Man’s strange relationship with other species haunts this freaky simian horror film from
Psycho IIdirector Richard Franklin.
Man’s strange relationship with other species haunts this freaky simian horror film from
Psycho IIdirector Richard Franklin. Terence Stamp is Dr Phillips, an archetypal, lab-coated mad scientist, grumpily testing the limits of ape intelligence, and Elisabeth Shue zoology student Jane, unwisely offering help at his remote Gothic mansion, where the most developed ape, Link, is his besuited butler and begrudging factotum.
There’s something of
The Island of Dr Moreau in Phillips’ arrogant, eventually overthrown genetic tyranny. “He’s missed the bus by a lousy 1%!” he rails at the apes’ shortfall from human civilisation. As he clambers over tables and into cages, the gap looks narrower than he thinks. The Doc is tweedy, superior and seedy, with vague designs on his young student, and a bedroom piled high with copies of his one, well-r
Last modified on Wed 17 Feb 2021 13.41 EST
One of the tenets observed by the screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who has died aged 89, was that âthe scenario is created when you and the director establish a near telepathic communication. This requires, on both sides, a receptiveness and a trust which can never be taken for granted. The scriptwriter must on occasion be prepared to submerge his ego, since ultimately itâs the directorâs film, and youâre there to help him, to facilitate him.â
Among the film directors whom Carrière âfacilitatedâ were Louis Malle, Pierre Etaix, Volker Schlöndorff, MiloÅ¡ Forman and, above all, Luis Buñuel, for and with whom he wrote six exemplary screenplays. Carrière first met Buñuel in 1963 when the latter was looking for a French co-writer on Diary of a Chambermaid, based on Octave Mirbeauâs 1900 novel. âBuñuel chose me only after eating lunch together and getting me to talk about the
Jean-Claude Carriere, Unbearable Lightness of Being Screenwriter, Dies at 89
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His family confirmed his death, of natural causes, to AFP.
Carriere was a frequent collaborator with Luis Bunuel, writing the screenplays for “Diary of a Chambermaid,” in which he also played the village priest, ” “Belle de Jour,” “The Milky Way” and “The Phantom of Liberty” as well as the international arthouse hits and Oscar nominees “That Obscure Object of Desire” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie.”
In an interview for “The Storytellers,” Carriere talked about how close his relationship became with Bunuel, “It was a very close relationship. We were always alone in some remote place, often in Mexico or Spain, talking French and Spanish, without friends, without women, without wives. Absolutely no one around. Just the two of us. Eating together, working together, drinking together to get absolutely obsessed abo