JONATHAN DEMME

(22 February 1944 - 26 April 2017)

The American filmmaker Jonathan Demme was prolific as a writer-director-producer and sometime actor, covering both cinema and television in equal measure. He began as a producer in the early 1970s, writing several films such as Angel Warriors, The Hot Box and Black Mama White Mama. His first film as a director was Caged Heat in 1974, then Crazy Mama with Cloris Leachman, Last Embrace with Roy Scheider, Swing Shift with Goldie Hawn, and Melvin and Howard with Jason Robards as Howard Hughes. He also worked concurrently on TV documentaries, series and video shorts. Then there was Something Wild (1986), which starred Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels, followed by Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia, and Married to the Mob, with Michelle Pfeiffer. Next came his greatest success, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), which won five Oscars, including statuettes for best picture, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins and for Demme himself as best director. He then followed this with Philadelphia, which won Tom Hanks his first Oscar and was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to tackle homosexuality and Aids. This was followed by Beloved, with Oprah Winfrey and Thandie Newton, and the critically ridiculed The Truth About Charlie, a remake of Charade with Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton. His remake of The Manchurian Candidate (2004) with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep was no improvement on the original, just different. Among the documentary work, Demme still found time to direct Rachel Getting Married with Anne Hathaway, A Master Builder, based on the play by Ibsen, and Ricki and the Flash (2015), with Meryl Streep, his last theatrical feature.

MICHAEL DARVELL