Grown-up Times

THE LIFETAKER (UK) 1975 Producer/Director/Original Screenplay: Michael Papas CAST: Terence Morgan, Peter Duncan, Lea Dregorn 35mm, Scope, Technicolor The Lifetaker is a stylish, atmospheric, sometimes macabre thriller, intended at a variety of levels and interpretations layered on two basic and interlocking themes: corruption and imperialism. The husband, James, represents a system which disguises corrupt and brutal practices with a veneer of civility and concern. His house is a visual metaphor, with its gracious exterior, its elegant rooms, and at its heart the secret room where James’s dark secrets are enshrined. Lisa, the wife, personifies life and beauty stifled and twisted by environment. Finally the film may be seen as an odyssey of the boy Richard embarking on life in the adult world, being initiated into it, corrupted by it and, when he inherits it, becoming its victim. Over the years a myth has grown up around this film in the UK, fuelled by totally inaccurate press reports by unscrupulous journalists and others trying to create a non-existent scandal and attach it to a young actor who played one of the leads in the film, a TV presenter in the BBC’s Blue Peter programme, and more recently Chief of Scouts. Needless to say, none of these people ever saw the film which they were so eager to misrepresent. In reality The Lifetaker is a beautifully-made, seriously thought-provoking and challenging film which was shown at film festivals and praised by film critics, as …