Clive Donner
Clive Donner started out as an editor and graduated to directing non-fiction shorts, television and features in the late 1950s.
Introducing this videotaped interview for the University of London Audiovisual Centre's In Conversations series, Ian Cameron considers Donner's his youth-focused feature films, exploring how they deal with issues of class in British society and how those issues evolved throughout the 1960s. Donner defines his approach as being to examine class structure in a 'non-Woodfall way' (a reference to the film studio set up by director Tony Richardson and writer John Osborne, which was particularly associated with 'social realist' films focused on contemporary working-class life). He categorises the usual social realist approach as being about 'us and them'. There are also thematic parallels between these film in their reflection on growing up and finding your place in the world.
Donner talks at length about making What's New Pussycat? (1965), which he describes as 'like directing Dunkirk', due to Woody Allen's anxieties about performing in front of the camera.
Donner comes across as a thoughtful filmmaker who believed in an egalitarian society and extended this into the presentation of Britishness in his films. He also appears to have been a sensitive director of actors, and adept at juggling their competing needs.
The early tape format used to record this interview is unfortunately poor quality, with some drop-out and sound issues.
Behind the Screen
Get inside the movies with these illuminating insights from the people who make them.
The movies can make us believe in magic, but what they really serve up is illusion: pull back the curtain and what's revealed is a vast enterprise of imagination, skill and invention. When it comes to feature films, a director may preside over a legion of hundreds of actors, artists and technicians.
To outsiders - that's most of us - this complex world can seem mystifying and impenetrable. So an insider's perspective is worth its weight in gold, as these rare interviews and talks by filmmakers and performers show.
20 videos in this collection
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The Set of Far from the Madding Crowd
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Robin Williams (Kelly)
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Clapperboard [24/11/80]
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MOMI Indian Cinema Interviews
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Ismail Merchant and James Ivory
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Ben Kingsley and Buzz Goodbody
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Georges Melies
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Clive Donner
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Mike Leigh and Les Blair
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Jill Craigie / Rosamond Lehmann
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Clapperboard North West [16/11/79]
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David Lean A Life in Film
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MOMI Presentation by Terry Gilliam
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The Electric Paradise
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War, Peace and Pictures: The Films of Kay Mander
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Anthony Daniels (Kelly)
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Gerry Meets... Maureen O'Hara
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