Richard Burton – In From The Cold? The World Of Richard Burton (Full Film) | Tony Palmer Films

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“Few great actors in my experience have been so unfairly represented in the public image. Drunk, a wastrel, uncontrollable, unprofessional, besotted with glamour and wealth - these are just a few of the more generous epithets dumped on Richard Burton.

I had the privilege of knowing him well but only at the end of is life, and the only thing I hold against him was that he ‘stole’ the best assistant I ever had and made her his last wife, who gave him so much comfort and tenderness in the final years of his tempestuous and tormented existence. And fortunately, as it turned out, I made this film in 1988 just in time to capture on film all his surviving siblings (he was the 12th of 13 children), especially his eldest sister, Cecilia or ‘Cis’ who, after the death of his mother when he was 2, brought him up. What I learned from them was the horror of working down the coal mines, as their father had done, and the determination of the young Welsh-speaking Richard that this world would never be his fate. And later, as his fame and wealth increased, he never forgot this extended family; indeed, at one point he has over 30 family members on his ‘payroll’.

But this ‘escape’ from the mining community of Pontrhydyfen in South Wales came at a considerable price. First, his father (Walter Jenkins) effectively ‘sold him’ (money changed hands) to the local schoolmaster, Philip Burton, who altered young Richard’s name in an attempt to adopt him. Second, his prestigious talent and good looks propelled him into a world wholly alien. That he was transformed from a scruff who earned money by collecting lumps from the scrap heaps around his village into one of the most famous actors in the world before he was 30, is nothing short of miraculous.

But, as he told me, he hated his voice, hated his face, hated everything about himself. Not disliked, but hated. As the great American director (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Mike Nichols tells us in the film, “Richard was a man cut off from his past, a man for whom ‘seeming’ became more real than ‘being’. But as an actor who had ‘wasted’ his talent? Virginia Woolf?, The Spy Who Came From The Cold, The Robe, Equus, Becket, Look Back In Anger, Hamlet, Wagner, 1984 - nearly 100 films. Few other screen actors could boast such monumental, iconic performances. Brando, Clint Eastwood, Olivier….? He is their equal.

Paradoxically for someone who lived most of his life in the public eye, he was shy, deferential, courteous and absurdly generous. As Brook Williams, his godson, says in the film: “if Richard passed through your life, even if you had only worked with him for a day or even half a day, he lit something in you that I don’t think ever goes out. “Yes he was wild, passionate, literate, incredibly well read (he once boasted he could recite any of Shakespeare’s Sonnets by heart, backwards!!! And he could!) and riddled with self doubt. Like all very great actors, he identified with the characters he played, simply because they spoke for him. In Equus, Dysart (Burton) at the end of the play (film) stares defiantly at the camera and attempts to sum up himself and his life. I find myself agreeing with every word.

“My desire might be to make of this boy an ardent husband, a caring citizen, a worshipper of an abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to have made a ghost. I’ve healed the rash on his body; I’ve erased the welts cut into his mind. But I doubt he will be left with much passion. He will most probably, be without pain. For me, however, it never stops. Why me? Why me? First, account for me.”

My film made at his widow’s request, is a small celebration of an extraordinary man whom I had the privilege to know.” - Tony Palmer

Includes extracts from:
Cleopatra
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
The Robe
My Cousin Rachel
Anne of the Thousand Days
Equus
Becket
Camelot
Hamlet
Where Eagles Dare
The Last Days of Dolwyn
Prince of Players
Alexander the Great
Wild Gees
Look Back In Anger
The Taming of the Shrew
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
Dr Faustus
Wagner
1984

With
SALLY BURTON
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
KATE BURTON
PHILIP BURTON
LAUREN BACALL
JOE MANKIEWICZ
MIKE NICHOLS
ROBERT HARDY
SIR JOHN GIELGUD
CLAIRE BLOOM
EMLYN WILLIAMS
BROOK WILLIAMS
JOHN NEVILLE
WILLIAM SQUIRE
CECILIA JAMES
HILDA OWEN
VERDUN JENKINS
DAVID ARTHUR JENKINS
MARIAN MASTROIANNI
RHIANON TROWELL
NEVILLE COGHILLE
MELVYN BRAGG

Directed & Edited by TONY PALMER
Photographed by NIC KNOWLAND & SIMON ARCHER
Sound recorded by JOHN MURPHY & mixed by AAD WIRTZ
Music by BENJAMIN BRITTEN JANACEK, MONCAYO & HENRY PURCELL

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