Chichester International Film Festival turns the focus on Dirk Bogarde

This year’s Chichester International Film Festival will mark the centenary of the great matinee idol turned arthouse cinema star Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999).
Dirk BogardeDirk Bogarde
Dirk Bogarde

The centenary tribute will comprise the screening of two landmark films, plus a conversation between the great screen actor’s nephew, Brock Van den Bogaerde, and his official biographer, John Coldstream.

John, who lives in Chichester and knew Dirk for the last eight years of his life, will be speaking with Brock at the Chichester Cinema at New Park on Saturday, August 21 at 1.30pm.

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They will discuss a distinguished body of work, illustrated with extracts selected from The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), The Night Porter (1975), Providence (1977), Despair (1978) and Bogarde’s poignant 1990 swansong, Daddy Nostalgie (These Foolish Things).

“Dirk’s achievement was unique,” as John says. “There are a lot of actors who have made 65 films, with most of them with their name above the title, which was very important to Dirk. He was always above the title from 1947 or 1948.

“But not a lot of actors have also written 15 books, every single one of which was a best-seller including seven volumes of autobiography. And there was also the fact that he was a published poet. And also the fact that he was an extremely good artist.

“The only person who probably comes near that level of achievement is probably Antony Sher who has that similar broad range of talent, a very very fine actor, a very very good writer, particularly of non-fiction which Dirk also was, and also a very accomplished painter.

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“Dirk could have made a career as an artist, but he chose cinema and he made an astonishing contribution, early on in the social problem films and early small-scale dramas and then moving into matinee idolatry and becoming a colossal box office star and then – and this is the crux of what we are going to be talking about – he moved into the arthouse cinema of Europe. How he made that transition from matinee idol to arthouse cinema is fascinating.

“One of the things that always characterised him was that he always gave the role his all. His was ultra professional. He always did the best, and he had the fiercest intelligence. He was not, you could say, educated fully. He didn’t go into tertiary education. He was an auto-didact but he had this fierce intelligence.

“He had quite a busy war as an interpreter of intelligence photos. He was Intelligence with a capital I during the war, and in his films he was intelligence with a lower-case i.

“With his acting, you can see what is going on behind his eyes. He was like Henry Fonda in that sense, like guys of that calibre. He had that thoughtfulness… but he could also explode every now and again.”

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John suspects that more than two decades after his death, he will be remembered rather more roundedly now: “I think people respect what he left behind, and the great thing is that he worked in three mediums which survived. They are all still there. His work is on celluloid and on printed paper and on canvas.

“We have a proper legacy which is tangible as well as visible, and that is important when we think about someone’s work, when we think about what matters.

“I think there are two movies that Dirk made that will stand the test of a very long time. The first was Victim in 1961 so we have also got the 60th anniversary this year. The second is The Servant. Death in Venice probably, but definitely The Servant.”

The festival will be showing Death In Venice on Saturday August 21 at 10.30am in the auditorium at Chichester Cinema at New Park and Accident on Friday, August 20 at 8.30pm in Slindon Cinema.