D) I know you will hate me, but I do this for our love

Assignments for Further Analysis

1. Share your impressions on the book.

2. Consider the title of the book and comment on it.

3. Try to define the general theme of the book.

4. Recall the occasions when Sarah and Bendrix met one another after their long separation? How many times had it happened? How were these meetings different (conserning their purposefulness etc.)?

5. If you designed a book-cover for this novel, what would it look like? Whom or what would you portray on it? What ideas would you try to convey? Look at the following book-covers and speculate on them. What’s the principal message of each one? To what extent are they original and corresponding to their contents?

(1^st edition)

6. If you were supposed to invent a set of key-words for this book (to be found in Internet etc.), what would you include? Have a look at some example; do you agree with everything mentioned there?

bi-polarity, creativity, Graham Greene, habit, hate, love, masterpiece, scholastic, stream of conscious writing, the end of the affair, relationships, work…

THE END OF THE AFFAIR, director – NEIL JORDAN (1999)

Many of Greene’s novels had been filmed, most notably 1947's Brighton Rock, and he also wrote several original screenplays, most famously for the film The Third Man.

Pre-watching Tasks

Read the following information about the film.

Director – Neil Jordan

Screenplay – Neil Jordan

Produced by Neil Jordan, Stehpen Woolley

Music – Michael Nyman

Cinematography – Roger Pratt

Editing – Tony Lawson

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Release date(s): December 3, 1999 (United States); February 11, 2000 (United Kingdom)

Running time – 102 min.

– Maurice Bendrix – Ralph Fiennes

– Sarah Miles – Julianne Moore

– Henry Miles – Stephen Rea

– Mr. Parkis – Ian Hart

– Father Richard Smythe – Jason Isaacs

History of Production

The End of the Affair is arguably Graham Greene’s most autobiographical novel, taking as its inspiration his adulterous love affair with American Catherine Walston. The book, published in 1951, is dedicated to her. Greene’s biographer, Norman Sherry, called their relationship “the greatest literary affair of this century”.

Neil Jordan, who first read the Graham Greene original many years ago, believes it is also his finest novel.

Jordan said, “It’s the simplest of stories, but the dramatic core is very strong, and its focus on the irrational is very relevant to contemporary life. I saw that it would make a very interesting movie. I was really interested in the basic plot, that the structure of this love affair was seen so differently by the two protagonists.”

The character of Maurice Bendrix was an amalgam of both real and literary sources. Jordan created half of the tortured novelist from the Bendrix that Greene had written, but also sculpted him around Greene’s life as well. Jordan decided on Ralph Feinnes for the part: “I thought Ralph would convey that disenchanted, embittered ‘40s intellectual – a figure with too much emotion, too much intelligence for their own good.”

For Sarah, Jordan wanted “somebody that would be able to express everything that was behind the words, that depth of emotion. I tested several people, and Julianne Moore blew me away.”

Stephen Rea, who has collaborated with Jordan on six previous films, was cast as the third side of the love triangle, the cuckold Henry Miles.

Production began on February 15, 1999, on B Stage at Shepperton Stidios, just outside, where production designer Anthony Pratt created the interior sets that comprised the Miles’ Edwardian home. (Exterior scenes of the house were shot on Kew Green). Other principal London locations included the Whitehall Theatre, Rules Restraunt, Maida Vale Underground Station and Kensal Green Cemetery. A week was also spent in Brighton, where Jordan filmed scenes at the Grand Hotel and the Royal Pavilion. Principal photography wrapped after eleven weeks.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 856