Prick Up Your Ears
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Prick Up Your Ears
Plot
This unadorned biography of playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) charts his bawdy, dangerous relationships. Alfred Molina plays Orton's brutish lover, Kenneth Halliwell, a pathetic figure who becomes horrific and then tragic before the film is over. The hilarity of scenes from such Orton plays as Loot and What the Butler Saw is evenly balanced by the bleakness of the playwright's tormented (and tormenting) off-stage existence, which ended suddenly at age 34 with half a dozen blows to the head from a hammer. Prick Up Your Ears is based on the book by theater critic John Lahr, who is played in the film by Wallace Shawn. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviReview
A playwright whose career was as brilliant as it was brief, Joe Orton made his name with plays whose anarchic quality mirrored the tumult of his own life. Brash, unapologetically homosexual, and possessing unbridled cheek, Orton was a vibrant personality, merrily jeering in the face of proper society until he died suddenly and violently, bludgeoned to death by his longtime lover, Kenneth Halliwell. The story of Orton's life would be easy to sentimentalize or sensationalize, but director Stephen Frears focuses on a portrait of what was essentially a very bad marriage. As told in flashbacks from the vantage point of Orton's agent (Vanessa Redgrave) and biographer (Wallace Shawn), the conclusion of Orton and Halliwell's relationship is a foregone one; what remains is for the viewer to sit back and watch the water come to a boil. Much of the film's strength can be found in Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina's portrayals of Orton and Halliwell. Oldman bears an uncanny resemblance to the playwright, and his performance is sexy, dangerous, and utterly compelling. Molina invests Halliwell with the needy gloom of an unwanted lover; the wary hurt in his eyes tells us all we need to know about where he's headed. Their moody, ever-shifting relationship mirrors the mercurial transformation of the stuffy 1950s into the swinging 1960s; there is exhilaration to be savored, but also the bitter taste of chaos lurking beneath. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, RoviCast
- Gary Oldman - Joe Orton
- Alfred Molina - Kenneth Halliwell
- Vanessa Redgrave - Peggy Ramsay
- Wallace Shawn - John Lahr
- Julie Walters - Elsie Orton
Credit
Philip Elton - Art Director, Debbie McWilliams - Casting, Bob Ringwood - Costume Designer, Michael Zimbrich - First Assistant Director, Stephen Frears - Director, Mick Audsley - Editor, Stanley Myers - Composer (Music Score), John Harle - Musical Direction/Supervision, Harry Carroll - Songwriter, Paul McCartney - Songwriter, Stanley Myers - Songwriter, Richard Myhill - Songwriter, Elaine Carew - Makeup, Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski - Production Designer, Oliver Stapleton - Cinematographer, Ann Wingate - Production Manager, Andrew Brown - Producer, Philip Elton - Set Designer, Tony Jackson - Sound/Sound Designer, Alan Bennett - Screenwriter, John Lennon - Featured Music, John Lahr - Book Author| Priceless Treasures of Dresden (1978 Film), Priceless (2006 Film) | |
| Pride (1917 Film), Pride (1998 Film) |
American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:
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prick up one's ears
Listen carefully, pay close attention, as in When she heard them mention her boyfriend she pricked up her ears. This term alludes to horses raising their ears at a sudden noise. [Late 1500s]
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Prick Up Your Ears
This article is about the film. For the episode of Family Guy, see Prick Up Your Ears (Family Guy). For the stage play, see Prick Up Your Ears (play).
| Prick Up Your Ears | |
|---|---|
 Poster for Prick Up Your Ears |
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| Directed by | Stephen Frears |
| Written by | John Lahr (book) Alan Bennett (screenplay) |
| Starring | Gary Oldman Alfred Molina Vanessa Redgrave Wallace Shawn Julie Walters |
| Cinematography | Oliver Stapleton |
| Distributed by | The Samuel Goldwyn Company |
| Release date(s) | April 17, 1987 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3 million |
| Box office | $1,654,743 |
Prick Up Your Ears is a 1987 film, directed by Stephen Frears, about the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. The screenplay was written by Alan Bennett, based on the book by John Lahr. The film stars Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell, Wallace Shawn as Lahr and Vanessa Redgrave as Margaret "Peggy" Ramsay.
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Contents
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Plot
The film tells the story of Orton and Halliwell in flashback, framed by sequences of Lahr researching the book upon which the film is based with Orton's literary agent, Peggy Ramsay. Orton and Halliwell's relationship is traced from its beginnings at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Orton starts out as the uneducated youth to Halliwell's older faux-sophisticate. As the relationship progresses, however, Orton grows increasingly confident in his talent while Halliwell's writing stagnates. They fall into a parody of a traditional married couple, with Orton as the "husband" and Halliwell as the long-suffering and increasingly ignored "wife" (a situation exacerbated by Orton's unwillingness, in 1960s England, to acknowledge having a male lover). Orton is commissioned to write a screenplay for The Beatles and Halliwell gets carried away in preparing for a meeting with the "Fab Four", but in the end Orton is taken away for a meeting on his own. Finally, a despondent Halliwell kills Orton and commits suicide.
Cast
- Gary Oldman - Joe Orton
- Alfred Molina - Kenneth Halliwell
- Vanessa Redgrave - Peggy Ramsay
- Frances Barber - Leonie Orton
- Janet Dale - Mrs. Sugden
- Julie Walters - Elsie Orton
- Bert Parnaby - The Magistrate
- Margaret Tyzack - Madame Lambert
- Lindsay Duncan - Anthea Lahr
- Wallace Shawn - John Lahr
Title
"Prick Up Your Ears" was to be the title of an unreleased play by Orton; Ironically, Halliwell, who had provided many of Orton's titles throughout his successful years, suggested the title. In the title, the word "Ears" is an anagram of the word "Arse" making Prick Up Your Ears a rather blunt reference to the homosexual subject matter. It is also a phonetic play on the conjunction of "your" and "ears" to produce "rears", which also alludes to gay sex.
Reception
Prick Up Your Ears received a generally positive critical reaction, with a 100% "fresh" rating at review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 15 reviews from notable publications. Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars out of four, writing, "The movie is not about homosexuality, which it treats in a matter-of-fact manner. It is really about a marriage between unequal partners." He described Redgrave's performance as "superb", and lauded the work of Oldman and Molina: "The great performances in the movie are, of course, at its center. Gary Oldman plays Orton and Alfred Molina plays Halliwell, and these are two of the best performances of the year."[1] Oldman's portrayal of Orton earned him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor.[2][3]
The film won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.[4]
References
- ^ Prick Up Your Ears review. Roger Ebert. May 8, 1987. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
- ^ Prick Up Your Ears Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Gary Oldman - Awards
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: Prick Up Your Ears". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/421/year/1987.html. Retrieved 2009-07-19.
External links
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American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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