The Romantic Englishwoman
The Romantic Englishwoman | |
---|---|
original film poster | |
Directed by | Joseph Losey |
Produced by | Daniel M. Angel |
Written by |
Tom Stoppard Thomas Wiseman |
Starring |
Michael Caine Glenda Jackson Helmut Berger |
Music by | Richard Hartley |
Cinematography | Gerry Fisher |
Edited by | Reginald Beck |
Distributed by | Fox-Rank |
Release dates |
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Running time | 115 min |
Language | English |
The Romantic Englishwoman is a 1975 British film directed by Joseph Losey. It stars Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson, Helmut Berger, and marks the feature-length screen debut for Kate Nelligan. The screenplay was written by Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman.
Caine plays a successful English novelist whose discontented wife, played by Jackson, decides to take a holiday to Germany in order to 'find herself'. There she meets a mysterious young man, played by Berger, in an elevator which initiates an often bizarre, but extremely mature examination of desire, responsibility and the nature of love.
The film was shown at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.[1]
Plot
Elizabeth, bored wife of a successful pulp writer in England, leaves husband and child and runs away to the German town of Baden-Baden. There she meets Thomas, who claims to be a poet but whom viewers know to be a petty thief, conman, drug courier and gigolo. Though the two are briefly attracted to each other, she returns home. He, hunted by gangsters for a drug consignment he has lost, follows her to England. Lewis, highly suspicious of his wife, invites the young man to stay with them and act as his secretary. Initially resenting the presence of the handsome stranger, Elizabeth one night starts an affair and the two run away with no money to the south of France. Lewis follows them, he in turn being followed by the gangsters looking for Thomas. At the end the gangsters reclaim Thomas, presumably for execution, while Lewis reclaims Elizabeth.
Cast
- Glenda Jackson - Elizabeth Fielding
- Michael Caine - Lewis Fielding
- Helmut Berger - Thomas
- Michael Lonsdale - Swan, chief gangster
- Béatrice Romand - Catherine, nanny
- Kate Nelligan - Isabel, friend of the Fieldings
- Nathalie Delon - Miranda
- Reinhard Kolldehoff - Herman
- Anna Steele - Annie
- Marcus Richardson - David
- Julie Peasgood - New Nanny
- Frankie Jordan - Supermarket Cashier
- Tom Chatto - Neighbour
- Frances Tomelty - Airport Shop Assistant
References
- ↑ "Festival de Cannes: The Romantic Englishwoman". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-05-04.