From gritty kitchen-sink drama A Kind of Loving (1962) to glossy Hollywood comedy The Next Best Thing (2002), John Schlesinger has proved himself one of cinema's most versatile talents. For 40 years, this London-born maverick has painted compelling and often uncompromising portraits of British and American lives, alternating intimate homespun affairs with more costly endeavours on the other side of the pond.
Swinging London and Manhattan low life
Schlesinger started out as an actor, playing supporting roles in a string of 1950s pictures. He proceeded to shoot several short documentaries for the BBC and received early acclaim for an assured profile of Waterloo Station, Terminus (1961). The following year he made his feature debut with A Kind of Loving, a bleak character-driven drama about an unexpected pregnancy. The film suggested Schlesinger's affinity with British realist Karel Reisz, who presented a similar milieu in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).
Billy Liar (1963), Schlesinger's second feature, proved more fantastical. Based on Keith Waterhouse's novel, this warm-hearted adventure about a small-time dreamer was the first of many literary adaptations helmed by the director. (He's since brought authors as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Ian McEwan and Nathanael West to the big screen.) Billy Liar gave Julie Christie one of her first roles. Schlesinger's Darling (1965), a satirical portrait of the swinging 60s, made her a household name.
In 1969 the director made his American debut with Midnight Cowboy, a melancholic tale of companionship in the face of adversity. Set in New York, this experimental film starred Dustin Hoffman as a Bowery bum befriended by Jon Voight's naïve Texan hustler. Despite being initially labelled with the deadly X rating, it garnered three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
An Englishman abroad
Schlesinger returned to London to direct an acute study of a bisexual bourgeois love triangle, Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971). Back in the US, the fast-paced thriller Marathon Man (1976) proved he could still deliver at the box office. He continued to work in television, earning praise for two gripping espionage dramas scripted by Alan Bennett - An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1992). The latter, a BAFTA award-winner, revolves around the Burgess, Maclean and Philby spy scandal and stars James Fox as an aristocratic art historian held under suspicion. A taut examination of upper-class mores and the complex relationship between art and artifice, it's one of Schlesinger's subtler works.
His next TV feature was Cold Comfort Farm (1995), a witty period drama based on a novel by Stella Gibbons, satirising the works of DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. (Schlesinger himself adapted Far from the Madding Crowd three decades earlier.) This light-hearted comedy of manners stars Kate Beckinsale as an unfortunate orphan spending a term with eccentric relatives at the titular farm. An impressive ensemble cast mixes familiar British faces (Freddie Jones, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry) with new hopefuls such as Beckinsale and Rufus Sewell.
Cold Comfort Farm remains one of Schlesinger's best-loved pictures on both sides of the Atlantic. It's a delightful addition to his eclectic oeuvre and an essential introduction to his considerable abilities as a director.
