Peter Greenaway- The Brilliant
British Director
Background & Personal
Information
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Born April 5, 1942 in Newport, Gwent, Wales, UK.
Father was an ornithologist, mother was a teacher.
Studied painting and art history at Walthamstow
College of Art (Waltham Forest College) located in
North-East London, England.
 Trained originally as painter rather than a filmmaker, but
his first exhibition indicated interest that led him into editing
film at the Central Office of Information.
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Married in 1969 but divorced in 1999
Two daughters
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Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com
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Career
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Director, screenwriter, film editor, and painter.
British Film Institute – caretaker starting in
1965.
British Government Central Office – director
and editor of documentaries (1965-76).
First exhibition of paintings at Lords Gallery:
London, 1964.
Artwork has been displayed all over the world
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Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com
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Awards/Honors
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Won 20 Film Awards, Nominated for 19 Film Awards
 Won 2014 BAFTA Film Award for Outstanding British
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Contribution to Cinema
Two Hugo Awards
British Film Institute Award
Melbourne Film Festival Award
Sydney Film Festival Award
Cannes Film Festival Award
Artistic Merit Award
Golden Palm Award
Nominated for four Cannes International Film Festival Awards,
won one
And many more…
Peter Greenaway Awards- IMDb
Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com
Films
The Falls (1980)
Zandra Rhodes documentary (1981)
The Belly of an Architect (1987)
The Draughtsman’s Contract (1987)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her
Lover (1989/1990)
 Prospero’s Books (1991)
 The Pillow Book (1996)
 Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012)
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Peter Greenaway - Encyclopedia.com
Greenaway’s Works
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Marcia Pally article: Term
“intertextuality” (the shaping of a text’s
meaning by another text) can’t
describe his films.
Films are normally chaotic.
“If Greenaway sees culture as man’s
attempt to order chaos, then cinema is
Greenaway’s way of ordering culture.”
(Pally, 4).
Talks about the women in his work.
 Pally says that when it comes to
women, Greenaway “fatalistic, as if
we are only as good as our
genes,” (37).
 He also tends to overestimate
female power: in three out of five
of his features, women kill their
husbands.
○ Pally says that for the first time,
a woman acts on behalf of
civilization. An example of this
would be The Cook, in which
Georgina finishes off her
husband after making him eat
a bite of her lover.
○ She Kills for justice and to
make peace over all the
mayhem.
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Death is also a large theme that
Greenaway focuses on:
 Death and animals
 Death and landscape
 Death and architecture
 Death and sex
 Death and food (cannibalism)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife
and Her Lover
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Arguably the best of Greenaway’s films.
Was nominated for:
 Best Film and won Greenaway Best Director in the 1989 Catalonian International
Film Festival; the Fantasporto International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film in
1990; the Independent Spirit Award in 1991; and the Independent Spirit Award for
Best Foreign Film in 1999
Includes themes such as aestheticism, cannibalism, consumerism and sadism.
Article by Ruth Johnston states that this movie is a critique of consumer society.
 Critics have questioned its political impact
○ Critic Leonard Quart dismisses the film’s politics as “too literal and facile…”
(19).
○ Even though the movie “means to have political and social implications…its real
distinction lies in its form,” (19).
Karin Badt’s interview with Peter Greenaway explains that the movie had a structured
story.
 8 sections of a menu, something happening within each section; settings were
color-coordinated; “pastiche of eras gripped the eye as a patchwork of costume,
painting, and furniture…” (54).
Wanted to know what would happen to the wife and her lover; movie ended with actual
cannibalistic sacrifice.
Was asked about his politics and subtle critique of the bourgeoisie in this film.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife
and Her Lover cont’d
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Article by Leonard Quart: “What accounts for the success
of [the film]…is that, on its surface, the film is a shocking
work.
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What makes it shocking?
○ Being smeared with feces; explicit sex and nudity; sadistic
beatings and mutilation; murder; and to top it all off, the “gourmet
cannibalism,” (45).
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Also mentions Margaret Thatcher’s love of materialism.
 “Viewed as a political parable…Greenaway states the The
Cook…is suffused with his ‘anger and passion about the
terrifying pejoratives done by this wretched Mrs. Thatcher,” (46).
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So in political terms, Albert, a man who believes that
“dining exquisitely each night on quail and profiteroles will
make up for his days of extortion, pimping, and street
brutalities,” (Pally, 4) is supposed to be one of Mrs.
Thatcher’s more terrifying success stories.
 He “mispronounces the entrees on the menu, and is relentlessly
and amorally attuned to the world of avarice and crass
materialism that is Thatcher’s legacy,” (46).
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Badt, Karin. "Peter Greenaway
Holds Court: An Interview at
the Venice Film Festival." Film
Criticism 29.2 2004/2005. 5366. Web. 1 Apr 2014.
Johnston, Ruth D. "The Staging of
the Bourgeois Imaginary in
"The Cook, the Thief, His
Wife, and Her Lover"." Cinema
Journal 41.2 (2002): 19-40.
Web. 1 Apr 2014.
Pally, Marcia. "Order vs. Chaos."
Cinéaste 18.3 (1991): 3-5, 37.
Web. 1 Apr 2014.
Quart, Leonard. "The Cook, The
Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
by Kees Kasander; Pete
Greenaway." Cinéaste 18.1
(1990): 45-47. Web. 1 Apr
2014.
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Fink, Beatrice. "Sadean
savouries in Peter
Greenaway’s The Cook, the
Thief, his Wife and her Lover."
Paragraph 23.1 (2000): 98106. Web. 1 Apr 2014.
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Works Cited
Works Consulted