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David Puttnam on ‘Discovering’ Alan Parker, Being Ready for Luck and James Dean’s Famous Line in ‘East of Eden’
Variety catches up with David Puttnam as he serves as jury president at Spain’s Seville European Film Festival, and gives a masterclass.
These highly disparate influences help to explain Puttnam’s great movies, as a mixture of Hollywood audience ambition, moral conscience, ideas – often a lot of them – and a sense of social or cultural point, more prevalent – at least at first glance – in European cinema. One is delivered by Jeremy Iron’s Father Gabriel as he tries to persuade Robert de Niro’s Mendoza not to take up arms against invading Spanish and Portuguese forces: “If might is right, love has no place in the world. Puttnam’s Oscar-winning ‘80s trio all have scenes which establish their films as productions of grandeur: the scene.setting shot of Cambridge, 1919; Father Gabriel climbing towering water falls and Pol Pot’s evacuation of Phnom Penh’s entire population.
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