Brian McFarlane

Brian McFarlane’s latest book is Four from the Forties: Arliss, Crabtree, Knowles and Huntington, Manchester: MUP, 2018. He has had three overlapping careers, as teacher, academic, and writer. He is the author or editor of over twenty books and hundreds of articles and reviews on film and literature and related matters. He co-edited The Oxford Companion to Australian Film and was compiler, editor and chief author of The Encyclopedia of British Film. His most recent books include: Twenty British Films: A guided tour, Double-Act: The remarkable lives and careers of Googie Withers and John McCallum, and The Never-Ending Brief Encounter. He is currently serving as Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology and as Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University.

'J.M. Coetzee and Philip Roth on Screen' by Brian McFarlane

June 2009, no. 312 • 01 June 2009

‘It wasn’t like that in the book’ is one of the commonest and most irritating responses to film versions of famous novels. Adaptation of literature to film seems to be a topic of enduring interest at every level, from foyer gossip to the most learned exegesis. Sometimes, it must be said, the former is the more entertaining, but this is no place for such frivolity. There are two contrasting ... (read more)

Brian McFarlane reviews 'People of the Book' by Geraldine Brooks

February 2008, no. 298 • 01 February 2008

‘I wanted to give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, protected it. I wanted it to be a gripping narrative, even suspenseful.’ So says Hanna Heath, protagonist of Geraldine Brooks’s latest novel, about her search through time and place for the history of ‘the Sarajevo Haggadah’, the ‘Book’ of the title. She is accustomed to writing schola ... (read more)

Brian McFarlane reviews 'Dirt Music' by Tim Winton

November 2001, no. 236 • 01 November 2001

Talk about unlikely associations. My first response to the opening chapter of Tim Winton’s latest novel was how its sense of a life at a standstill, awaiting some new impulse, reminded me of Jane Austen’s Emma. Winton’s protagonist, Georgie Jutland, with a string of unsatisfactory relationships behind her and bored with her present bloke, Jim Buckridge, her useful life as a nurse now well in ... (read more)

Brian McFarlane reviews 'Performing Hamlet: Actors in the modern age' by Jonathan Croall

January-February 2019, no. 408 • 26 December 2018

‘It is arguably the most famous play on the planet’, writes Jonathan Croall in his introduction to this absorbing study of how the play and its eponym have gripped the imagination across the ages – and, as far as this book is concerned, particularly across the last seventy years. Whether for actor or director, Hamlet has always been ‘a supreme challenge’, making huge demands on those bri ... (read more)

Peterloo

ABR Arts • 20 November 2018

What I’ve come to expect of a new Mike Leigh film is, above all, the unexpected. His first feature, Bleak Moments (1971), of which there were quite a few in that contemporary study of urban, lower-middle class life, made him a potent force in British film. Think of Naked (1993) and Secrets & Lies (1996), unnerving studies of difficult relationships that almost re-defined realism. Then came T ... (read more)

Breath

ABR Arts • 01 May 2018

In Simon Baker’s film, there is a visually stunning moment – one among many – of a giant curving wave on the verge of breaking that recalls the Japanese artist Hokusai’s famous ‘The Great Wave of Kanagawa’. What these two images share is the sense of rapturous beauty that doesn’t underestimate the challenge it offers. It seems appropriate to start on this note as the cinematography ( ... (read more)

Brian McFarlane reviews 'Anthony Powell: Dancing to the music of time' by Hilary Spurling

January–February 2018, no. 398 • 21 December 2017

Readers of this review are warned that they are in the presence of an addict. Having read Anthony Powell’s monumental twelve-volume Dance to the Music of Time three times, I had been trying not to succumb to a fourth. Then along comes Hilary Spurling’s brilliant biography and will power has suffered total defeat. Anyone who has read Spurling’s magisterial ‘lives’ of, among others, Henri ... (read more)

Darkest Hour

ABR Arts • 08 January 2018

Who knows why, but there have been at least three films in recent months focusing on the Dunkirk evacuation: Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest, Christopher Nolan’s magisterial Dunkirk. and now Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. Unsurprisingly in view of this, we have also seen a lot of Winston Churchill on our screens. It is a role that attracts formidable acting talents. Wright’s film juggles the pers ... (read more)

Brian McFarlane reviews 'Balancing Acts: Behind the scenes at the National Theatre' by Nicholas Hytner

November 2017, no. 396 • 27 October 2017

One of the most appropriate titles since Pride and Prejudice, Balancing Acts adroitly captures the drama and appeal of Nicholas Hytner’s account of his twelve years as director of London’s National Theatre. There have been several different takes on this often-controversial site of some of the world’s most riveting theatrical fare. Previous directors Peter Hall and Laurence Olivier have both ... (read more)

My Cousin Rachel

ABR Arts • 02 June 2017

Does anyone read Daphne du Maurier (1907–89) these days? An immensely popular novelist for some decades, she was much filmed, for screens large and small, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock, who filmed Jamaica Inn and Rebecca in 1939 and 1940 respectively, and, even more famously, The Birds in 1963. Clearly there was plenty to attract filmmakers to her work. As one who had not read her for severa ... (read more)