November 21, 2005
David Puttnam: "Hollywood is the mecca of cynical cinema"
Says David Puttnam, producer of the famous Chariots of Fire, in Havana
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann
SONIA SÁNCHEZ
sonia.sh@granma.cip.cu
Last Sunday saw the closing of Havana’s cycle of a British sports film week with the screening in Cinemateca de Cuba of well-known motion picture Chariots of Fire attended by its prize-winning producer Lord David Putnam in his first visit to the Island.
Chariots... (1981) won two Academy Awards, for best film and best photography, among other important awards to which prestigious Greek composer Vangelis’s soundtrack contributed.
Our readers probably remember the plot: a story based on real facts of two British athletes who compete in the Paris 1924 Olympic Games. One is a consecrated British missionary who runs to honor God, whereas the other is a Jewish student of Cambridge who does it to become famous and overcome prejudice. The struggle between personal values and professional commitment is inspiring, touching, and always topical, so much more now when London is getting ready to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
"Chariots of Fire changed my life", Puttnam commented to Granma at the end of the Sunday show of this festival now moving to Matanzas and Pinar del Río provinces. "I had made some rather successful films before, but what makes Chariots... special is that it was somehow an act of revenge against the motion picture industry.
"Nobody wanted to make this movie, nobody was interested in sports in the 1980s, no one in the United Kingdom wanted to see people wearing long shorts. Fortunately I managed to find the money, and then along this project whenever things looked hopeless, something would happen, something would fell to our lot, and that’s how it was from square one until the day when we got the Oscar.
"I was convinced, and still am, that this movie had to be made, that this story had to be told. I was lucky; having produced this film has been a beautiful thing in my life. It’s as if God decided to say, ‘This story deserves to be told’," stated Puttnam, who devoted 30 of his 65 years of age to the hustle and bustle of the so-called seventh art, which he gave up 8 years ago. Nowadays he presides over the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Great Britain and is in charge of upgrading programs for a million school teachers throughout the United Kingdom.
Films such as Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, The Mission, The Killing Fields, and Chariots of Fire itself compose his successful work, some being representative of the committed spirit of a producer who bears in mind not only cinema’s powers and capabilities and the role played therein by professional self-regulation and social responsibility to combine entertainment with reflection, but also the message his film heroes convey by showing triumph in defeat as a way to win when everything seems lost.
"For the time being I believe it is cynical", remarked Puttnam freely when asked his opinion on today’s globalized cinema. "And I’m speaking about western movies, which exploits people’s darkest side and does nothing to show youth that they have a purpose in life. Of course, I’m generalizing. There are good films around, but education is absent from the motion picture industry…Hollywood? Cynical cinema’s Mecca".
La
semana de cine británico sobre deporte cerró este domingo su ciclo habanero con
la proyección de la conocida Carrozas de fuego en la Cinemateca de Cuba y
la presencia de su laureado productor Lord David Puttnam, por primera vez en la
Isla.
Carrozas...
(1981) obtuvo un Oscar a la mejor película y a la mejor fotografía entre otros
importantes premios en los que coadyuvó también la música compuesta por el
prestigioso compositor griego Vangelis.