- Born
- Birth namePeter John Greenaway
- Peter Greenaway trained as a painter and began working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information in 1965. Shortly afterwards he started to make his own films. He has produced a wealth of short and feature-length films, but also paintings, novels and other books. He has held several one-man shows and curated exhibitions at museums world-wide.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- Born in Wales and raised in Chingford, Essex, Peter Greenaway originally trained as a painter in the early 1960s, until he began making experimental short films and documentaries while working as an editor and director at the British Central Office of Information. Drawing from his extensive experience in short filmmaking, Greenaway made his feature debut in 1980 with The Falls, a fascinating assembly of 92 mockumentary style shorts chronicling the victims of a fictitious disaster, referred to as the "Violent Unexplained Event." Two years later, Greenaway found international success with The Draughtsman's Contract, a stunningly picturesque narrative puzzle set in late 17th century rural England, that turns the whodunnit formula on its head.
In the years following, Greenaway established himself as one of the most visionary and boundary-pushing filmmakers by challenging viewers through his honest confrontations with topics such as nudity, sexuality, religion, violence, decay and death. His 1985 A Zed And Two Noughts follows twin zoologists, who, after losing their wives to the same accident, become obsessed with their animals'-and soon their own-decompositions. Similarly, Greenaway's next feature The Belly of An Architect (1987) stars a superb Brian Dennehy as the titular architect, who senses his own demise from an alarming stomach issue.
Despite dealing in taboo topics and graphic depictions, Greenaway has never shied away from the playful and humorous sides of life. For example, in Drowning By Numbers (1988), Greenaway tells the story of three similar murders, while relating the actions to various children's games, as well as a literal numbered countdown. Greenaway's most graphic assault on the senses (and perhaps his most renowned film) The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) revels in gluttony, violence, torture, and cannibalism, while being playfully structured as a multi-course meal at a fine dining restaurant. And likewise, the sexual violence and shockingly brutal treatment of the quasi-religious figures in The Baby of Mâcon (1993) are framed by the play-within-the-narrative structure, a wink to the audience that the events within the film are not real.
In each of these films, Greenaway avoids traditional narrative structures, favoring the inherently visual aspect of the medium over the textual. As a result, he is especially lauded for his magnificent compositions, which stem from his passion for painting and other visual multi-media projects, as well as his recurring interest in Renaissance, Baroque and Flemish art.- IMDb Mini Biography By: American Cinematheque
- SpousesCarol(1969 - 1999) (divorced, 2 children)Saskia Boddeke(? - present) (2 children)
- Strong, and manipulative female characters
- Prominence of the number 92 (92 falls exist in The Falls (1980), and 92 suitcases belong to Tulse Luper in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (2003))
- Scenes in hospitals where characters are bedridden and immobile
- Plots concerning artists or designers
- Long tracking shots
- When actors on the set of The Baby of Mâcon (1993) pointed out that he was introducing continuity errors, Peter replied that 'Continuity is boring.'
- When he saw Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) at age 16 he decided he wanted to be a film maker.
- His favorite movie is Last Year at Marienbad (1961).
- Was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2007 "Queen's New Years Honors List" for his services to film.
- Trained as a painter.
- Cinema doesn't connect with the body as artists have in two thousand years of painting, using the nude as the central figure which the ideas seem to circulate around. I think it is important to somehow push or stretch or emphasize, in as many ways as I can, the sheer bulk, shape, heaviness, the juices, the actual structure of the body. Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.
- Many quite popular films are filled with violence. I think the difference between those and my films is that I show the cause and effect of violent activity. It's not a Donald Duck situation where he get a brick in the back of the head and gets up and walks away in the next frame. Mine have violence which keeps Donald Duck in the hospital for six months and creates a trauma which he will remember for the rest of his life.
- I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.
- If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.
- [on working with composer Michael Nyman] I'm pretty certain Michael and I will never ever work together again.
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