Abstract
The 1990s and 2000s saw the release of a surprising number of British and American films depicting the lives of prominent British writers and focusing in some way on the process of writing.1 We might label these films Brit-lit biopics. In fact, there have been at least sixteen such films in twenty years — that is, almost one a year, from Shadowlands (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1993) and Tom and Viv (dir. Brian Gilbert, 1994) in the early 1990s, via Shakespeare in Love (dir. John Madden, 1998) and Iris (dir. Richard Eyre, 2001) around the turn of the century, to Miss Potter (dir. Chris Noonan, 2006) and Bright Star (dir. Jane Campion, 2009) in the late 2000s (see Table 6.1). These films covered writers as diverse as William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen and Iris Murdoch, J.M. Barrie and C.S. Lewis, Beatrix Potter and Dylan Thomas. There was also The Hours (dir. Stephen Daldry, 2002), which, though hardly a biopic, nevertheless offers scenes from the life of Virginia Woolf.
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Notes
This chapter, and especially the case study of Becoming Jane, draws on material in A. Higson, Film England: Culturally English Filmmaking Since the 1990s (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). I’m very grateful to Judith Buchanan for her expert editorial interventions.
See A. Higson, English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama since 1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
P. French, ‘Be-All and End-All for Triumph’, The Observer (3 May, 1992): 52; J. Salamon, ‘Film: Merchant Ivory’s “Howards End”’, Wall St Journal (12 March, 1992), Section A: 10; T. Crow, ‘Regarding Howards End’, Los Angeles Village View (17–23 April, 1992): 15.
R. Reed, ‘Grim Flicks Creep out Toronto’, The New York Observer (27 September 2004): 24.
D. Rooney, ‘Stage Beauty’, Variety (10–16 May 2004): 50.
P. Howlett, ‘Film Choice: Gosford Park’, The Guardian Guide (21 March 2009): 53; Derek Elley, ‘Quite a Royal Send-Off’, Variety (19–25 May 2003): 27.
M. Goodridge, ‘Shakespeare in Love’, Screen International (18 December 1998): 19.
O. Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly, quoted in Miramax advertisement in Screen International (11 December 1998): 7.
S. Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 61.
J. Spence, Becoming Jane Austen: A Life (London: Continuum, 2003).
Julian Jarrold, in ‘Behind the Scenes’, special feature on Becoming Jane DVD, (2Entertain Video Ltd., 2007).
N. Pierce, ‘Becoming Jane’, Total Film, 126 (April 2007): 36.
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© 2013 Judith Buchanan
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Higson, A. (2013). Brit-lit biopics, 1990–2010. In: Buchanan, J. (eds) The Writer on Film. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317230_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317230_7
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