Michael radford

Michael Radford received British nationality from his father, since his mother came from Austria, and he was born in New Delhi, India, on February 24, 1946. The future filmmaker spent most of his childhood in the Middle East, Egypt and Cyprus, because his father was a military man. “Traveling opened my mind, I learned other cultures, I heard other languages. I remember, for example, the smells.” But then he went to Bedford School, one of those traditional and rigid British schools that inspired the Harry Potter saga.

It turned out to be a real brainiac, as he obtained the qualification ‘cum laude’ in the specialty of Political Science at the University of Oxford. After spending a season teaching classes, he became a student in the first class of the National Film at Television School, where other eminences have subsequently passed, such as David Yates , Terence Davies , Mark Herman , Nick Park or Michael Caton-Jones .

After finishing his studies there, Michael Radford spent time composing documentaries for the BBC in Scotland. He made his film debut with Another Time, Another Place , selected for the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 1983. A suggestive love story between a married woman and an Italian prisoner during World War II, the unmistakable style of the filmmaker was already present, which basically consists of distancing himself as far as possible from the academic and refined images of the classic British directors.

He demonstrated gargantuan courage by daring to put into images none other than 1984 , George Orwell ‘s powerful dystopian novel , already made into a film in 1956 by Michael Anderson , which garnered the most terrible criticism. John Hurt plays the citizen sent to the Ministry of Love to be reprogrammed by the cruel officer O’Brien, played by Richard Burton . Although, as one might expect, it does not stand up to comparisons with the novel, the results were slightly better than those of its predecessor, especially due to its very personal treatment of color.

Perhaps cured of fright, for his next work, Passions in Kenya , he decides to start from an unknown novel, by James Fox , about a married couple of British aristocrats who settle in Africa. He was bringing John Hurt back as secondary.

Michael Radford has a certain reputation as an ashen in the film world. After the death of the great Richard Burton shortly after the end of 1984 , and of Trevor Howard after Passions in Kenya , he signed Massimo Troisi , who gave a masterful performance as the lead in The Postman (and Pablo Neruda) . Within 24 hours of giving the last clapperboard, the Neapolitan actor died in his sleep, due to a heart disease that he had suffered for a long time. Unfortunately, he did not live to enjoy the great international success that this adaptation of the book “Ardiente paciencia” by Antonio Skármeta reaped.. The actor moved moviegoers as a humble post office employee, capable of appropriating the works of the great writer ( Philippe Noiret ) without qualms in order to win over his beloved ( Maria Grazia Cucinotta ), justifying himself because “poetry belongs to no one, it belongs to who needs it.”

For a long time, The Postman (and Pablo Neruda) held the record for the highest grossing film in a non-English language worldwide. He received 5 Oscar nominations, including the one for best film, and two for Radford himself, as director and co-author of the adapted screenplay. He recalls that during filming he had to deal with a wailing mafia envoy. “The drama of today’s world is that honesty no longer exists, not even among gangsters,” he told her.

But Radford is somewhat choking on success, judging by the low interest in the bawdy B. Monkey , shot four years later, based on a novel by Andrew Davies . Dancing at the Blue Iguana , about strippers in a club, didn’t quite work either. It goes back with the careful The Merchant of Venice , with superb performances, especially by Al Pacino as the Jew Shylock, but also by the rest of the well-rounded cast, since it included Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes , among others.

Divorced from Iseult Teran, mother of his son Felix in 1991, Michael Radford has joined Emma Tweed, with whom he has had two other offspring, Amaryllis –born in 2005– and Linus –from 2010–. He somewhat regrets not going to Hollywood when he had the chance. “They offered me Robocop , I rejected it and I sank the bridges. I could have combined commercial cinema with low-budget auteur films. Now, I only have low-budget ones left,” he commented.

In the entertaining robbery tape A Brilliant Plan reunited Michael Caine and Demi Moore more than 20 years after Mess in Rio . The director returned to the field of documentary in Michel Petrucciani , about the brilliant jazz pianist, who suffered from a degenerative disease.

The filmmaker moved to Spain to shoot La mula , set to images of a text by Juan Eslava Galán , with Mario Casas and María Valverde as protagonists. But just a week before finishing, he decided to call off the shoot. He went so far as to make a statement public to justify this decision. “The problem arises when the Spanish production company Gheko Films, probably ill-advised, does not agree to sign the necessary documents that the English and Irish governments require in order to collect the investments approved and reserved for the project,” commented the filmmaker, who complained that for this reason neither his team nor he himself were collecting his fees.

Gheko Films eventually decided to replace Radford with another director, apparently the French publicity specialist Sebastien Grousset, who according to Variety appeared on the set wearing a balaclava so as not to be recognized. It is unknown how the film would have turned out if Radford had remained in his position, but the theatrically released version remains a crude imitation of The Heifer , which clearly shows his production problems. “It was going to be one of my three great films, along with The Postman (and Pablo Neruda) and Another Time, Another Place . They tell the same thing, the dreams of humble people.”

The Briton has continued to be linked to Spain in a certain way in his next work, the remake of Elsa and Fred , by Marcos Carnevale, which was a co-production with Argentina, starring the Spanish Manuel Alexandre and the Uruguayan China Zorrilla . They are replaced by Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer . He plans to shoot Castro’s Daughter , a biography of Alina Fernández, the exiled daughter of Fidel Castro. He has also expressed his intention to make “King Lear”, another renowned work by Shakespeare, into a movie.