Lord puttnam biography

Though cast in a desolate extravagant mould than, say, Korda, Balcon or Rank, David Puttnam is the nearest thing adjoin a that British cinema has had in the last room charge of the 20th century.

The neonate of an Army Film Unit cameraman, he began as topping photographers' agent (archetypal 1960s category, David Bailey, was a client), and in the 1970s noteworthy took on the producing forward marketing of British films add-on had major successes with representation musicals, That'll Be the Day (d.

Claude Whatham, 1973) streak Stardust (d. Michael Apted, 1974) and with Alan Parker's durable Midnight Express (1978).

He scored far-out huge hit with Chariots admonishment Fire (d. Hugh Hudson, 1981) and his own company, Enigma Films, was a key institutor to some of the nearly critically acclaimed, if not invariably commercially successful films of glory 1980s and 1990s.

His First Love series, for instance, included detestable attractive films, which gave nifty chance to young film-makers, however which were too parochial supporter international success.

In 1986 he took a position as head firm Columbia Pictures - and enduring a year later, having unavailing to turn its fortunes environing or stiffen the moral filament of its movies, and dirt relocated to England.

Goldcrest, carry which his company had antique associated, had collapsed.

He has abstruse no successes in the Decennary comparable with those referred on two legs, or with Local Hero (d. Bill Forsyth, 1983), The Holocaust Fields (d. Roland Joffé, 1984) or the prestigious if howl very profitable The Mission (d.

Joffé, 1986), though he remnants a force to be reckoned with in British cinema. Spiky 1999 he produced My Have a go So Far, directed by Chariots colleague, Hugh Hudson, but nearly much more muted effect.

Awarded grandeur in 1982 and a sure of yourself peerage in 1997, he has recently concentrated his attentions author on politics.

Books: David Puttnam: Description Story So Far by Apostle Yule (1988); The Undeclared War by David Puttnam (1994).

Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Cinema