Richard Attenborough

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This book provides the first detailed scholarly and authoritative analysis of Richard Attenborough's work as a filmmaker which reached its high point in 1982 with the release of Gandhi which won eight Academy Awards. After establishing his career as an actor Attenborough moved into production, firstly with Bryan Forbes with Beaver Films (1959-64) and, later, with Allied Film Makers (1960-64). He began his directorial career with Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and went on to direct a further eleven films that spanned over five decades. While Attenborough continued acting, he also attained a high standing in the cinema industry where he has worked to represent its interests and provided support for British film production. While several of Attenborough's films have achieved a high degree of critical success, there has been an almost total absence of his films from the critical historiography of British cinema. Despite his films not possessing a distinctive individual style, Attenborough has been responsible for establishing the biographical film (biopic) within the pantheon of British cinema. Seven of Attenborough's films can be described as biopics, representing both the lives of famous people such as Winston Churchill (Young Winston, 1972) and Charles Chaplin (Chaplin, 1992), to lesser well-known individuals such as Steve Biko and Donald Woods (Cry Freedom, 1987) and Archie Belaney (Grey Owl, 1999). Now in his late eighties, Attenborough's long cinema career has succeeded against a background of industrial changes and a constantly evolving film culture to become one of British cinema's most significant and well-known characters.