| All
the Little Animals
Jeremy Thomas UK
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| Jeremy Thomas first read Walter Hamilton's novel All The Little Animals
in 1970, when he was starting out in the film business. Nearly three decades
later, long-since established as one of Europe's most influential producers,
he has at last made it into a film.
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Originally, Thomas had thought of casting Dirk Bogarde as the kindly, animal-loving eccentric Mr Summers and John Hurt as Bobby, the orphaned boy who finds refuge with him after running away from his evil stepfather. "I've got letters on file from Bogarde in 1973 saying thank you, but I dodn't think it's quite right for me." Ironically, Hurt is now playing Summers while Christian Bale (first spotted by Thomas as the child actor in Spielberg's Empire Of The Sun) is cast as the troubled adolescent. British media tycoon Lord Bernstein shared Thomas' enthusiasm for Hamilton's novel (the only one the young novelist wrote before his untimely death in 1969), and bought the rights for his TV company, Granada. "But they never made a movie of it and in the end they sold me the rights in the early 80s." It took a further decade for Thomas to decide to direct. "It is a first film but I was certainly prepared," he says. Thomas grew up on film sets. His father, Ralph Thomas, was one of the most prolific filmmakers in British cinema history As a producer, Jeremy has seen directors of the calibre of Bertolucci, Oshima and Cronenberg at first hand. One of the most striking aspects of Thomas's very impressive debut is its feel for landscape and myth. In order to capture the richness, colour and mystery of the rural settings, he instructed his cinematographer, Mike Molloy, to use CinemaScope. In the balding, ruthless De Winter, Thomas has also unearthed one of the most memorable screen villains in recent British cinema: US actor Daniel Benzali plays the villainous stepfather De Winter with a relish which rekindles memories of Cruela De Vill in 101 Dalmatians. Geoffrey Macnab |
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