Jack Clayton [Paperback]

In Fran?ois Truffaut's opinion The Innocents was 'the best English film after Hitchcock goes to America'. Tennessee Williams said of The Great Gatsby: 'a film whose artistry even surpassed the original novel'. The maker of both films was Jack Clayton, one of the finest English directors of the post-war era and perhaps best remembered for the trail-blazing Room at the Top which brought a new sexual frankness and social realism to the British screen.

This is the first full-length critical study of Clayton's work. The author has been able to consult and quote from the director's own private papers which illuminate Clayton's creative practices and artistic intentions. In addition to fresh analyses of the individual films, the book contains new material on Clayton's many unrealized projects and valuably includes his previously unpublished short story 'The Enchantment' - as poignant and revealing as the films themselves.

This is a personal and fascinating account of the career and achievement of an important, much-loved director that should appeal to students and film enthusiasts.

List of plates

Series Editor's foreword

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: lonely passions - the cinema of Jack Clayton

2. Early career: Naples is a Battlefield (1944); The Bespoke Overcoat (1955)

3. Sex, realism and Yorkshire pudding: Room at the Top (1959)

4. Pearl of ambiguity: The Innocents (1961)

5. Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown: The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

6. Forbidden games: Our Mother's House (1967)

7. Clayton in America: The Great Gatsby (1974); Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

8. God's lonely woman: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)

9. Death makes a call: Memento Mori (1992)

10. Unfinished business: the unrealised projects of Jack Clayton

11. Conclusion

Appendices: Some writings of Jack Clayton

Filmography

Select bibliography