INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION ROUND-UP
_______________________________________________________________ ___________ _________ Verina Glaessner
BRITAIN Production on The Sex Pistols’ first feature, Anarchy in the UK, was suspended on the departure of director Russ Meyer after the film ran into financial problems. It has since found independent finance and will roll at some future, unspecified time. Meanwhile, Brian Eno is scoring Derek Jarman’s punk rock film. EMI’s belated follow up to Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, is shooting in Egypt and at Pinewood. John Guillermin directs, and the cast includes Peter Ustinov, Jane Birkin and Bette Davis. Alan Parker's first film after his success with Bugsy Malone is Midnight Express, produced by David Puttnam and Alan Marshall. Shooting on location in Malta and Greece, it features John Hurt, Bo Hopkins and Randy Quaid (for Columbia). Kevin Connor continues his line in monster films with Seven Cities to Atlantis (for EMI) with Cyd Charisse, Doug McClure and Peter Gilmore. It is being shot in Malta and Gozo with principal photography at Pinewood. Guy Hamilton directs another film version of an Alistair MacLean novel, F o rc e Ten F ro m N a v a rone, on location in Yugoslavia and at Shepperton. Robert Shaw, Franco Nero and Edward Fox are the stars. It is produced by Carl Foreman for Columbia. Ken Russell is directing Clouds of Glory, with David Warner and David Hemmings (for Granada Television). It is from a screenplay by Melvyn Bragg and is set in the Lake District. Clouds of Glory — the series title for three plays (all written by Bragg) about the poets and writers Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Thomas de Quincy — will be shot for te le v is io n . D avid W a rne r plays Wordsworth. Blake Edwards is in pre-production at Shepperton with Revenge of the Pink Panther. The biography of Agatha Christie, Agatha, wholly funded from the U.S. (Warner Brothers and First Artists), is on location in Harrogate and London. It features Vanessa Redgrave, Dustin Hoffman and Australia’s Helen Morse who has replaced Julie Christie in the cast. Among Lord Lew G rade’s vast production list are Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, Stanley Donen’s Double Feature and a projected modern version of The Lone Ranger, The British Film Institute Production Board is funding Rapuntzel, a film made by Francine Winham and a group of women previously involved in the now defunct London Women’s Film Group. Using theatre and animation, the film examines the sexual politics of the fairytale.
UNITED STATES Brian de Palma directs The Fury (20th Century) from a John Farris script. It stars Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes and Carrie Snodgrass. John Milius directs his own script for Big Wednesday for Warners. His next project is a film of Marvel Conres’ C o n a n th e B a rb a ria n which will feature Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role. Mark Robson follows Earthquake with the Abraham P olonsky scrip te d " Avalanche Express. Based on a novel by Colin Forbes, it is being filmed in Europe.
240 — Cinema Papers, January
Murder on the Nile
Michael Hodges directs the inevitable Omen follow-up Damien — Omen 2 in Chicago. Stanley Mann co-wrote the script with Hodges and the film features William Holden, Jonathan Scott-Taylor and Lee Grant (for 20th Century). Burt Lancaster stars in Ted Post’s Go Tell It To The Spartans, a Vietnam war story based on the novel In c id e n t a t M u c Wa by Daniel Ford. Arthur Hiller starts shooting Stormy Women in New York in December. It’s about four women from different walks of life, and the film is scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni. Among a mixed bag of productions announced by the prolific Dino de Laurentiis are William Friedkin’s Big Stick Up at Brinks being made on a $1 0 million budget with Peter Falk; The Hurricane, a $15 million project which Roman Polanski is hopefully to direct; and an even more fabulously budgeted version of Flash Gordon. James Coburn plays the eye in a version of Dashiell Hammett’s The D a in C u rs e , called Private Eye. Alvin Rackoff directs King Solomon’s Treasure. American International predictably enter the Star Wars syndrome with Starcrash, directed by Lewis Cozzi from his own script. The stars are Carolyn Munro and Marjoe Gortner. Scott Jacoby and Randy Herman fe a tu re in the same c o m p an y’s California Dreamin’. Ivan Reitman, who produced and directed the notably grotesque Cannibal Girls, produces John Landis' National Lampoon’s Animal House for Universal. Sidney Lumet directs The Wiz (for Universal), another re-interpretation of the Wizard of Oz, shot on location in New York, with Diana Ross, Richard Pryor and Lena Horne.
Irvin Kershner directs Eyes with Faye Dunaway for Columbia. Jerry Jameson, of Airport ’77, directs The Day the Sun Died for an independent company. W olfm an Ja ck is c a s t in M ike McFarland’s Good Time Band for Mike McFarland Prods. Robert Rosenthal directs Malibu Beach fo r Crown In te rn a tio n a l. Paramount are producing American Hot Wax, the story of Alan Freed, the leading 1950s rock ’n’ roll DJ. _ Don Siegel is scheduled to direct I, Tom Horn for Steve McQueen’s Solar Productions. Georgina Spelvin, easily the best of the U.S. porno actresses, stars in the El Paso Wrecking Corp for Joe Gage Films. It is being shot in Southern California. Joseph McBride’s script of Blood and Guts is being produced for Independent Pictures/Quadrant Films. It is being directed by Paul Lynch and is shooting in Toronto.
FRANCE Claude Chabrol’s next project is Violette Lozieres for Gaumont. It stars Isabelle Huppert. The much acclaimed director Andre Techine is to shoot The Bronte Sisters with Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani and Marie France Pisier. Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gaullois is this director’s second costume drama (the first was Die Marquise von O ...). It has a $2 million budget (for Gaumont). Nagisa Oshima’s Phantom Love will be made on the Empire of the Senses model. It will be shot in Japan and processed in France. Produced by Anatole Dauman, the film is about murder and guilt. Jacques Rivette continues his Duelle-Noroit ‘phantom ladies’ series, with Merry Go Round (for Sunchild Productions). . Joseph Losey directs Roads to the South, the story of a Spanish refugee who returns after the democratization of his country. The script is by Jorge Semprun (Tinacra Films). Francois Truffaut plays the lead in his The Green Room (Carrosse Films). Serge Leroy directs Attention, the Children Are Watching, a remake of the classic Vittorio de Sica film for Alain Delon’s Adel Productions. Delon stars.
Ernest Tidyman is scripting Giants on the Road, for Orphee Arts — a film about trucks. Michel Piccoli stars in Alan Bridges’ A Girl in Blue Velvet, which is set in 1930s Cannes (for Orphee Arts).
ITALY Sergio Citti starts filming Something Blonde with Monica Vitti (for Parva) in November. Gillo Pontecorvo directs Operation Ogro, an Italian Canadian co production. Pierre Clementi and Fernando Rey star in another adaptation of de Sade’s P h ilo s o p h y o f th e B e d ro o m (for Sword) in Roma and Altamira, Spain. Dino Risi is working on an untitled project, starring Ugo Tognazzi and Ornella Muti (for Dean). Miklos Jancso is to direct a film for RAI on World War I. Francesco Rosi begins shooting his adaptation of Carlo Levi’s C h r is t S to p p e d A t E b o li in March. S e rgio S o llim a c o n tin u e s the Sandokan vogue with My Name is Sandokan, which stars Kabir Bedi. It’s being shot on location in Sri Lanka (for Rizzoli Film). Monte Heilman is producing an Italian Spanish co-production, China 9 — Liberty 37, starring Fabio Testi and Warren Oates, It will be directed by Tony Brandt.
SWEDEN Jorn Donner directs a film based on Maeta Tikkanan’s feminist novel M e n C a n n o t B e R a p e d . It is co-scripted by Jeannette Donner.
CANADA David Cronenberg, who followed his two remarkable experimental features Stereo and Crimes of the Future with an encouragingly uncompromising and h ig h ly s u c c e s s fu l tra n s itio n to commercial features with The Parasite Murders and Rabid, is currently working on The Brood. This, is a more distanced and reasoned approach to the themes that have tended to haunt his work and is, he claims, largely autobiographical but “ nonetheless horrible for being so” .
HONG KONG Michael Hui, the vastly successful producer/writer/director/performer, is filming a comedy about a film extra with am bitions. It’s a Golden Harvest production. The company is still attempting to resurrect something from the footage of Bruce Lee’s unfinished Game of Death. Robert Clouse has joined the cast which includes Gig Young, Dean Jagger and Hugh O’Brian.
BELGIUM Harry Kumel, who will be remembered for the moody evocative qualities of M. Hawarden, Daughters of Darkness, and the scandalously undershown Malpertuis (from the Jean Ray novel), is filming The Lost Paradise — his first film in several years — for Pierre Films from a script by himself and Kees Sengers. It stars Willeke van Ammelrooy, Hugo van den Berghe and Bert Andre, and is a melee of rural politics and haur\ting romance: “The rebirth of a love betrayed that has to fight the intrigues of low village minds, of small town demagogy and of large-scale scandals. Very large scale indeed.”