Joseph Losey | |
|---|---|
.png) Losey in 1965 | |
| Born | Joseph Walton Losey III (1909-01-14)January 14, 1909 La Crosse, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | June 22, 1984(1984-06-22) (aged 75) London, England |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College Harvard University |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1933–1984 |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2, includingGavrik |
| Awards | See below |
Joseph Walton Losey III (/ˈloʊsi/; January 14, 1909 – June 22, 1984) was an American film and theatre director, producer, and screenwriter. Born inWisconsin, he studied in Germany withBertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States.Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom.
Among the most critically and commercially successful were the three films with screenplays byHarold Pinter:The Servant (1963),Accident (1967), andThe Go-Between (1971).[1][2] His 1976 filmMonsieur Klein won theCésar Awards forBest Film andBest Director. Other notable films includedThe Boy with Green Hair (1948),Eva (1962),King & Country (1964),Modesty Blaise (1966),Figures in a Landscape (1970),A Doll's House (1973),Galileo (1975), andDon Giovanni (1979). Though drubbed by critics and a box office failure,Boom! (1968) was sometimes cited by Losey as his personal favorite,[3] and Tennessee Willams considered it the best movie adaptation of one of his plays.[4] The film starredElizabeth Taylor andRichard Burton, both of whom worked with Losey again, Taylor inSecret Ceremony (1968) and Burton inThe Assassination of Trotsky (1972).
He was also a four-time nominee for both thePalme d'Or (winning once) and theGolden Lion, and a two-timeBAFTA Award nominee.
Joseph Walton Losey III was born on January 14, 1909, inLa Crosse, Wisconsin, where he andNicholas Ray were high-school classmates atLa Crosse Central High School.[5][6][7] He attendedDartmouth College andHarvard University, beginning as a student of medicine and ending in drama.[8][9]
Losey became a major figure in New York City political theatre, first directing the controversial failureLittle Old Boy in 1933.[10] He declined to direct a staged version ofDodsworth bySinclair Lewis, which led Lewis to offer him his first work written for the stage,Jayhawker. Losey directed the show, which had a brief run.[8]Bosley Crowther inThe New York Times noted that "The play, being increasingly wordy, presents staging problems that Joe Losey's direction does not always solve. It is hard to tell who is responsible for the obscure parts in the story."[11]
He visited theSoviet Union for several months in 1935, to study the Russian stage. In Moscow he participated in a seminar on film taught bySergei Eisenstein.[12] He also metBertolt Brecht and the composerHanns Eisler, who were visiting Moscow at the time.[13]
In 1936, he directedTriple-A Plowed Under onBroadway, a production of theWorks Progress Administration'sFederal Theatre Project.[14] He then directed the secondLiving Newspaper presentation,Injunction Granted.[15]
Losey served in theU.S. military duringWorld War II and was discharged in 1945.[16] From 1946 to 1947, Losey worked with Bertolt Brecht—who was living in exile in Los Angeles—andCharles Laughton on the preparations for the staging of Brecht's playGalileo (Life of Galileo) which he and Brecht eventually co-directed with Laughton in the title role, and with music by Eisler. The play premiered on July 30, 1947, at the Coronet Theatre inBeverly Hills.[17] On October 30, 1947, Losey accompanied Brecht to Washington D.C. for Brecht's appearance before theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[17] Brecht left the US the following day. Losey went on to stageGalileo, again with Laughton in the title role, in New York City where it opened on December 7, 1947, at theMaxine Elliott Theatre. More than 25 years later Losey, in exile in England, directed a film version of Brecht's playGalileo (1975).
Losey's first feature film was a political allegory titledThe Boy with Green Hair (1947), starringDean Stockwell as Peter, a war orphan who is subject to ridicule after he awakens one morning to find his hair mysteriously turned green.
Seymour Nebenzal, the producer ofFritz Lang's classicM (1931), hired Losey to directa remake set in Los Angeles rather than Berlin. In the new version, released in 1951, the killer's name was changed from Hans Beckert to Martin W. Harrow. Nebenzal's son Harold was associate producer of this version.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Losey maintained extensive contacts with people on the political left, including radicals and communists or those who would eventually become such. He had collaborated withBertolt Brecht and had a long association withHanns Eisler, both targets of HUAC's interest.[18] Losey had written to theImmigration and Naturalization Service in support of a resident visa for Eisler, who had many radical associations. They had collaborated on a "political cabaret" from 1937 to 1939, and Losey had invited Eisler to compose music for a short public-relations film that he had been commissioned to produce for presentation at the1939 New York World's Fair,Pete Roleum and His Cousins.[19]
Losey had also worked on theFederal Theatre Project, long a target of HUAC. Losey directed the playTriple-A Plowed Under, which been denounced by HUAC's antecedent, theDies Committee, as communist propaganda.[18] His Hollywood collaborators included a long list of other HUAC targets, includingDalton Trumbo andRing Lardner Jr.[18]
Losey's first wifeElizabeth Hawes worked with a wide range of communists and anticommunist liberals at the radical newspaperPM. After their divorce in 1944, she wrote about working as a union organizer just after World War II, where "one preferred the Communists to the Red-Baiters."[20] At some point, probably early in the 1940s, theFBI maintained dossiers on both Losey and Hawes, and that of Losey charged that he was aStalinist agent as of 1945.[18]
In 1946, Losey joined theCommunist Party USA. He later explained to a French interviewer:[18]
I had a feeling that I was being useless in Hollywood, that I'd been cut off from New York activity and I felt that my existence was unjustified. It was a kind of Hollywood guilt that led me into that kind of commitment. And I think that the work that I did on a much freer, more personal and independent basis for the political left in New York, before going to Hollywood, was much more valuable socially.
Losey was under a long-term contract withDore Schary atRKO whenHoward Hughes purchased the company in 1948 and began purging it of leftists. Losey later explained how Hughes tested employees to determine whether they had communist sympathies:[21]
I was offered a film calledI Married a Communist, which I turned down categorically. I later learned that it was a touchstone for establishing who was a "red": you offeredI Married a Communist to anybody you thought was a Communist, and if they turned it down, they were.
Hughes responded by holding Losey to his contract without assigning him any work.[18] In mid-1949, Schary persuaded Hughes to release Losey, who soon began working as an independent onThe Lawless forParamount Pictures.[18] Soon he was working on a three-picture contract withStanley Kramer. His name was mentioned by two witnesses before HUAC in the spring of 1951. Losey's attorney suggested arranging a deal with the committee for testimony in secret. Instead, Losey abandoned his work editingThe Big Night[22] and left for Europe while his ex-wife Louise departed for Mexico a few days later. HUAC took weeks to try unsuccessfully to serve them with a subpoena compelling their testimony.[18]
After more than a year working onStranger on the Prowl in Italy, Losey returned to the U.S. on October 12, 1952. He found himself unemployable:[18]
I was [in the United States] for about a month and there was no work in theatre, no work in radio, no work in education or advertising, and none in films, in anything. For one brief moment, I was going to do theArthur Miller playThe Crucible. Then they got scared because I had been named. So after a month of finding that there was no possible way in which I could make a living in this country, I left. I didn't come back for twelve years.... I didn't stay away for reasons of fear, it was just that I didn't have any money. I didn't have any work.
He returned briefly to Rome and settled in London on January 4, 1953.[18]
“As his many interviews reveal, Losey was an artist who thought long and hard about his work, a man of exceptional candor, as ready to judge some of his films harshly as to express his pleasure in others.” - Critics James Palmer and Michael Riley inThe Films of Joseph Losey (1993).[23]
Losey settled in Britain and worked as a director of genre films. His first British filmThe Sleeping Tiger (1954), anoir crime thriller, was made under the pseudonym of Victor Hanbury, because the stars of the film,Alexis Smith andAlexander Knox, feared being blacklisted by Hollywood in turn if it became known they had worked with him. It was financed by Nat Cohen at Anglo-Amalgamated who also financedThe Intimate Stranger (1956), where Losey carried a pseudonym as well.[8][24]
His films covered a wide range from theRegency melodramaThe Gypsy and the Gentleman (1958) to the gangster film for Cohen,The Criminal (1960).[25]
Losey was also originally slated to direct theHammer Films productionX the Unknown (1956), but after a few days' work the starDean Jagger refused to work with a supposedCommunist sympathiser and Losey was removed from the project. An alternative version is that Losey was replaced due to illness.[26][27] Losey was later hired by Hammer Films to directThe Damned, a 1963 British science fiction film based on H.L. Lawrence's novel "The Children of Light".
In the 1960s, Losey began working with playwrightHarold Pinter, in what became a long friendship and initiated a successful screenwriting career for Pinter. Losey directed three enduring classics based on Pinter's screenplays:The Servant (1963),Accident (1967) andThe Go-Between (1971).[28]The Servant won threeBritish Academy Film Awards.Accident won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury award at the 1967Cannes Film Festival.[29]The Go-Between won theGolden Palm Award at the 1971Cannes Film Festival, four prizes at the 1972BAFTA awards, and Best British Screenplay at the 1972Writers' Guild of Great Britain awards.[30] Each of the three films examines the politics of class and sexuality in England at the end of the 19th century (The Go-Between) and in the 1960s. InThe Servant, a manservant facilitates the moral and psychological degradation of his privileged and rich employer.Accident explores male lust, hypocrisy and ennui among the educated middle class as twoOxford University tutors competitively objectify a student against the backdrop of their seemingly idyllic lives. InThe Go-Between, a young middle-class boy, the summer guest of an upper-class family, becomes the messenger for an affair between a working-class farmer and the daughter of his hosts.
Although Losey's films are generally naturalistic,The Servant's hybridisation of Losey's signatureBaroque style, film noir,naturalism andexpressionism, and bothAccident's andThe Go-Between's radicalcinematography, use ofmontage,voice over and musical score, amount to a sophisticated construction of cinematic time and narrative perspective that edges this work in the direction of neorealist cinema. All three films are marked by Pinter's sparse, elliptical and enigmatically subtextual dialogue, something Losey often develops a visual correlate for (and occasionally even works against) by means of dense and clutteredmise-en-scène and peripatetic camera work.
In 1966, Losey directedModesty Blaise, a comedy spy-fi film produced in the United Kingdom and released worldwide in 1966. Sometimes considered aJames Bond parody, it was based loosely on the popular comic stripModesty Blaise byPeter O'Donnell.'
Losey directedRobert Shaw andMalcolm McDowell in the British action filmFigures in a Landscape (1970), adapted by Shaw from the novel byBarry England. The film was shot in various locations in Spain.
Losey also worked with Pinter onThe Proust Screenplay (1972), an adaptation ofA la recherche du temps perdu byMarcel Proust. Losey died before the project's financing could be assembled.
In 1975, Losey realized a long-planned film adaptation of Brecht'sGalileo released asLife of Galileo starringChaim Topol.Galileo was produced as part of the subscription film series of theAmerican Film Theatre, but shot in the UK. In the context of this production, Losey also made a half-hour film based onGalileo's life.[citation needed]
Losey'sMonsieur Klein (1976) examined the day in Occupied France when Jews in and around Paris were arrested for deportation. He said he so completely rejected naturalism in film that in this case he divided his shooting schedule into three "visual categories": Unreality, Reality and Abstract.[7] He demonstrated a facility for working in the French language andMonsieur Klein (1976) gaveAlain Delon as star and producer one of French cinema's earliest chances to highlight the background to the infamousVel' d'Hiv Roundup of French Jews in July 1942.
In 1979, Losey filmedMozart's operaDon Giovanni, shot inVilla La Rotonda and the Veneto region of Italy; thisfilm was nominated for severalCésar Awards in 1980, including Best Director.
“David Caute’s careful biography showed Losey’s creativity growing out of a cheerless vanity that kept few friends. He seemed determined to give others no chance of liking him.”- Film historian David Thomson inThe New Biographical Dictionary of Film (2002).[31]
In 1964, Losey toldThe New York Times: "I'd love to work in America again, but it would have to be just the right thing."[8] He told an interviewer the year before he died that he was not bitter about being blacklisted: "Without it I would have three Cadillacs, two swimming pools and millions of dollars, and I'd be dead. It was terrifying, it was disgusting, but you can get trapped by money and complacency. A good shaking up never did anyone any harm."[6]
Dartmouth College, his alma mater, awarded Losey an honorary degree in 1973.[6] In 1983, theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison did the same.[6]
Losey married four times and divorced thrice. He marriedElizabeth Hawes on July 24, 1937.[32] They had a son,Gavrik Losey, in 1938, but divorced in 1944.[33][34] Gavrik helped with the production on some of his father's films. Gavrik's two sons are film directorsMarek Losey andLuke Losey.
Later in 1944, Losey married Louise Stuart; they divorced in 1953.[34] From 1956 to 1963, Losey was married to British actressDorothy Bromiley.[34] They had a son, Joshua Losey, born on July 16, 1957, who became an actor. On September 29, 1970, Losey married Patricia Mohan inKing's Lynn,Norfolk, shortly after finishing shootingThe Go-Between.[35] Patricia Losey went on to adaptLorenzo Da Ponte's opera libretto for Losey'sDon Giovanni andNell Dunn's play forSteaming.
He died from cancer at his home inChelsea, London, on June 22, 1984, aged 75, four weeks after completing his last film.[6][34]
InGuilty by Suspicion,Irwin Winkler's 1991 film about theHollywood blacklist,McCarthyism, and the activities of theHouse Un-American Activities Committee,Martin Scorsese plays an American filmmaker named "Joe Lesser" who leaves Hollywood for England rather than face HUAC investigations. The fictional director played by Scorsese is based on Joseph Losey.
Short films
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1939 | Pete Roleum and His Cousins[36] | |
| 1941 | Youth Gets a Break | |
| A Child Went Forth | Also producer and writer | |
| 1945 | A Gun in His Hand | |
| 1947 | Leben des Galilei | |
| 1955 | A Man on the Beach | |
| 1959 | First on the Road | Promotional short for the launch of theFord Anglia 105E |
Feature films
| Year | Title | Contributed to | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Writer | Producer | |||
| 1948 | The Boy with Green Hair | Yes | No | No | Feature directorial debut |
| 1950 | The Lawless | Yes | No | No | |
| 1951 | M | Yes | No | No | |
| The Prowler | Yes | No | No | ||
| The Big Night | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| 1952 | Stranger on the Prowl | Yes | No | No | First non-American film |
| 1954 | The Sleeping Tiger | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1956 | The Intimate Stranger | Yes | No | No | |
| 1957 | Time Without Pity | Yes | No | No | |
| 1958 | The Gypsy and the Gentleman | Yes | No | No | |
| 1959 | Blind Date | Yes | No | No | |
| 1960 | The Criminal | Yes | No | No | |
| 1962 | Eva | Yes | No | No | |
| 1963 | The Damned | Yes | No | No | |
| The Servant | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| 1964 | King & Country | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1966 | Modesty Blaise | Yes | No | No | |
| 1967 | Accident | Yes | No | No | |
| 1968 | Boom | Yes | No | No | |
| Secret Ceremony | Yes | No | No | ||
| 1970 | Figures in a Landscape | Yes | No | No | |
| 1971 | The Go-Between | Yes | No | No | |
| 1972 | The Assassination of Trotsky | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1973 | A Doll's House | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1975 | The Romantic Englishwoman | Yes | No | No | |
| Galileo | Yes | No | No | ||
| 1976 | Monsieur Klein | Yes | No | No | |
| 1978 | Roads to the South | Yes | No | No | |
| 1979 | Don Giovanni | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1982 | La Truite | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1985 | Steaming | Yes | No | No | |
| Year | Title | Venue | Notes | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1933 | Little Ol' Boy | Playhouse Theatre, New York | [37] | |
| 1934 | A Bride for the Unicorn | Brattleboro Theater, Cambridge | [38] | |
| Jayhawker | National Theatre, Washington, D.C. | [38] | ||
| Garrick Theatre, Philadelphia | [38] | |||
| Cort Theatre | [37] | |||
| Gods of the Lightning | Peabody Theater, Boston | [38] | ||
| 1935 | Waiting for Lefty | Moscow | [38] | |
| 1936 | Hymn to the Rising Sun | Fourteenth Street Theatre, New York | [38] | |
| Conjur Man Dies | Lafayette Theatre, New York | [37] | ||
| Triple-A Plowed Under | Biltmore Theatre, New York | Federal Theatre Project production | [37] | |
| Who Fights This Battle? | Delaney Hotel, Hoosick | [38] | ||
| 1938 | Sunup to Sundown | Hudson Theatre, New York | [37] | |
| 1947 | The Great Campaign | Princess Theatre, New York | [37] | |
| 1947-48 | Life of Galileo | Maxine Elliott's Theatre, New York | [39] | |
| 1954 | The Wooden Dish | Phoenix Theatre, London | [40] | |
| 1955 | The Night of the Ball | Noël Coward Theatre, London | [38] | |
| 1975 | Waiting for Lefty | Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover | [38] | |
| 1980 | Boris Godunov | Paris Opera | [38] |
| Institution | Year | Category | Title | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Academy Film Award | 1968 | Outstanding British Film | Accident | Nominated |
| 1972 | Best Direction | The Go-Between | Nominated | |
| Cahiers du Cinéma | 1964 | Top 10 Films of the Year | The Servant | 10th place |
| Cannes Film Festival | 1962 | Palme d'Or | Eva | Nominated |
| 1966 | Modesty Blaise | Nominated | ||
| 1967 | Accident | Nominated | ||
| 1971 | The Go-Between | Won | ||
| 1976 | Monsieur Klein | Nominated | ||
| César Awards | 1977 | Best Film | Won | |
| Best Director | Won | |||
| 1980 | Best Film | Don Giovanni | Nominated | |
| Best Director | Nominated | |||
| Nastro d'Argento | 1966 | Best Foreign Director | King & Country | Nominated |
| The Servant | Won | |||
| 1972 | The Go-Between | Nominated | ||
| New York Film Critics Circle | 1964 | Best Director | The Servant | Nominated |
| San Sebastián International Film Festival | 1954 | Golden Shell | The Sleeping Tiger | Nominated |
| Sant Jordi Awards | 1972 | Best Foreign Film | The Go-Between | Won |
| Taormina Film Fest | 1978 | Golden Charybdis | Roads to the South | Nominated |
| Venice Film Festival | 1962 | Golden Lion | Eva | Nominated |
| 1963 | The Servant | Nominated | ||
| 1964 | King & Country | Nominated | ||
| 1982 | La Truite | Nominated |
A number of published sources list this as the first film directed by Joseph Losey; however, Helen van Dongen recalls 'Joseph Losey was the producer ... It was I who made all the breakdowns and sketches for the changes in facial expressions and movement frame by frame'.
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