Penelope Gilliatt (; born Penelope Ann Douglass Conner; 25 March 1932 – 9 May 1993) was an English novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film critic. As one of the main film critics for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' magazine in the 1960s and 1970s, Gilliatt was known for her detailed descriptions and evocative reviews. A writer of short stories, novels, non-fiction books, and screenplays, Gilliatt was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Awards, Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Be ...
for ''
Sunday Bloody Sunday
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the opening track from their 1983 album ''War'' and was released as the album's third single on 21 March 1983 in the Netherlands and West Germany. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is noted f ...
'' (1971).
Film criticism
Gilliatt began her work as a film and theater critic with London's ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'', where she wrote numerous reviews between 1961 and 1967. In 1967, she began a column in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', in which she alternated for six-month intervals with
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions oft ...
as that publication's chief film critic. Gilliatt's column ran from late spring to early fall, and Kael's for the remainder of the year.
The contrasting perspectives of Kael and Gilliatt were a significant attraction to the magazine. Gilliatt's criticism tended to focus on visual metaphors and imagery, describing scenes from films in detail in her characteristically grandiose style. She also prided herself on knowing actors and directors personally, and tended to interweave her acquaintance with them into reviews of their films.
Many of Gilliatt's readers appreciated her colorful and detailed writing, while other readers saw her style as distracting and superfluous to film criticism, and felt that her description of films was too complete.
Gilliatt wrote profiles on many directors, with her favorite directors including
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film director, screenwriter, Film producer, producer and playwright. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films are known ...
,
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...
,
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
,
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau (; 23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Mo ...
, and
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
.
Her career as a film critic for ''The New Yorker'' ended in 1979, after it was determined that a profile she had written of
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
contained unattributed passages taken from a piece about Greene by novelist
Michael Meshaw that had appeared in ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' two years before. The fact-checker had warned editor
William Shawn
William Shawn ('' né'' Chon; August 31, 1907 – December 8, 1992) was an American magazine editor who edited ''The New Yorker'' from 1952 until 1987.
Early life and education
Shawn was born William Chon on August 31, 1907, in Chicago, Illino ...
of the plagiarism, but Shawn published the article anyway. Following its appearance, Greene said that Gilliatt’s ”so-called Profile” of him was “inaccurate” and the product of a “rather wild imagination.”
Although she no longer wrote film criticism for ''The New Yorker'', Gilliatt continued to publish fiction in the magazine.
Some of her film (and theater) writing was first collected in ''Unholy Fools: Wits, Comics, Disturbers of the Peace: Film & Theater'' (1973), which reprints articles first published in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', ''
Harper's Bazaar
''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...
'' / ''
Queen
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
'' / ''
Harper's & Queen
''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...
'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The Observer'', ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...
'', and ''
Vogue
Vogue may refer to:
Business
* ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine
** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine
** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine
** ''Vogue Australia'', an Australian fashion magazine
** ''Vogue China'', ...
''. A later collection, ''Three-Quarter Face: Reports & Reflections'' (1980), features articles from ''The New Yorker'' and her "Nabokov" article from ''Vogue''. In addition, Gilliatt published two non-fiction books on two French film directors, ''Jean Renoir: Essays, Conversations, Reviews'' (1975) and ''Jacques Tati'' (1976),
as well as a book on comedy, ''To Wit: Skin and Bones of Comedy'' (1990).
Fiction
In addition to her criticism and non-fiction books, Gilliatt wrote short stories, novels, teleplays, and one screenplay. The film was ''
Sunday Bloody Sunday
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the opening track from their 1983 album ''War'' and was released as the album's third single on 21 March 1983 in the Netherlands and West Germany. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is noted f ...
'' (1971), an accepting treatment of homosexuality based on personal story of the director
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' an ...
. She was approached by Schlesinger to collaborate on the script in part because of her debut novel ''One by One''. She wrote the first draft then left the project to take a job at ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
.'' The final script was extensively revised by
David Sherwin
David Sherwin-White (24 February 1942 – 8 January 2018) was a British screenwriter best known for his collaborations with director Lindsay Anderson and actor Malcolm McDowell on the films '' if....'' (1968) (for which Sherwin was nominated for ...
and John Schlesinger in her absence.
For the film script, she won several Best Screenplay awards, including the
New York Film Critics Circle Award
The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) is an American film critic organization founded in 1935 by Wanda Hale from the New York ''Daily News''. Its membership includes over 30 film critics from New York-based daily and weekly newspapers, magazi ...
,
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers:
* The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO
* The Writers Guil ...
, USA, and
Writers' Guild of Great Britain
The Writers' Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), established in 1959, is a trade union for professional writers. It is affiliated with both the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds (IAWG).
History
The un ...
. The screenplay was also nominated for an
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
and a
BAFTA.
Gilliatt wrote several novels, including ''One by One'' (1965), ''A State of Change'' (1967), ''The Cutting Edge'' (1978), ''Mortal Matters'' (1983), and ''A Woman of Singular Occupation'' (1988). ''Mortal Matters'', much concerned with shipbuilding and
suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...
s, is largely set in Northumberland and Newcastle. There are several pages devoted to
Hexham
Hexham ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Northumberland, England, on the south bank of the River Tyne, formed by the confluence of the North Tyne and the South Tyne at Warden, Northumberland, Warden nearby, and ...
, and numerous mentions of Newcastle locations. She celebrates the achievements of the
North East, including the vessels ''
Mauretania
Mauretania (; ) is the Latin name for a region in the ancient Maghreb. It stretched from central present-day Algeria westwards to the Atlantic, covering northern present-day Morocco, and southward to the Atlas Mountains. Its native inhabitants, ...
'' and
Charles Parsons' ''
Turbinia
''Turbinia'' was the first steam turbine-powered steamship. Built as an experimental vessel in 1894, and easily the fastest ship in the world at that time, ''Turbinia'' was demonstrated dramatically at the Spithead Navy Review in 1897 and set ...
''. Gilliatt also praises the ''
Torrens'', the Sunderland-built ship on which
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
served for two years from 1891.
Gilliatt's short stories, many of which were first published in ''The New Yorker'', were collected in ''What's It Like Out? and Other Stories'' (UK edition, 1968) / ''Come Back If It Doesn't Get Better'' (US edition, 1969), ''Nobody's Business'' (1972), ''Splendid Lives'' (1977), ''Quotations from Other Lives'' (1982), ''They Sleep Without Dreaming'' (1985), ''22 Stories'' (1986), and ''Lingo'' (1990).
Personal life
Born in London, Gilliatt was the daughter of a barrister named Cyril Conner. Her mother was Marie Stephanie Douglass. Both parents came from
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
, and divorced not long after their daughter's birth. Gilliatt had an upper-middle class upbringing in
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land on ...
, where her father (having left his legal practice) was director of the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
country.
in Vermont.
Gilliatt married neurologist Roger Gilliatt in 1954, and carried on using his name after their divorce. Gilliatt was then married to playwright
. She gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Nolan, whom Osborne later disowned. Following her divorce from Osborne, she was romantically involved with
.
was her companion for many years.
Gilliatt died from alcoholism in 1993.