John Schlesinger

The English born John Schlesinger ended his career at the turn of the century in the worst possible way, directing a Madonna vehicle.  Even by the material girl’s standards “The Next Best Thing” is wretched, a melodrama about a yoga instructor who has a child with a gay, platonic friend.  Both director and star were justly nominated for ‘Razzie’ awards.

In his prime, and even beyond it, Schlesinger had worked with the very cream of English acting talent.  He almost single-handedly made the careers of Alan Bates and Julie Christie, and guided Laurence Olivier through one of his more memorable late performances, the sadistic Nazi dentist in “Marathon Man”.

The key films in the Schlesinger oeuvre were made between 1962 and 1975.  “A Kind of Loving” (1962) sees Bates as an ambitious young draftsman whose tentative courtship of a girl in the typing pool leads to unplanned pregnancy and a shotgun marriage.  Unlike other entries in the ‘angry young man’ genre of the time the emphasis is less on class and politics and more on the emotion of the relationship.

“Billy Liar” (1963) also has a young, alienated male protagonist, but one more prone to escape into a fantasy world than overtly protest his situation.  Julie Christie shines as Tom Courtney’s dream girl and was subsequently cast in Schlesinger’s “Darling” (1965), winning an Oscar as an ambitious, free spirited actress.  In someways now stylistically dated, the performances of Christie and her two suitors, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, stand the test of time.  Certainly “Darling” benefited from a more liberal treatment of sexual themes than earlier possible in British cinema.

After another collaboration with Christie, a not entirely successful adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd” (1967), Schlesinger made his US debut with his most critically respected work, “Midnight Cowboy” (1969).  A dark, inverted version of the American dream it has Jon Voight as a cowboy who comes to New York with the plan of making his fortune as a gigolo and Dustin Hoffman as the low life Ratso Rizzo who befriends him, “Midnight Cowboy” became the first X rated movie to win an academy award for best picture.  Schlesinger, who was himself gay, delicately skirts around the issue of the characters’ sexuality.

Homosexuality and bisexuality is treated much more openly in “Sunday, Bloody, Sunday” (1971).  The aptly named Murray Head is loved by both Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch.  The latter’s sensitive performance as an intelligent and warm if lonely physician was perhaps the most positive characterisation of a gay man then seen in a mainstream film.