two Oscars, nominated for the Golden Bough at the Cannes Film Festival, and so on.
Along with the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay to Oliver Stone, the second award went to Giorgio Moroder - for the soundtrack.
The generation of hip-hop can hear the theme song from the Midnight Express on the OutKast song.
The way he described Turkish prisons prevented him from filming his next film - Glory (1980) - in a real-life New York art school.
(“We don’t want you to do the same to our school as you did to a Turkish prison,” the New York City Council said.)
And he just wanted to make a musical that didn't sound like your usual boring dusty musical.
He took eight students of a certain art school and showed their development.
The film has an amazing atmosphere.
And generally alive.
And he raised a wild box office - $ 42 million. Plus became the basis for the television series.
The song Fame won an Oscar, as did the overall soundtrack.
Plus the Golden Globe, although, of course, this is a completely local award, the value of which is greatly exaggerated.
The strangest thing is that two composers who were offered to work on the picture - Giorgio Moroder and Jeff Lynn (Electric Light Orchestra) - refused to work.
All the music here is by Michael Gore.
Some critics lashed out at the director because he destroyed the glamor of show business and showed in which dump the flowers grow.
His next film, "As it comes around, so it will respond" (1982) can be considered a commercial failure.
This is the story of a dirty divorce through the eyes of a child.
In the same year, along with Roger Waters of PF and artist Gerald Scarfe, he filmed Pink Floyd's double album, The Wall.
Leaving aside the merits of PF in music in principle, but the problem of film adaptation for many in the world has become a pure reification of what was previously perceived by ear more universally and abstractly.
Bob Geldof is just as bad an actor as a musician, the suffering of the post-war traumatized British is a little on our drum, and J. Scarfe will then be seen everywhere with his annoying vaginal-phallic images.
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Let's agree that everything was filmed in order to cut a video clip for the song “Another brick in the wall” from there.
"Hey, teecher, liv as kids elone" - forever the anthem of mitrofanushki and other ignoramuses around the world.
Leave you elone, so you, like monkeys, will climb trees.
“The Wall is one of the poorest experiences in my creative life,” Alan Parker would later say.
Two years later, he again returned to military PTSD, taking the book by William Wharton "Ptah". The book contains the story of two friends who returned from World War II. In the film - from Vietnamese. A couple of Matthew Modine - Nicolas Cage plays with dignity. Plus soundtrack by Peter Gabriel (ex-Genesis). The premiere took place at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 and won the Grand Prix of the jury.
In 1987, he rolled through neonoir with the supposedly psychological thriller Angel Heart, based on the novel Fallen Angel by William Hjörtsberg. The director gathered a fashionable cast: Mickey Rourke was not yet a creature with a beaten face, but quite the opposite, Robert De Niro always sells well, and Charlotte Rampling will always attract intellectuals, although it is not clear for what merits. Otherworldly, voodoo rituals, blood from the ceiling where Tarkovsky has water from the ceiling, and other numerous tricks perfectly distract the viewer from the fact that there is no meaning or history in the picture. But everyone is intimidated. Soundtrack by Trevor Jones, who wrote Labyrinth with David Bowie and Dark Crystal for Jim Hanson.
In Burning Mississippi (1988), Parker addresses the theme of racism.
Back when it wasn’t so trendy and didn’t bring lavish goodies.
Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe are planned gorgeous in the lead roles.
"Oscar" for the camera work and an Oscar nomination for Parker himself as a director.
Of course, it would be nice to watch the film.
If only to make sure once again how America joyfully and deeply killed its blacks, which now results in unbearably hypocritical repentance, which for some reason the same America imposes on all other countries.
Parker returned to music in 1991 with the film The Commitments based on the book by Irish writer Roddy Doyle.
Throughout the film, the heroes gather musicians in Dublin for a new group.
Doyle's book consists mainly of dialogues written in rich language.
Some parts of it do not carry anything at all, except for a juicy language.
And on such a basis, Parker shot a film where other people's songs are played, performed by real musicians gathered in a group, who play some roles.
For me, quite a hard and clumsy attempt.
Show me the person who will listen to the Mustang Sally for the second time in his life.
Nevertheless, the soundtrack for the film was a success, and on its basis they charged the second release of the album with a soundtrack, but nothing came of it.
Parker received a BAFTA for directing, and his editing director was nominated for an Oscar.
The ridiculous story of the real Dr. Kellogg (the one who Kellog's flakes) "The Road to Wellville" (1994) did not add anything special to Parker's filmography.
Moreover, with a budget of $ 25 million, he brought in only $ 6 million.
Experience with concept albums like PF The Wall has taught him nothing, and Parker takes on Rice-Webber's 1976 album Evita.
By that time, everyone has been trying to film it for fifteen years - and no one has succeeded.
But Parker takes on the role of Evita Peron Madonna, for whom it is a great way to emphasize that she is also an actress, and flaunt in beautiful dresses, and Banderas for the role of Che Guevara.
It turned out, as it was intended, a spectacular zalepukh with songs.
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Of course, the glamorization of characters like Evita Peron and Che does not benefit the picture.
But the history of Argentina is so contradictory that its interpretation in any direction will definitely bring money to someone.
Written by Oliver Stone.
1999 brought another Irish film from Parker - Angela's Ashes, based on the memoirs of the Irish-American writer F. McCourt.
Dad is an alcoholic, America is a stepmother, and McCourt is not James Joyce at all.
And Parker was already tired.
Composer (s) - Sinead O'Connor.
Director Parker is a man devoid of illusions about the profession, although he has achieved what many, many cannot achieve: just look at the list of his awards.
Therefore, he did not begin to shoot a movie to the grave, and in 2003 filmed his final film "The Life of David Gale" with Kevin Spacey and retired.
And he lived there until last summer 2020 (that is, 17 years) in peace and happiness.
What we all can only wish for.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.