BRITTEN: NOCTURNE + Introduction by Tony Palmer
Made in 2013 for the 100th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, it is Tony Palmer’s fifth film with and about this tortured composer.
We're delighted to welcome Tony Palmer to introduce this special screening which marks the 50th anniversary of Briten's death in December 1976.
Tony Palmer’s acclaimed film looks at Britten’s uneasy relationship with a troubled wider world, examining the role of the artist in society and the nature of creativity itself.
With Peter Pears, Janet Baker, Simon Rattle, Yehudi Menuhin, Imogen Holst, Rostropovich, Richter, the Amadeus Quartet, James Bowman, Irina Shostakovich and Britten himself, with music performed by Allan Clayton and the English Chamber Orchestra, the film tells the story of a deeply troubled man whose own masterpiece the War Requiem almost didn’t happen.
"After its first screening, critic Simon Heffer wrote: “I have rarely seen such a profoundly troubling film. Palmer is a master, and this is his masterpiece”.
“My subject is war”, Britten wrote as a preface, quoting Wilfred Owen. “All a poet can do is warn.”
This film with its political message is perhaps that warning."
- Tony Palmer
"Nothing quite prepares the Palmer novice for the ferocity and daring and the intense subjective raptures of work that still have to be classified as 'documentary'."
- David Thomson, The Biographical Dictionary of Film