EIt’s fitting that Steven Soderbergh of all people wrote the definitive book about Richard Lester – Soderbergh, who, like Lester, is a cinema all-rounder, only in a different, more confusing time. Formally a conversation between two maniacal professional directors, Getting Away With It is in fact a working biography of Lester, who reveals not only his trade secrets but also his interest in the non-cinematic Facts and research revealed. For example, because the rapiers used by the cavaliers of the seventeenth century were much too heavy for the dancing fencing usual in the cinema – which is why Lester his actors in “The Three Musketeers” (1973) and “The Four Musketeers – Revenge of the Milady” (1974) historically and critically hacked at and stabbed at one another.
Not that this changed the style and tempo of the Musketeer Diptych significantly. But the anecdote typifies the meticulousness with which Lester plied his craft, from his big screen debut with the Cold War comedy The Mouse on the Moon to the Superman movies of the ’80s. Lester was never a writer-director per se, many of his films are remakes or updates of classic genre patterns; but the instinct for the feasible and believable has instilled itself in all his work. His cinema makes reality dance, but it always remains reality.
This is best seen in the two films he made with the Beatles. Instead of just ensnaring the already world-famous band with the camera, Lester opted for a hybrid of revue and documentary in “A Hard Day’s Night” that at the same time playfully dissected the celebrity hype in which she took part. He took the irony a notch further in Help!, ensnaring John, Paul, George and Ringo in an adventure outfit that fused cinema and pop culture for a feature length. The scene in which the four sing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” to a tiger can be watched again and again.
At that time he was one with his time
Between the one Beatles opus and the other, however, Lester made the film in 1965 that secured it a place in cinematic memory. “The Certain Kniff”, in which Rita Tushingham mixes up a men’s shared flat with magical audacity and Jacqueline Bisset, Jane Birkin and Charlotte Rampling celebrate their screen debut, is the true portrait of the Swinging Sixties, the snapshot of a new beginning that is still alive today continues. In later films, Richard Lester has bigger stars – Audrey Hepburn, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Sean Connery -, grandiose sets (as in the musical film adaptation “The Ancient Romans Did It Great” or the cruise thriller “Eighteen Hours to Eternity”. ) and lavish budgets; but here, on the streets of London, he was one with his time. Maybe that’s what Soderbergh was looking for in him. Richard Lester turns ninety today.
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