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Iris Murdoch on Screen
The National Film Theatre, August 2002
(For dates and times see listings below)
South Bank, Waterloo, London, SE1 8XT.
Box Office: 020 7928 3232
www.bfi.org.uk/nft
Iris Murdoch's novels have been described as psychological detective stories, with their complex emotional relationships and highly structured plots. These qualities, together with Murdoch's great human sympathy, would seem to make them ideal for adaptation to the screen. Indeed, Murdoch herself was surprised and sorry that so few of her novels made the transition to the screen. Directors such as Tony Richardson and Bo Widerberg and actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward showed interest, but their plans came to nothing.
The BBC's well-cast dramatisations of two of Murdoch's early novels are being screened as part of this season, together with the only feature film yet adapted from her work, A Severed Head. There's also another opportunity to see last year's Oscar winning Iris.
-Ros Cranston
A Severed Head
Sat 3 Aug 8.40 NFT2; Sat 10 Aug 3.50 NFT2
Not only often appallingly funny, but brilliantly verbatim accounts of over-cultivated people in an ethical mess.' The high speed plot combines with a magnificent cast, including Ian Holm as a harassed wine merchant juggling a wife and mistresses, though it's Claire Bloom's Oxford lecturer who steals the show.
UK 1970/Dir Dick Clement. With Richard Attenborough, Lee Remick. 98 mins.
Iris
Sat 17 Aug 8.45 NFT1; Sun 18 Aug 6.20 NFT1;
Mon 19 Aug 6.15 NFT2 (with hearing impaired subtitles); Wed 21 Aug 8.45 NFT1
Kate Winslet and Judi Dench beautifully capture the wit and warmth of the younger and older Murdoch. The film switches between Oxford in the 50s during the courtship of Murdoch and John Bayley to the painful final years of her life when she suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
UK US 2001/Dir Richard Eyre. With Hugh Bonneville, Jim Broadbent. 90 mins.
An Unofficial Rose - Parts 1 & 2
Sun 11 Aug 6.20 NFT2; Tues 27 Aug 6.15 NFT2
An Unofficial Rose - Parts 3 & 4
Sun 11 Aug 8.30 NFT 2; Tue 27 Aug 8.40 NFT2
Two unexpected mourners attend the funeral of Fanny, the wife of Hugh Peronett, and a complex web of relationships and desires begins to unravel. Hugh (Maurice Denham), as Hugh, hankers after his former mistress, while his son, Randall (John Woodvine), plans to leave his long-suffering wife and has asked his father to fund his elopement.
BBC tx 28.12.74-18.1.75/Dir Basil Coleman. With Ann Bell, Charles Lloyd Pack 105/100 mins.
Joint ticket available £9.30, conc £7.20
The Bell - Parts 1 & 2
Tue 20 Aug 6.30 NFT2; Fri 30 Aug 6.20 NFT2
The Bell - Parts 3 & 4
Tue 20 Aug 8.50 NFT2; Fri 30 Aug 8.40 NFT2
'Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason.' This adaptation of Murdoch's 1958 novel set in a lay community adjoining a convent has Tessa Peake Jones leading a fine cast, in a compassionate depiction of the struggle between sex and religious belief.
BBC tx 13.1.82 ñ 3.2.82/ Dir Barry Davis. With Ian Holm, Michael Maloney, Kenneth Cranham, Trudie Styler. 105/110 mins.
Joint ticket available £9.30, conc £7.20
All tickets cost £7.20, concs £5.50 unless stated otherwise. NFT members enjoy £1 off all tickets.
FIRST IRIS MURDOCH SOCIETY CONFERENCE
(organized in conjunction with Kingston University)
Date: Saturday 14th September 2002
Time: 9:30 am to 4:30 pm
Venue: St Anne's College, Oxford
Speakers:
- Peter J Conradi, Iris Murdoch's biographer on "Love and Power:
Writing Iris Murdoch's Biography";
- Bran Nicol (University of Portsmouth), author of "Iris Murdoch: the
Retrospective Fiction", on "Iris Murdoch and the Art of Disguise" which will
explore the question of authorship in Murdoch's work in the light of Peter
Conradi's biography;
- Priscilla Martin (St Edmund Hall, Oxford), will explore the treatment of time in "The Bell" and
other novels;
- Alison Denham (St Anne's, Oxford), on "Envisioning the Good:Iris Murdoch's Psychology of
Value.
For further information: Jane Slaymaker
tel: 01306 730967
fax 01306 731529
e-mail: jane_ slaymaker @ hotmail .com
Booking information:
- £25 for the day ( includes tea/coffee/buffet lunch)
- student concessions £15
- Send a cheque payable to "The Iris Murdoch Society" to :
Jane Slaymaker
Wildwood Cottage
Felday Glade
Holmbury St Mary
Dorking
Surrey
RH5 6PG
- Conversations with Iris Murdoch
Gillian Dooley
University of South Carolina Press
Publication: Spring 2003
"It will contain 22 interviews dating from 1962 to the last years of her life, including major interviews by Frank Kermode, Christopher Bigsby, Michael Bellamy, Jo Brans, Barbara Stevens Heusel, Jeffrey Meyers and Jonathan Miller." - Gillian Dooley (Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia).
- Iris Murdoch's Paradoxical Novels: Thirty Years of Critical Reception
Barbara Stevens Heusel
Boydell & Brewer
Publication: AUGUST 2001 (Hardback)
ISBN: 1571130896
Full Description
Modern Fiction Studies
A new edition of the journal devoted to Iris Murdoch. Hyperlink.
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None current: please inform
Iris Murdoch's Paradoxical Novels: Thirty Years of Critical Reception
BARBARA STEVENS HEUSEL
Collecting the major critics who have described for the last third of a century the phenomena of Iris Murdoch's fiction, this study analyzes the stories her critics tell about her artistic processes. Now that Alzheimer's Disease has tragically removed her from the literary scene, it is time to examine her critical reception. There are three major questions at the heart of this reception: to what extent is she a philosophical novelist, a realistic novelist, a postmodern novelist? These three questions form the structure of the present study. The book also deals with the question of the status of Murdoch's reputation in the literary world. This is an intriguing question since Murdoch's works have been compared to those of Shakespeare, and her name has been put forward for the Nobel Prize in literature. Her works have been translated into 29 languages, and Harold Bloom says of her: "no other contemporary British novelist seems to me of Murdoch's eminence." This study is the first full-length work to deal with the literary criticism on Murdoch.
BARBARA STEVENS HEUSEL is associate professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri.
c.197pp, 9 6inches, 1 57113 089 6, c.$55.00/35.00 Great Britian pounds, expected publication: August 2001
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