Shared Top Border

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

  WebTSPDT

[ Home ] [ Directors A-L ] [ Directors M-Z ] [ 1,000 Greatest Films ] [ 21st Century ] [ Film Noir ] [ Recommended Viewing ] [ About ] [ Links ] [ aStore ]
 
Joseph Losey  

TSPDT Rating

Director / Producer / Screenwriter
1909 - 1984
Born January 14, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA
Key Production Countries: UK, USA 
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Thriller, Film Noir, Romantic Drama
Key Collaborators: Reginald Beck (Editor), Dirk Bogarde (Leading Player), Norman Priggen (Producer), Alexander Knox (Leading Character Player), Gerry Fisher (Cinematographer), Reginald Mills (Editor), John Dankworth (Composer), Richard MacDonald (Production Designer), Stanley Baker (Leading Player), Harold Pinter (Screenwriter/Character Player)
Highly Recommended: The Lawless (1949), The Prowler (1951), The Sleeping Tiger (1954)
Recommended: The Boy with Green Hair (1948), Big Night (1951), The Criminal (1960), The Servant (1963), Accident (1967)
Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide[ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Senses of Cinema Article ] [ Senses of Cinema Article #2 ] [ Art and Culture Profile ] [ Film Comment Article (2004) ] [ Screen Online Biography ] [ Britmovie Biography ] [ Images Journal DVD Reviews ] [ Moving Image Source Article (2008) ]
Books: [ The Films of Joseph Losey ] [ Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life ] [ Joseph Losey (British Film Makers) ] [ Conversations with Losey ] [ The Cinema of Joseph Losey
DVD's: [ Amazon ]
1,000 Greatest Films: The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971)
250 Quintessential Noir Films: M (1951), The Prowler (1951)
 
The Lawless (1949)The Sleeping Tiger (1954)The Boy with Green Hair (1948)Accident (1967)
 
     
  "Like many directors, Losey seems more effective when he transcends conventions than when he avoids them altogether. Genre movies give him the distancing he needs to writhe expressively on the screen. By contrast, movies about Life and Time and The World seem to make him relatively subdued, functional, and impersonal." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)  
     
  "A victim of the McCarthy witch-hunts, Joseph Losey, who made several taut movies in Hollywood, was forced into exile in England, where he became a sharp observer of the social mores of his new home...He became part of the "new realism" movement of British cinema, although he developed a more baroque visual style using elaborate camera movements, shock angles, and dramatic set designs." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)  
     
  "Joseph Losey's career spanned five decades and included work in both theater and film. The early years of his life as a director were spent in the very different milieus of New Deal political theater projects and the paranoia of the Hollywood studio system during the McCarthy era. He was blacklisted in 1951 and left America for England where he continued making films, at first under a variety of pseudonyms. His work is both controversial and critically acclaimed, and Losey has long been recognized as a director with a distinctive and highly personal cinematic style." - Janet E. Lorenz (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)  
     
  "Shadowy figures moving through an indistinct landscape describe the best films of Losey. He creates atmospheres of paranoia, fear, alienation, and disillusionment like nobody else in cinema today." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "Films can illustrate our existence...they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers." - Joseph Losey  
     
 
 
 

[ Home ] [ Directors A-L ] [ Directors M-Z ] [ 1,000 Greatest Films ] [ 21st Century ] [ Film Noir ] [ Recommended Viewing ] [ About ] [ Links ] [ aStore ]
[ Recommended Reading Archives ] [ The Shooting Gallery ]
 
Last updated: 08/07/2008 02:28 AM.  Contact Us: mymansyd@hotmail.comThis website is best viewed with Internet Explorer, and at 1024 x 768 pixels.
©2002-2006 They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
"A film is a petrified fountain of thought." - Jean Cocteau   "If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed." - Stanley Kubrick