John SchlesingerFilmography

Born:: February 16, 1926 in London, England
Occupation:: Director
Biography:: London-born director John Schlesinger worked steadily in both Hollywood and Britain in films, television, and on the stage. By exploring the complexities of human relationships, some of his films made it possible for later filmmakers to bring controversial subjects into the mainstream. He started...Read More

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The Next Best Thing

Crew: Director

Actors: Rupert Everett, Madonna, Benjamin Bratt, Michael Vartan, Josef Sommer

Synopsis: Best buddies Abbie (Madonna), a heterosexual yoga instructor, and Robert (Rupert Everett), a gay landscaper, cope with failed relationships, the approach of middle age, and the AIDS-related death of a mutual friend by sticking together as a "family of choice." Drunk one night, they have sex, and Read More

3/3/00
The Tale of Sweeney Todd

Crew: Director

Actors: Ben Kingsley, Joanna Lumley, Campbell Scott, Selina Boyack, John Kavanagh

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directed this razor-sharp retelling of the familiar Demon Barber legend, previously a Victorian penny-dreadful by Christopher Bond (The Story of Pearls), a stage play by George Dibdin-Pitt, a Tod Slaughter film (the 1936 Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street), and the Read More

1998
The Twilight of the Golds

Actors: Jennifer Beals, Jon Tenney, Faye Dunaway

Synopsis: Co-written by Jonathan Tolins and based on his original stage play, this Showtime drama concerns the possible role of genetics in determining sexual orientation. Suzanne Gold (Jennifer Beals), a medical-school dropout who manages a clothing store, marries genetic researcher Rob Stein (Jon Tenney) Read More

1997
The Celluloid Closet

Actors: Antonio Banderas, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Sharon Stone, Tony Curtis, Harvey Fierstein, Tom Hanks, Lily Tomlin, Gore Vidal

Synopsis: Based on Vito Russo's groundbreaking 1981 work of film history, The Celluloid Closet gathers clips from dozens of mainstream Hollywood films to illustrate how the movies have dealt explicitly -- and more importantly, implicitly -- with gay and lesbian themes. Layered between the clips are Read More

1995
Cold Comfort Farm

Crew: Director

Actors: Kate Beckinsale, Sheila Burrell, Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen, Ivan Kaye

Synopsis: Stella Gibbons' popular novel was published in 1932, and it has been adapted twice for British television, first as a miniseries in 1971, then by director John Schlesinger in 1995. That version proved so popular that it was released to theaters in the U.S. The heroine of Gibbons' story, Flora Read More

1995
Eye for an Eye

Crew: Director

Actors: Sally Field, Kiefer Sutherland, Ed Harris, Beverly D'Angelo, Joe Mantegna

Synopsis: An ordinary woman is driven to the point of violent revenge in this tense thriller. Karen McCann (Sally Field) is a suburban wife and working mother with two daughters. Karen's life is turned upside down when her 17-year-old daughter is raped and murdered, a crime she overhears on her cellular Read More

1995
The Innocent

Crew: Director

Actors: Isabella Rossellini, Anthony Hopkins, Campbell Scott, Ronald Nitschke, Hart Bochner

Synopsis: A young man unthinkingly throws himself into a world of political and sexual turmoil in John Schlesinger's adaptation of the novel by Ian McEwan. Leonard Markham (Campbell Scott) is a British communications and surveillance expert who is sent to Germany in the early 1950s, at the height of the Read More

1993
The Lost Language of Cranes

Actors: Brian Cox, Eileen Atkins, Angus MacFadyen, Corey Parker, René Auberjonois

Synopsis: Adaptation of the David Leavitt novel in which a young man agonizes over revealing his homosexuality to his parents, but doesn't realize that his father is also gay and is about to come out of the closet in a way that will destroy his marriage. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide Read More

1992
A Question of Attribution

Crew: Director

Actors: James Fox, Geoffrey Palmer, David Calder, Edward de Souza

Synopsis: James Fox stars as real-life British turncoat Anthony Blunt in A Question of Attribution. A highly respected art expert (he was Queen Elizabeth's personal art advisor), Blunt was also intimately involved in the Burgess-Maclean-Philby spy scandal of the 1950s. According to this 1992 adaptation of Read More

1992
Pacific Heights

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Keaton, Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, Mako, Nobu McCarthy, Dorian Harewood

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directed this upscale horror film about a landlord with the ultimate problem tenant. Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) and Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) are a middle class couple who lie on their financial statement in order to buy an old Victorian house in San Francisco, planning Read More

9/28/90
Un Ballo In Maschera

Crew: Stage Director

Actors: Plácido Domingo, Leo Nucci, Josephine Barstow

Synopsis: Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera is performed before a live audience in this 1990 production captured live at the Grobes Festspielhaus in Salzberg, Germany and starring Placido Domingo, Leo Nucci, and Josephine Barstow. The Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor performs under chorus Read More

1990
Madame Sousatzka

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Shirley MacLaine, Navin Chowdhry, Peggy Ashcroft, Twiggy, Shabana Azmi

Synopsis: Shirley MacLaine is Madame Sousatzka, an aging piano instructor of Russian extraction. Entrenched in a dilapidated London rooming house, the Madame gives lessons only to the most gifted. She does not stop at mere instruction; Sousatzka insists that her pupils conduct their lives in the same Read More

10/14/88
The Believers

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Robert Loggia, Jimmy Smits, Harley Cross

Synopsis: A police psychologist and his school-age son become embroiled in the machinations of a mysterious cult religion in this thriller from director John Schlesinger. After his wife is electrocuted in a freak accident, Dr. Cal Jamison (Martin Sheen) and his son, Chris (Harley Cross), move back to Read More

6/10/87
50 Years of Action!

Actors: Stanley Ackerman, Woody Allen, John A. Alonzo, Warren Beatty

Synopsis: One of the few documentaries to shine a spotlight on directors in Hollywood, this informative film sketches out the 50-year history of the Directors Guild of America. Formed at a time when people were still fighting for unions in the United States, the guild also had its problems when the studios Read More

1986
The Falcon and the Snowman

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, David Suchet, Lori Singer, Pat Hingle

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directed this fact-based drama - adapted from Robert Lindsay's bestseller of the same title -- about two Californians, friends since boyhood, who are caught selling government secrets to the Soviet Union. Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) is an all-American boy, studying for the Read More

1985
Brothers-In-Law

Synopsis: In this Stephen Cannell-produced pilot for a potential TV detective series, Mac Davis plays an ex-highway patrolman and Joseph Cortese an ex-trucker, related by marriage. Their wives were twin sisters--were, because in addition to all the other "ex" qualifications in their lives, Davis and Cortese Read More

1985
An Englishman Abroad

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Bates, Coral Browne, Charles Gray, Harold Innocent, Vernon Dobtcheff

Synopsis: The BBC-produced An Englishman Abroad was first offered to American viewers October 27, 1984, as part of PBS' Great Performances series. Alan Bates stars as Guy Burgess, the infamous British diplomat who spied for the Russians in the 1950s. Alan Bennett's teleplay re-creates the 1958 chance Read More

1983
Separate Tables

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Bates, Claire Bloom, Julie Christie, Irene Worth

Synopsis: British filmmaker John Schlesinger directs Separate Tables, a made-for-cable TV version of the Terence Rattigan plays Table By the Window and Table Number Seven. This 50-minute adaptation features Julie Christie and Alan Bates, each in a dual role. Set in a sleepy British town, a group of Read More

1983
Honky Tonk Freeway

Crew: Director

Actors: Beau Bridges, Hume Cronyn, Beverly D'Angelo, William Devane, George Dzundza

Synopsis: In this involved send-up of two American icons -- the automobile and the tourist trap -- the tiny Florida town of Ticlaw strives desperately for success after it has been denied the most essential of all tourist amenities -- a freeway exit. The insane, and mostly successful, schemes of the mayor (William Devane Read More

1981
Yanks

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Gere, Lisa Eichhorn, Vanessa Redgrave, William Devane, Rachel Roberts, Chick Vennera

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directs the war romance Yanks, based on the story by Colin Welland. Set in England at the end of WWII, the story concerns three American GIs and their affairs with British women of varying social status. The central romance concerns Sgt. Matt Dyson (Richard Gere) and Jean Moreton Read More

1979
Marathon Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller

Synopsis: Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) is an American secret agent who has been running interference between the U.S. government and escaped Nazi war criminal Szell (Laurence Olivier). Believing that Doc has stolen a valuable cache of gems, Szell emerges from his South American hiding place and heads for New Read More

1976
The Day of the Locust

Crew: Director

Actors: Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, William Atherton, Geraldine Page

Synopsis: The Day of the Locust is anything but a cheerful, light look at Hollywood in the '30s. It recreates both the town as well as the filmmaking world around which much of the town revolved with devastating accuracy. The movie tells the twin tales of talentless wannabe actress Faye Greener (Karen Read More

1975
Visions of Eight: The Olympics of Motion Picture Achievement

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This documentary of the 1972 Summer Olympics, held in Munich, is remarkable for bringing eight of the world's most notable film directors to work on it. They are: Milos Forman, Yuri Ozerov, Mai Zetterling, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch and John Schlesinger. Each Read More

1973
Sunday Bloody Sunday

Crew: Director

Actors: Cindy Burrows, Emma Schlesinger, Kimi Tallmadge, Patrick Thornberry, Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch, Murray Head, Peggy Ashcroft, Maurice Denham

Synopsis: This British film examines the choices individuals must make when confronted with a romantic relationship which is rewarding but does not offer them everything they want. In this sympathetic and psychologically precise drama, Alexandra Greville (Glenda Jackson), "Alex" to her friends, has a Read More

1971
Midnight Cowboy

Crew: Director

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro

Synopsis: Based on a James Leo Herlihy novel, British director John Schlesinger's first American film dramatized the small hopes, dashed dreams, and unlikely friendship of two late '60s lost souls. Dreaming of an easy life as a fantasy cowboy stud, cheerful Texas rube Joe Buck (Jon Voight) heads to New York Read More

1969
Far From the Madding Crowd

Crew: Director

Actors: Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Peter Finch, Alan Bates, Prunella Ransome

Synopsis: This 1967 version of Thomas Hardy's novel should have done better at the box office than it did, given the star power of Julie Christie and the visual and aural fidelity to its source material. Julie Christie plays Bathsheba Everdene, a country heiress who is loved by three different men: Terence Stamp Read More

1967
Darling

Crew: Director

Actors: Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey, Roland Curram, José-Luis de Villalonga

Synopsis: Julie Christie won an Oscar for her portrayal of a bored, amoral fashion model in this cynical melodrama from director John Schlesinger. Following the break-up of a teenage marriage, Diana Scott (Christie) drifts into the world of modeling and acting, where she meets a television news reporter Read More

1965
Billy Liar

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Finlay Currie, Ethel Griffies

Synopsis: Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) is known to his blue-collar British mates as Billy Liar because of his vivid imagination. This film version of the Keith Waterhouse-Willis Hall stage play "visualizes" some of Billy's more outrageous fabrications. He periodically escapes the drudgery of his job at a Read More

1963
A Kind of Loving

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Bates, June Ritchie, Thora Hird, Bert Palmer, James Bolam, Leonard Rossiter, Gwen Nelson

Synopsis: This well-wrought romance takes place in Lancashire, England in an industrial area where Vic (Alan Bates) and Ingrid (June Ritchie) work in the same factory. He is a draftsman who wants only a physical relationship with the woman of his choice (Ingrid), and she is a typist who wants true love with Read More

1962
The Last Man to Hang

Actors: Tom Conway, Elizabeth Sellars, Eunice Gayson, Freda Jackson, Hugh Latimer

Synopsis: Though his Hollywood career had petered out, Tom Conway continued to star in British films throughout the 1950s. In Last Man to Hang, Conway heads the cast as Roderick, who at present is on trial for his life. Accused of poisoning his wife, Roderick's fate rests in the hands of the jury, who must Read More

1956
Pursuit of the Graf Spee

Actors: John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Peter Finch, Ian Hunter, Jack Gwillim, Bernard Lee

Synopsis: Widely regarded as one of the best and most intelligent British war dramas of the 1950s, The Battle of River Plate is the story of Britain's first significant naval victory in WW2. John Gregson heads the cast as Captain Bell, skipper of the Exeter, one of several vessels engaged in pursuit of the Read More

1956
The Divided Heart

Actors: Cornell Borchers, Yvonne Mitchell, Armin Dahlen, Alexander Knox, Geoffrey Keen

Synopsis: Based on a true story, The Divided Heart is an effective, high-gloss British soap opera. Cornell Borchers stars as Inga, a young German woman who disappears and is presumed killed during WW2. Inga's infant son is placed in an orphanage; years later, the boy is adopted by childless couple Sonja Read More

1954
Sailor of the King

Actors: Michael Rennie, Wendy Hiller, Jeffrey Hunter, Bernard Lee, Peter Van Eyck

Synopsis: Jeffrey Hunter plays a young British sailor, the out-of-wedlock son of a high-ranking naval officer (Michael Rennie). Hunter's ship is torpedoed, leaving him stranded on a German-occupied island. Armed with only a rifle, Hunter is able to shoot at a German cruiser docked for repairs, and to slow Read More

1953