Mornings in the Dark
The Graham Greene Film Reader
Few novelists have taken films as seriously, or been as closely involved in so many aspects of the film business, as Graham Greene. His experience included producing, performing, script-writing and adaptation. And twenty years before he wrote the scripts to such celebrated films as "Brighton Rock", "The Fallen Idol" and "The Third Man", he had been one of the finest film critics of the 1930s, his intimate knowledge of the industry matched by his trenchant and perceptive responses to film as art, entertainment and social phenomenon.
Mornings in the Dark gathers some of Greene's best film criticism with a mass of related material: his film articles, interviews, lectures and radio talks, stories for film, letters and film proposals. With appendices on Greene's own films and unfulfilled film projects, and David Parkinson's introduction, this is an essential collection for readers and film enthusiasts alike.
About the Author
Graham Greene was born in Berkhamsted in 1904 and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He was on the staff of "The Times" from 1926 to 1930, and in 1935 became film critic of the "Spectator", becoming the magazine's literary editor in 1940. During the Second World War Greene worked for the Foreign Office, from 1941-1943 in Sierra Leone. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1966 and a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1969. Greene died in 1991.
Considered one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, Greene was a prolific writer, the author of, in addition to his novels and criticism, short stories, essays, plays, screenplays, travel books and autobiography. His first popular success was the thriller "Stamboul Train" (1932), the first of a series of novels that included "The Confidential Agent" (1939) and "Our Man in Havana" (1958) termed by Greene "entertainments". Other novels, such as "Brighton Rock" (1938), "The Power and the Glory" (1940), "The Heart of the Matter" (1948) and "The Quiet American" (1955) explore preoccupations with the human condition that reflect Greene's conversion to Catholicism in 1926.
Reviews
"I well remember when I was beginning as a film critic, reading with the most passionate envy the writings of Graham Greene in the 'Spectator'... it struck me that this was the kind of thing that film criticism should be" – Dilys Powell, The Listener
