Peter Greenaway- The Brilliant British Director

1. Peter Greenaway- The Brilliant British Director

2. Background & Personal Information • Born April 5, 1942 in Newport, Gwent, Wales, UK. • Father was an ornithologist, mother was a teacher. • Studied painting and art history at Walthamstow College of Art (Waltham Forest College) located in North-East London, England. • Trained originally as painter rather than a filmmaker, but his first exhibition indicated interest that led him into editing film at the Central Office of Information. • Married in 1969 but divorced in 1999 • Two daughters • Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com

3. Career • Director, screenwriter, film editor, and painter. • British Film Institute – caretaker starting in 1965. • British Government Central Office – director and editor of documentaries (1965-76). • First exhibition of paintings at Lords Gallery: London, 1964. • Artwork has been displayed all over the world • Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com

4. Awards/Honors • Won 20 Film Awards, Nominated for 19 Film Awards • Won 2014 BAFTA Film Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema • Two Hugo Awards • British Film Institute Award • Melbourne Film Festival Award • Sydney Film Festival Award • Cannes Film Festival Award • Artistic Merit Award • Golden Palm Award • Nominated for four Cannes International Film Festival Awards, won one • And many more… Peter Greenaway Awards- IMDb Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com

5. Films • The Falls (1980) • Zandra Rhodes documentary(1981) • The Belly of an Architect (1987) • The Draughtsman’s Contract (1987) • The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989/1990) • Prospero’s Books (1991) • The Pillow Book (1996) • Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012) • Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com

6. Greenaway’s Works • Marcia Pally article: Term “intertextuality” (the shaping of a text’s meaning by another text) can’t describe his films. • Films are normally chaotic. • “If Greenaway sees culture as man’s attempt to order chaos, then cinema is Greenaway’s way of ordering culture.” (Pally, 4). • Talks about the women in his work. • Pally says that when it comes to women, Greenaway “fatalistic, as if we are only as good as our genes,” (37). • He also tends to overestimate female power: in three out of five of his features, women kill their husbands. • Pally says that for the first time, a woman acts on behalf of civilization. An example of this would be The Cook, in which Georgina finishes off her husband after making him eat a bite of her lover. • She Kills for justice and to make peace over all the mayhem. • Death is also a large theme that Greenaway focuses on: • Death and animals • Death and landscape • Death and architecture • Death and sex • Death and food (cannibalism)

7. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover • Arguably the best of Greenaway’s films. • Was nominated for: • Best Film and won Greenaway Best Director in the 1989 Catalonian International Film Festival; the Fantasporto International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film in 1990; the Independent Spirit Award in 1991; and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film in 1999 • Includes themes such as aestheticism, cannibalism, consumerism and sadism. • Article by Ruth Johnston states that this movie is a critique of consumer society. • Critics have questioned its political impact • Critic Leonard Quart dismisses the film’s politics as “too literal and facile…” (19). • Even though the movie “means to have political and social implications…its real distinction lies in its form,” (19). • Karin Badt’s interview with Peter Greenaway explains that the movie had a structured story. • 8 sections of a menu, something happening within each section; settings were color-coordinated; “pastiche of eras gripped the eye as a patchwork of costume, painting, and furniture…” (54). • Wanted to know what would happen to the wife and her lover; movie ended with actual cannibalistic sacrifice. • Was asked about his politics and subtle critique of the bourgeoisie in this film.

8. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover cont’d • Article by Leonard Quart: “What accounts for the success of [the film]…is that, on its surface, the film is a shocking work. • What makes it shocking? • Being smeared with feces; explicit sex and nudity; sadistic beatings and mutilation; murder; and to top it all off, the “gourmet cannibalism,” (45). • Also mentions Margaret Thatcher’s love of materialism. • “Viewed as a political parable…Greenaway states the The Cook…is suffused with his ‘anger and passion about the terrifying pejoratives done by this wretched Mrs. Thatcher,” (46). • So in political terms, Albert, a man who believes that “dining exquisitely each night on quail and profiteroles will make up for his days of extortion, pimping, and street brutalities,” (Pally, 4) is supposed to be one of Mrs. Thatcher’s more terrifying success stories. • He “mispronounces the entrees on the menu, and is relentlessly and amorally attuned to the world of avarice and crass materialism that is Thatcher’s legacy,” (46).

9. Badt, Karin. "Peter Greenaway Holds Court: An Interview at the Venice Film Festival." Film Criticism 29.2 2004/2005. 53- 66. Web. 1 Apr 2014. • Johnston, Ruth D. "The Staging of the Bourgeois Imaginary in "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover"." Cinema Journal 41.2 (2002): 19-40. Web. 1 Apr 2014. • Pally, Marcia. "Order vs. Chaos." Cinéaste 18.3 (1991): 3-5, 37. Web. 1 Apr 2014. • Quart, Leonard. "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover by KeesKasander; Pete Greenaway." Cinéaste 18.1 (1990): 45-47. Web. 1 Apr 2014. • Encyclopedia.com • IMDb.com • Fink, Beatrice. "Sadeansavouries in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover." Paragraph 23.1 (2000): 98- 106. Web. 1 Apr 2014. Works Cited Works Consulted