Top 10 Best Last Films

According to Quentin Tarantino, most directors end their careers with a 'lousy' film. Indeed, he is even considering retirement after racking up three Oscar nominations for his 10th feature, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), to avoid the fate of so many major Hollywood film-makers. But do all directors go out on a low note? Cinema Paradiso finds out.

There are numerous reasons why directors stop making films. Some become too old or infirm to secure insurance for a shoot, while others can only attract projects that disinterest them. Dwindling box-office fortunes often make it hard for directors to find funding, while some become so frustrated at battling against industry bureaucracy that they decide to call time on their careers. Others become disenchanted and seek employment in other spheres.

A number of those who had thrived from having fixed contracts under the old studio system struggled to make the transition to independence during the New Hollywood era. In many cases, work dried up because the executives who took over the studios had no film background and knew nothing of a director's track record. A few reinvented themselves in theatre and television, but some lost touch with their audience as cultural shifts widened the age gap. And, of course, a number simply died.

Final films aren't always planned, although mercifully few directors suffer the fate of Irishman William Desmond Taylor, who was shot in the back on 1 February 1922 shortly after completing the silent, The Top of New York. A century later, this remains one of Hollywood's most notorious unsolved murder mysteries, with major stars like Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter being among the prime suspects. Fellow director King Vidor was a keen student of the case, while a clutch of documentaries have examined the clues. But no one has yet made a feature reconstruction.

The majority of directors think they've got one last film in them and some spend years developing potential projects. As Billy Wilder, who lived for another 21 years after completing Buddy Buddy (1981), famously fumed, 'I didn't suddenly get stupid.' As we'll being examining international film-makers in another article, Wilder isn't covered here. But the Cinema Paradiso catalogue is full of fine final features by directors from America and Britain.

Gone Too Soon

The saddest way for any directorial career to end is through early death. A number of big names have fallen silent before their time, including John Singleton, who was only 51 when he died in 2019, a full 12 years after he directed his last feature, Illegal Tender (2007).

Such is the importance of profitability in the world's movie capital that directors could be dead to producers if they became box-office poison. In 1946, Wesley Ruggles passed from a 31-year career to a 26-year retirement after travelling to Britain to star Sid Field and Petula Clark in the Techicolor musical comedy, London Town (1946). The brother of actor Charlie Ruggles, he had appeared in a handful of Charlie Chaplin shorts before turning to directing. He became the first person to win the Oscar for Best Picture with a Western, Cimarron (1931), and later returned to the genre with Arizona (1940). His métier, however, was light entertainment, as he followed collaborations with Mae West (I'm No Angel, 1933) and W.C. Fields (Mississippi, 1935) with the Bing Crosby musical, Sing You Sinners (1938). But his London venture was such a calamitous flop that Ruggles didn't direct again before his death at the age of 82 in 1972.

Following a tough childhood, Anthony Mann worked his way through the ranks to acquire a reputation for films noirs like Railroaded! (1947) and Raw Deal (1948). However, he is best remembered for the psychological Westerns he made with James Stewart in the 1950s. Cinema Paradiso users can rent their teamings on Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Far Country (1954) and The Man From Laramie (1955), as well as such non-oaters as Thunder Bay and The Glenn Miller Story (both 1953).

Regarded as a safe pair of hands, Mann was entrusted with such widescreen epics as El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), as well as blockbuster war movies like The Heroes of Telemark (1965). However, while in Berlin making A Dandy in Aspic (1968), he succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 60 and the film was completed by its star, Laurence Harvey.

Sixty-three year-old Joseph L. Mankiewicz lived another 21 years after directing Sleuth (1972). Yet, despite earning an Academy Award nomination for bringing Anthony Shaffer's ingenious play to the screen - and making history by guiding the film's entire cast, Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, to Oscar recognition - Mankiewicz proved unable to get another picture greenlit. Among his stalled projects was a version of William Shakespeare's Macbeth with Marlon Brando and Maggie Smith.

Having started out producing exploitation items like Felix E. Feist's Donovan's Brain (1953), Tom Gries became a prolific TV director before graduating to features like Will Penny (1968) and 100 Rifles (1969). However, having teamed with Charles Bronson on Breakout and Breakheart Pass (both 1975), he died at the age of 54, shortly after putting Muhammad Ali through his paces in the boxing biopic, The Greatest (1977).

Editor-turned-director Hal Ashby was only five years older when he passed on after making what proved to be his unlucky 13th feature, 8 Million Ways to Die (1986). Jeff Bridges delivers a gutsy performance as the drugs cop trying to clean up his act, but what makes this so frustrating was that it suggested that Ashby was returning to the form that had earned him an Oscar for Coming Home (1978) and the Palme d'or at Cannes for Being There (1979).

James Bridges was also bouncing back after indifferent reviews for the John Travolta vehicles, Urban Cowboy (1980) and Perfect (1985). He inherited Bright Lights, Big City (1988) and brought in Michael J. Fox to play the vulnerable yuppie caught up in a world of temptation after Joyce Chopra had been removed from an adaptation of Jay McInerney's bestseller, which had attracted the attention of Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez and Sean Penn. However, the 57 year-old Bridges succumbed to cancer in 1993.

Four years later, the same pitiless disease claimed 62 year-old Michael Ritchie after he had made the modern-day fairytale, A Simple Wish (1997). Having started impressively with the Robert Redford duo, Downhill Racer (1969) and The Candidate (1972), Ritchie had become known for comedies like Fletch (1985) and The Golden Child (1986). However, he was a veteran compared to Ted Demme, who was just 38 when he died of a heart attack before the release of his documentary, New Hollywood, A Decade Under the Influence (2003).

The younger brother of Oscar winner Jonathan Demme, Ted also received a posthumous acting credit, after he cameo'd as himself in Nick Cassavetes's John Q (2002). Christopher Reeve was better known as an actor before he was paralysed from the shoulders down after a 1995 riding accident. However, the Superman star was able to start work on his dream animation project, the heartwarming baseball story, Everyone's Hero (2006), which was completed after his death at the age of 52.

We've already mentioned William Desmond Taylor, but actress-turned-director Adrienne Shelly was also murdered. She had just finished Waitress (2007) when she was strangled by Ecuadorian immigrant Diego Pillco, whom she had caught stealing money. Callously, he tried to make it look as though the 40 year-old had tried to commit suicide with a bedsheet noose. George Hickenlooper was only seven years older when he accidentally overdosed on drugs and alcohol. Having co-directed the Francis Ford Coppola documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991), Hickenlooper had notably helmed the Edie Sedgwick biopic, Factory Girl (2006), before he signed off far too early with Casino Jack (2010), which starred Kevin Spacey as controversial political lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

The Parade's Gone By

It often happens in directing circles that a glorious career extends a tad too long. Take five-time Oscar nominee, King Vidor, who reached the conclusion that Hollywood was no longer a fun place to be while making Solomon and Sheba (1959). Already a logistically complex project, the Spanish shoot for this biblical epic became a nightmare after Tyrone Power died of a heart attack and Vidor had to start from scratch.

When Gary Cooper, William Holden, Charlton Heston and Robert Taylor all declined, Yul Brynner agreed to don a brown wig and play the sagacious Israelite. However, he insisted on playing Solomon as an action man and, with Gina Lollobrigida similarly dismissing his reading of the characters, Vidor (who had been making films since 1914) decided there was no point trying to fight star power and quit the mainstream to devote the next two decades to more personal projects.

As those who have read Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert's Guide to Frank Capra will know, the three-time Oscar winner found his patented brand of Capracorn falling from favour with postwar American audiences. Indeed, following two mediocre collaborations with Bing Crosby, his only other feature in the 1950s starred another iconic crooner, Frank Sinatra, in A Hole in the Head (1959). This enjoyable comedy would have been a fitting way to bow out. But Capra couldn't resist one last outing, as he reworked his own sentimental excursion into the world of Damon Runyon, Lady For a Day (1933), as Pocketful of Miracles (1961), with Glenn Ford and Bette Davis causing plenty of headaches on the set in taking on the roles of a street vendor and a soft-hearted mobster that had been originated by May Robson and Warren William.

In the 1910s, Charlie Chaplin was the most famous person on the planet. The comic shorts he fashioned around The Little Tramp spoke a universal language. He had no trouble moving into features, but transitioning to talkies proved trickier and City Lights (1931) remained wordless a full four years after Al Jolson had caused a sensation in Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927).

Critics were more receptive to Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952) than audiences and, under a political cloud, Chaplin relocated to Switzerland. It might have been wise to leave his fans with a final memory of himself duetting with Buster Keaton. But, in 1957, Chaplin returned to the screen in The King of New York. Such was the antipathy, however, that a decade passed before he tested the waters again. This time, Chaplin remained behind the camera (apart from a brief cameo), as he starred Marlon Brando in A Countess From Hong Kong (1967), after Rex Harrison and Cary Grant had resisted the temptation of co-starring with Sophia Loren. For all its romantic whimsy, Chaplin's sole colour venture was dismissed as an old-fashioned curio during the Summer of Love and he remained in Corsier-sur-Vevey retirement until his death, at the age of 88, in 1977.

Very different in sensibility, Sam Peckinpah had seized upon the relaxation of censorship in 60s Hollywood to redefine its attitude towards violence in The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971). The bad boy tag rather went to his head, however, and 'Bloody Sam' spent the 70s making interesting pictures that always seemed to fall a little short. Consequently, five years blighted by drink and drug issues had passed after Convoy (1978) before he was invited to salvage a long-gestating adaptation of Robert Ludlum's espionage thriller, The Osterman Weekend (1983). Peckinpah loathed the book and the screenplay, but the film makes for fascinating viewing. As do Peckinpah's final directorial efforts, the videos for Julian Lennon's singles, 'Too Late For Goodbyes' and 'Valotte'.

Peckinpah died aged 59 in December 1984, a fortnight to the day after David Lean released A Passage to India, his first feature since Ryan's Daughter (1970). Some readers may be surprised to find this 11-time Oscar-nominated adaptation of E.M. Forster's 1924 novel in the 'past their best' section. However, by sanctioning Alec Guinness's brownface performance as Professor Godbole, Lean demonstrated a lack of post-colonial sensitivity and a refusal to heed past criticisms, following Guinness's use of make-up and mannerism in playing Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948) and Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Any hopes that Lean could redeem himself with an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo were dashed when he fell out with potential producers Steven Spielberg and Serge Silberman before he died, at the age of 83, in 1991.

Two years later, Blake Edwards took his last scrape of the Inspector Clouseau barrel with Son of the Pink Panther (1993). A decade had passed since Edwards had run out of the Peter Sellers outtakes that he had recycled in Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and the ways to disguise his absence in Curse of the Pink Panther (1983). Yet, despite directing such genial outings as Blind Date (1987) and Sunset (1988), Edwards couldn't resist revisiting Clouseau and cast Roberto Benigni as his bungling son, Jacques Gambrelli. The negative reviews prompted Edwards to retire 17 years before he died at 88 in 2010.

Steady As He Goes

Few directors realise that they are making their final feature while they are shooting it. Cinema Paradiso has already shown in The Instant Expert's Guide to Howard Hawks how 'the Grey Fox' had played the studio game on his own terms by remaining a freelancer for much of his career. However, the once-prolific director had slowed down by the 1960s and four years were to pass before he followed El Dorado (1966) with another Western about a lawman taking on an unruly town. Scripted by Leigh Brackett and Burton Wohl, Rio Lobo (1970) felt like a remake of Rio Bravo (1958), in which Hawks had also directed John Wayne. He had no intention of hanging up his megaphone, however, and planned a buddy comedy and an Ernest Hemingway project (after having previously bet the author that he could make a classic out of his worst story and succeeded with To Have and Have Not, 1944).

If Hawks was the master of the 'man on a mission' movie, John Sturges wasn't far behind. The director of The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) had continued to make high-profile Westerns and action adventures into the 1970s, with Clint Eastwood on Joe Kidd (1972) and John Wayne on McQ (1973). But his road ended with The Eagle Has Landed (1976), an adaptation of the Jack Higgins bestseller about a Nazi attempt to kidnap Winston Churchill during the Second World War. By this stage of his career, however, Sturges sought only to make enough cash to ensure he could spend his time fishing and star Michael Caine was dismayed by his detached approach to material that still manages to excite.

Elia Kazan's career never really recovered from his decision to co-operate with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during its investigation into the perceived Communist infiltration of Hollywood. He had tried to justify his decision in On the Waterfront (1954), which converted eight of its 12 Oscar nominations (including Best Director). But America's foremost socio-political realist had become a peripheral figure by the time producer Sam Spiegel proposed an overdue reunion on F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon (1976).

Kazan replaced Mike Nichols (who would bow out with Charlie Wilson's War, 2017) after he had proposed a reunion with Dustin Hoffman after The Graduate (1967). But Spiegel replaced him with Kazan, who had made only three features since pairing Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass (1961). Despite Robert De Niro impressing as studio production chief Monroe Stahr (who had been based on 1930s MGM wunderkind, Irving G. Thalberg), the picture received mixed reviews and Kazan spent the next 27 years writing novels.

De Niro would also headline Martin Ritt's farewell. Acclaimed for his collaborations with Paul Newman on The Long Hot Summer (1958) and Hud (1963), Ritt (who is played by Conleth Hall in John Hay's To Olivia, 2021) might have changed the course of Hollywood history in 1973 if he had managed to pair Newman and Robert Mitchum as John Rambo and Sheriff Teasle. Instead, the roles went to Sylvester Stallone and Brian Dennehy in Ted Kotcheff's 1982 take on David Morrell's First Blood.

By that time, Ritt had been further lauded for The Front (1976) and Norma Rae (1979), which had earned Sally Field the Oscar for Best Actress. He remained busy over the next decade and was hired to adapt Pat Barker's novel, Union Street, as Stanley & Iris (1990). Despite touching turns by De Niro and Jane Fonda, as an illiterate cook and the widow who teaches him to read, the drama drew mediocre notices. Ritt died 10 months later at the age of 76, while Fonda remained off screen for 15 years before her return in Robert Luketic's Monster-in-Law (2005).

Having started out as Gene Kelly's co-director on On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), Stanley Donen developed into a fine director in his own right. Among the highlights of a garlanded career are Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), Funny Face (1957), Indiscreet (1958), Charade (1963) and Two For the Road (1967). But he retired after Blame It on Rio (1984), a remake of a 1977 Claude Berri comedy that saw Michael Caine develop a crush on his pal's teenage daughter, Demi Moore. Donen tried to atone with the 1999 teleplay, Love Letters, but this remained his last cinematic word until his death at 94 in 2019.

Robert Mulligan and Alan J. Pakula worked on six films together as director and producer, with the best known being the Oscar-winning Harper Lee adaptation, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Mulligan might also have rewritten screen history had screenwriter Paul Schrader not objected to his casting Jeff Bridges as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976), a project that reinforced the reputations of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

Mulligan continued to make quality dramas that deserve to be better known. But he bowed out on a high by giving 14 year-old Reese Witherspoon her debut in The Man in the Moon (1991), as a 1950s Louisiana teen getting her first crush on boy-next-door, Jason London. By contrast, Pakula went out with a bang with The Devil's Own (1997), as Harrison Ford's Irish American cop stumbles on to Brad Pitt's mission to buy anti-aircraft missiles for the IRA. It was a solid thriller, which also saw award-winning cinematographer Gordon Willis turn in his viewfinder. But it wasn't a patch on the paranoia trilogy of Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and All the President's Men (1976), or Pakula's poignant adaptation of William Styron's Sophie's Choice (1982), which brought Meryl Streep a well-merited Oscar.

After waiting 12 years to work again after Full Metal Jacket (1987), Stanley Kubrick didn't live to see the release of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), as he died six days after a private screening for its stars. It didn't help that he had to replace Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh with Sydney Pollack and Marie Richardson after principal photography had all-but wrapped (the shoot would run to a record-setting 400 days). The casting of the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ratcheted up the anticipation for this adaptation fo Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella, Dream Story. But, while some reviews were ecstatic, many were underwhelmed and it was overlooked entirely at both the Oscars and the BAFTAs.

Renowned more as a director than an actor, Sydney Pollack got to have two final films. The last completed during his lifetime was the architectural documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005). But, a decade after his death at the age of 73, Pollack's footage of Aretha Franklin's recording a live album at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles resurfaced in Amazing Grace (2018), which had been rescued from the Warner Bros vaults by producer Alan Elliott.

Sidney Lumet had no intention of bowing out with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). But he never got round to making the prison break thriller, Getting Out, before his death at the age of 86 in 2011. However, there's much to engross in the New York saga of brothers Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke's bid to rob the jewellery shop run by their parents, Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris. Another recipient of one of Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert guides, Lumet remains one of American cinema's most underrated talents.

Hopes were high that critic-turned-director Peter Bogdanovich was going to be Hollywood's equivalent of the Cahiers du Cinéma cabal that had led the nouvelle vague. But he lost his way after early hits like Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973). Yet he got to demonstrate his love of screen history with a last documentary, The Great Buster: A Celebration (2018), which reviewed the career of Buster Keaton, the Great Stone Face who struggled to make the transition from meticulously timed silent slapstick to witty repartee. Four years later, the 82 year-old Bogdanovich left to meet his heroes.

Goodbye Piccadilly

So far, we've focussed on Hollywood. But our attention now shifts to Britain. Only a fraction of the films made in this country are available on disc, but Cinema Paradiso can offer users a goodly number of final features. Among the more intriguing is Basil Dean's 21 Days (1940), in which Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh proved unable to hide the fact that they were having an off-screen affair. The John Galsworthy adaptation was made in 1937, but producer Alexander Korda held it back in order to cash in on Leigh's Oscar-winning success in Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939).

Having directed such Ealing gems as Pink String and Sealing Wax (1946), It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Robert Hamer began to lose his battle with the bottle. Consequently, Cyril Frankel and Hal E. Chester stepped in to complete School For Scoundrels (1960) after Hamer became too incapacitated to direct Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas in a comedy based on Stephen Potter's Lifemanship books.

Anthony Asquith also struggled with alcoholism. But an all-star cast that included Ingrid Bergman, Shirley MacLaine and Rex Harrison was assembled for The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), the last of the many collaborations with playwright Terence Rattigan that had made Asquith one of Britain's most bankable directors. His 1938 comedy, Quiet Wedding, was remade as Happy Is the Bride (1958), by the Boulting Brothers. Even though he would live until 1985, John Boulting signed off from cinema with Rotten to the Core (1965), a comic caper starring Anton Rodgers that afforded Charlotte Rampling her first credited role.

Another subject of a Cinema Paradiso Instant Expert's Guide, Basil Dearden perished in a car crash shortly after finishing The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970). Eerily, the story turned on Roger Moore's successful businessman, who unleashes his alter ego after surviving a traffic accident. Seth Holt had served as an assistant editor on Dearden's POW drama, The Captive Heart (1946). He had gone on to work on a number of Ealing comedies before making his directorial mark with one of the studio's final features, Nowhere to Go (1958), which earned Maggie Smith the first of her 18 BAFTA nominations. However, he died on the set of the Hammer horror, Blood From the Mummy's Tomb (1971), and Michael Carreras completed the shoot without taking credit.

If you don't know the name Michael Powell, we recommend you type his name into the Cinema Paradiso searchline and order every title you find. Yet, even one of British cinema's few undisputed geniuses found himself as a director for hire in later life and ended a career strewn with landmarks with The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972), a comic parable written by long-term associate, Emeric Pressburger, which can be found on Volume 3 of Children's Film Foundation Collection: Weird Adventures. The CFF also persuaded Ralph Thomas (see our Introducing a British Family article) to take his final credit with Pop Pirates (1984), a battle of the bands saga starring The Who's Roger Daltrey that is available from Cinema Paradiso on the BFI's Children's Film Foundation Bumper Box.

Back at Hammer, the director who had transformed the studio's fortunes with his lurid colour remakes of Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker's Gothic novels departed the scene with Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1974). Returning to films after a three-year recuperation period following two road accidents, Terence Fisher actually finished Hammer's sixth entry in this particular franchise in 1972 and was already enjoying his eight-year retirement when the film was released. Amusingly, stars Peter Cushing and David Prowse would reunite on George Lucas's Star Wars (1977).

Plucked from Britain by David O. Selznick, after impressing with titles like Tudor Rose (1936), Robert Stevenson started steadily in Hollywood with Tom Brown's Schooldays (1940) and Jane Eyre (1943). But he will be best remembered for the 19 features he made for Disney. While The Shaggy D.A. (1976) may not be on a par with Mary Poppins (1964) or The Love Bug (1968), it's still a rattling good yarn.

Having collaborated with Jack Bond on Separation (1968) and The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), Jane Arden ended her short, but influential directorial career with Anti-Clock (1979). Son Sebastian Saville - whose father, Philip, would win BAFTAs for Boys From the Blackstuff (1982) and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986) - takes the dual role of a mind-reader and the scientist striving to reprogramme his depressive thoughts. Tragically, Arden would commit suicide three years later at the age of 44.

Farewell Leicester Square

Almost four decades after he made his directorial debut with the Arthur Askey comedy, Miss London Limited (1943), Val Guest kept a watchful eye on Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball in The Boys in Blue (1982). Although he is most highly regarded for Hammer offerings like The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), Guest tried his hand at everything from musicals (Expresso Bongo, 1959) and film noir (Hell Is a City, 1960) to sci-fi ( The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1961) and softcore porn (Au Pair Girls, 1972). He also made eight films (including Penny Princess, 1952) with wife Yolande Dolan, with whom he retired to California, dying at the age of 94 in 2006.

Alan Bridges and Bill Douglas provided very different takes on the heritage picture with their last acts. Adapted from a novel by Isabel Colegate, The Shooting Party (1985) explores the state of the nation on the cusp of the Great War and would make a fine double bill with either Bridges's 1973 take on L.P. Hartley's The Hireling or Rebecca's West's The Return of the Soldier (1982). Renowned for the autobiographical trilogy of My Childhood (1972), My Ain Folk (1973) and My Way Home (1978), Douglas focussed in Comrades (1986) on the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs', the Dorset villagers who were transported to Australia in the 1830s for forming an illegal trade union.

A pair of feted social realists released contrasting last features in 1987. Having proven a combative critic of the British class system in This Sporting Life (1963), If.... (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973), Lindsay Anderson was in more reflective mood in The Whales of August, as sisters Lillian Gish and Bette Davis entertain Russian visitor Vincent Price in their cosy Maine home. However, having forged his reputation with uncompromising teleplays (see the BFI's three-volume BBC collection ), Alan Clarke remained spiky to the end, with Rita, Sue and Bob, Too, a raucous Bradford comedy scripted by Andrea Dunbar about the relationship between the married George Costigan and teenage babysitters Siobhan Finneran and Michelle Holmes.

Among the pioneers of 'kitchen sink' drama with his adaptation of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1959), Tony Richardson's fortunes were transformed by an Oscar win for his saucy interpretation of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1963). However, his pursuit of eclectic projects meant that he had become something of a marginal figure by the time he made Blue Sky in 1990. Internal problems at Orion meant Richardson had died (at the age of 63) by the time the picture was released in 1994 and earned Jessica Lange the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as a 1960s military wife with mental health issues.

Among the unsung talents of British cinema, J. Lee Thompson had been in the business for 17 years by the time he directed one of the earliest examples of social-realist cinema, The Weak and the Wicked (1954). Versatile and astute, he slipped between war classics like Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and The Guns of Navarone (1961), thrillers like Cape Fear (1962) and such franchise blockbusters as Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).

He had racked up 47 feature credits by the time he made Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989), a child prostitution thriller that marked his ninth collaboration over 13 years with Charles Bronson. He died at 88 in 2002, a decade after failing to team Alec Baldwin and Anna Chumsky in a remake of Tiger Bay (1959), in which Thompson had directed Horst Buchholz and Hayley Mills.

In partnership with producer Peter Rodgers, director Gerald Thomas helped make the Carry Ons a national institution. But refused to quit after misfiring with Carry On Emmannuelle (1978). Following stalled efforts to make Carry On Dallas and Carry On Down Under, they teamed the willing survivors of the old gang with some emerging comedians for Carry On Columbus (1992), a tale of naughty nautical discovery that promptly sank at the box office.

Donald Cammell's career may have been much shorter, but it still contained such highlights as Performance (co-directed with Nicolas Roeg, 1970), Demon Seed (1977) and White of the Eye (1987). It concluded tragically with Wild Side (1995), a tangled web of sexual intrigue involving banker Anne Heche that was so badly edited by the producers that the 62 year-old Cammell shot himself in 1996. A director's cut emerged in 1999 and this is the version available on high-quality DVD from Cinema Paradiso.

As users will discover from typing her name into the searchline, Antonia Bird had acquired quite a reputation from small-screen shows like Casualty (1986-) by the time she began making such features as Mad Love (1995) and Face (1997). However, the 1840s cannibalism horror, Ravenous (1999), proved to be her last cinematic outing, although she worked on programmes like Spooks (2005), Cracker (2006) and The Village (2013) before dying at the age of 62.

In 2000, it was hard to equate the avuncular John Schlesinger with the cutting-edge director who had helped British cinema move from social realism to swinging counterculturalism with A Kind of Loving (1962), Billy Liar (1963) and Darling (1965). He had also steered Midnight Cowboy (1969) to becoming the first X-rated title to win the Oscar for Best Picture. He followed his own Best Director win with another nomination for Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Once in Hollywood, though, he made periodic hits like Marathon Man (1976) and was very much still in demand when Madonna and Rupert Everett danced to his tune in The Next Best Thing (2000). Unfortunately, this custody battle saga proved to be a project too far before Schlesinger's death at 77 in 2003.

There isn't really room to do justice to the achievements of the directors mentioned in this article and that is particularly true of Ken Russell. While still making exceptional arts documentaries for television, Russell acquired a reputation as an enfant terrible with controversial award magnets like Women in Love (1969), The Music Lovers (1970), The Devils (1971) and Tommy (1975). He tried to rekindle old scandals with Crimes of Passion (1984) and Lady Chatterley (1993), but he had discovered a flair for horror with Gothic (1986) and The Lair of the White Worm (1988) by the time he bade farewell to features with the homemade Poe parody, The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002). He was still planning pictures when he died at 84 in 2011.

Equally ready to speak his mind, Alan Parker also had a chequered career after swapping advertising for features like Bugsy Malone (1976) and Midnight Express (1978). Adept at any genre, he scored hits with the musicals Fame (1980), The Commitments (1991) and Evita (1996). But he had the misfortune to bow out with an underappeciated treatise on capital punishment, The Life of David Gale (2003), although he remained busy within the British film industry until his death (at 76) in 2020.

Comfortable directing on radio, stage, television and film, Anthony Minghella was taken much too soon at the age of 54 in 2008. However, he left an indelible legacy with the likes of Truly Madly Deeply (1990), the Oscar-winning The English Patient (1996) and The Talented Mr Ripley (1999). Despite teaming Jude Law and Juliette Binoche, the crime drama, Breaking and Entering (2006), failed to live up to Minghella's high standards.

Ace cinematographer Nicolas Roeg made an impressive start to his directorial career, as readers will discover in the Cinema Paradiso piece, Roeg and Bertolucci: Remembering the Masters. But later works were reviewed less favourably than Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Bad Timing (1980) and The Witches (1990). Yet, while the Fay Weldon adaptation, Puffball (2007), prompted plenty of lively critical debate, Roeg didn't direct another feature before he died at 90 in 2018.

Richard Attenborough was long established as an actor when he made his directorial bow with Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). He became known for lavish epics, winning the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director with Gandhi (1982). But later works were more intimate, including Shadowlands (1993) and Closing the Ring (2007), a romantic drama that cross-cut between wartime Belfast and 1990s Michigan. He was 83 when he completed the picture and was still hoping to make a biopic of 18th-century American radical, Thomas Paine, when he died in 2014.

Tony Scott was just 68 when he jumped off a bridge in Los Angeles in 2012. The younger brother of Ridley Scott, he had made his reputation with the erotic vampire chiller, The Hunger (1983), before enjoying a string of high-concept hits with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. The likes of Top Gun (1986), Days of Thunder (1990) and Crimson Tide (1995) proved hard to surpass, however, although he made three fine features with Denzel Washington, Déjà Vu (2006), The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) and, his last outing, Unstoppable (2010).

One of the outliers of alternative comedy in the 1960s, Terry Jones began directing his fellow Monty Python members in the spin-off features from their cult TV series: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (co-directed Terry Gilliam, 1975), Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python's Meaning of Life (1983). He had mixed fortunes with non-Python offerings like Personal Services (1987), Erik the Viking (1989) and his final feature, Absolutely Anything (2015), in which an alien comes to assess Earth to see if it's worth saving. This little-seen comedy was also Robin Williams's last film. Jones died at 77 in 2020.

Michael Apted also started out on television, with the pioneering Up series (1964-2019). His filmography is dotted with acclaimed dramas like Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), Gorillas in the Mist (1988) and Amazing Grace (2006). But he could also do thrillers like Gorky Park (1983) and Enigma (2001) and had the Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough (1999), among his credits when he signed off with a study of counter-terrorist espionage, Unlocked (2017). He died in Los Angeles at the age of 79 in January 2021.