FIRE STARTER (REMEMBERING HUGH HUDSON)

"The British are coming," a euphoric Colin Welland declared at the 1982 Oscars.

And in some senses he was right because Hugh Hudson's Best Picture winning 'Chariots of Fire' marked a moment that the country's film industry has really built on.

British talent had won every year at the Academy Awards since 1955 - an achievement that has continued to this day.

However 'Chariots of Fire' was a turning point for the profile of British film, coming just before the birth of Channel 4 whose support for indigenous filmmaking talent would kickstart other investment in the nation's film industry, with other broadcasters like the BBC, ITV and Sky following suit.

Richard Attenborough's 'Gandhi,' Bernardo Bertolucci's 'The Last Emperor,' Anthony Minghella's 'The English Patient,' John Madden's 'Shakespeare In Love,' Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire,' Tom Hooper's 'The King's Speech' and Steve McQueen's 'Twelve Years A Slave' would all go on to take the top prize - Best Picture - for British film.

However films by Peter Yates, Roland Joffe, David Lean, James Ivory, John Boorman, Charles Crichton, Lewis Gilbert, Neil Jordan, Mike Leigh, Jim Sheridan, Peter Cattaneo, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Frears, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott, Sam Mendes, Paul Greengrass, Christopher Nolan, Emerald Fennell and Martin McDonagh have also featured heavily in Oscar races over the years.

Hudson and 'Chariots of Fire' was the spark that lit that flame.

Apart from 'Chariots of Fire,' though, he had a relatively modest career - making just seven dramatic feature films as a director, as well as documentaries.

Born in London in 1936, he hailed from a family with ancestry in Scotland and Cumberland and which also boasted a Conservative MP ib its ranks, his great grandfather Charles Donaldson-Hudson who represented constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire between 1880 and 1885.

Sent to boarding school at the age of six, Hugh was educated at Eton but didn't really enjoy his time at the famous English public school.

On leaving the college, he served in the Army during National Service in the Dragoon Guards, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant.

Hudson remained in the Army Reserve of Officers until he was discharged in 1960.

He moved to Paris where he spent three years training as a film editor - having previously bring struck by the power of the moving image at the age of 10 while watching newsreels of the evacuation of a Nazi Holocaust concentration camp.

Returning to London, Hugh worked on a string of documentary and live action short films as a producer and director with the writers David Cammell and Robert Brownjohn.

These included 'A Is For Apple' a 11 minute film in 1963 which won a Screenwriters Guild Award, 'Boxes of Eggs' and 'Design for Today' in 1965 and the 1966 BAFTA nominated short film drama 'The Tortoise and The Hare' about a Jaguar car and a Pirelli truck's journey along Italy's stunning Autostrada del Sole to the sounds of Vivaldi and jazz.

Other short films he made during this period included the impressionistic 1967 documentary short 'Birds and Planes' and 1971's 'Irresistible' a largely dialogue free tale of three travellers on a journey through Sicily.

Working alongside Alan Parker, Tony and Ridley Scott, he plied his trade in the advertising industry - directing commercials for British Airways, Benson and Hedges cigarettes and Fiat while also making documentary shorts like '12 Squadron Bucaneers' in 1978 about Royal Air Force manoeuvres near Gibraltar.

Parker hired him as a second unit director on his Oscar nominated movie 'Midnight Express' which really lit a desire to make his own feature films.

In 1980, Hudson made the feature documentary 'Fangio: Una Vita a 300'alora (Fangio: A Life at 300 Kmph') about the Argentine Formula One racing car driver Juan Manuel Fangio who dominated the first decade of the sport during the 1950s.

His chance to direct a feature film came a year later when producer David Puttnam came to him with Colin Welland's script about two British Olympic sprinters - one a devout Scottish Christian and the other of Lithuanian Jewish extraction.

Puttnam had known Hudson through working in the advertising industry and was looking for a screenplay in the same vein as 'A Man for All Seasons'.

He later told the Jewish Chronicle in 2011 his strategy during the film was to work with lesser known actors like Ben Cross, Ian Charleston, Nicholas Farrell, Cheryl Campbell and Nigel Havers as leads and established actors like Ian Holm and John Geilgud in supporting roles.

"If I put stars in it, the film would never have been successful," he explained.

"With unknown actors, you look at them afresh. It's a very powerful element."

The result was a movie that earned strong reviews at Cannes, around the world and fared well at the international box office.

With its striking Vangelis' score, Hudson won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes and Holm the award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Sam Mussabini, the coach of Ben Cross' Harold Abrahams.

Ian Charelson was also lauded for his performance as Eric Liddle and more awards followed, with 'Chariots of Fire' capturing Best Film at the BAFTAs, Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and Best Film at the National Board of Review awards.

At the Oscars, it beat 'Atlantic City,' 'On Golden Pond,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and 'Reds' to Best Picture, although Hudson lost the Best Director race to Warren Beatty.

Welland won Best Original Screenplay, Vangelis captured the award for Best Original Musical Score and Milena Canonero for Best Costume Design.

It enjoyed a re-release in 2012 as London and the UK celebrated hosting the Olympic Games.

Reflecting on its enduring popularity, Hudson told the Jewish Chronicle: "We though it was a very small film - it had a budget of just £5.5 million.

"But it won four Oscars and was nominated for eight, which is a great accolade.

"It has made the rest of my career much easier. It's much more straightforward to get finance when you have an Oscar. It has kept me going for a long time."

To follow up 'Chariots of Fire,' Hudson took on an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Tarzan of the Apes' which sought to reclaim the tale from memories of the Johnny Weissmuller movie serial.

Ten years in gestation, it was originally a project developed by Robert Towne who ended up getting a screenwriting credit as PH Vazak with Michael Austin.

Towne had found it difficult to adapt Burroughs' novel in the way he intended and during the making of his directorial debut 'Personal Best,' he found himself clashing with producer David Geffen and Warner Bros and dealing with an actors strike.

This led to him selling the project for $1 million to stave off debts incurred while making 'Personal Best' but Towne would later claim abandoning the project was the greatest regret of hus career.

Riding high after his debut feature film's success, Hugh inherited a "brilliant.. half finished but overlong" screenplay from Towne, with Christophe Lambert beating Viggo Mortensen, Julian Sands and a Danish ballet dancer to the part of John Clayton/Tarzan.

With Ian Holm, Ralph Richardson, James Fox, Ian Charleson and Andie McDowell on board as Jane, he ended up getting Glenn Close to dub over her Southern US accent which he felt didn't work for the movie.

Hudson's handsome film just about made its money back and earned decent reviews.

It also landed three Academy Award nominations including Richardson for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the Earl of Greystoke and Towne and Austin for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Richardson and Holm would also land BAFTA Best Supporting Actor nominations.

His next feature would be 'Revolution,' an ambitious American war of independence drama in 1985 with Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland and Nastassja Kinski with Hollywood producer Irwin Winkler.

Made on a $28 million budget and working from a Robert Dillon screenplay, Pacino was cast as a fur trapper reluctantly drawn into the revolution against the British.

The movie, however, was mauled by reviewers who derided the accents and the decision to shoot it in England

'Revolution' bombed and Pacino was so devastated by its critical and commercial hammering that he did not make another movie for four years.

The film, however, had been rush released into cinemas to secure a Christmas release with Hudson dissatisfied with the final cut.

A Director's Cut was later released on DVD in 2009 and was championed by the Observer film critic Philip French as a much better film than the original.

Licking his wounds, he was coaxed by the Labour Party to direct their most high profile 1987 General Election party political broadcast.

Dubbed 'Kinnock - The Movie,' the stylish film about the Welshman boosted Kinnock's personal ratings but Labour were unable to the oust Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives on polling day.

Hudson took a step away from big budget studio fare for his next movie, the 1989 indie drama 'Lost Angels' with Beastie Boys member Adam Horowitz as a young offender who Donald Sutherland's psychiatrist connects with.

Screened at Cannes, it received tepid reviews, although the critic Roger Ebert did praise Hudson's intelligent direction.

In 1995, Hudson was one of 45 filmmakers tasked with making 52 second shorts for the anthology film 'Lumiere and Company' under the strict rules that there could only be three takes and no synchronised sound.

Rubbing shoulders with Theo Angelopoulos, John Boorman, Costa Gavras, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Hallstron, Michael Haneke, Spike Lee, David Lynch, Jacques Rivette, Liv Ullman, Wim Wenders and Zhang Yomou among others, Hudson's contribution was about Japanese schoolchildren visiting a monument in Hiroshima over a soundtrack of news reports of the atomic bomb.

1999 saw the release of his feature 'My Life So Far' about a landed gentry family on a Scottish estate coming to terms with the impact of the First World War.

Adapted by Simon Donald from the memoir by the British television executive Dennis Forman, it starred Colin Firth, Irene Jacob, Malcolm McDowell, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Kelly MacDonald and reunited him with his 'Chariots of Fire' producer David Puttnam who had bailed out of 'Greysroke' during pre-production.

It was well received but struggled to find an audience.

A year later, Hugh released 'I Dreamed of Africa,' a biographical drama in which Kim Basinger played a divorced Italian socialite who undergoes a radical transformation in her life after a car crash.

Co-starring Vincent Perez, Eva Marie Saint and Daniel Craig, the $50 million movie tanked with critics and audiences, earning $15 million at the box office.

It would be 12 years before he returned to a big screen project, collaborating with his wife Maryam D'Abo, who he married in 2003, and Nigel Havers who he had worked with on 'Chariots of Fire'.

'Rupture: Living With My Broken Brain' was forged out of D'Abo's experience of suffering a brain haemorrhage and undergoing surgery four years after they married and featured interviews with people who had suffered brain injuries like the music producer Quincy Jones, the newspaper editor Robert McCrum and jazz guitarist Pat Martino.

Narrated by Havers and screened on BBC4, it was shown at several film festivals with D'Abo's interviewing style and its mix of fact and personal storytelling receiving critical praise.

In 2014, he helped script Roger Spottiswoode and Brando Quilici's Canadian-Italian family adventure 'The Journey Home' with Goran Visnij, Dakota Goyo and Bridget Moynahan which received mixed reviews.

His last feature film as a director was 2016's Spanish biographical drama 'Altamira' in which Antonio Banderas played the real life jurist and archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola who discovered prehistoric cave art on his land in 1879.

With a cast that included Maryam D'Abo, Rupert Everett, Nicholas Farrell and Golshifteh Farahani, it drew mixed reviews with many critics noting its striking visuals but criticising the telling of the story as otherwise unremarkable.

Hugh teamed up again as a writer with Brando Quilic for the 2022 live action adventure 'Tiger's Nest' with Sunny Pawar and Claudia Gerini which was set in the Himalayan forests and focused on a boy's bond with a tiger cub.

The film won awards in festivals in Madrid, Rome and Tallinn.

Given his eye for a striking image, Hudson remained a respected figure in the film industry.

Over the years, he served on many film festival juries in cities like Tokyo, Istanbul, Sarajevo, Athens, Bombay, Tiblisi and Marakesh.

Hudson passed away in London's Charring Cross Hospital but is survived by a son from his first marriage to the painter Susan Michie.

But he has left behind a solid body of work as an accomplished filmmaker who blazed the trail for British film and future generations of British and Irish directors.

(Hugh Hudson passed away at the age of 86 on February 10, 2023)

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FIRE STARTER (REMEMBERING HUGH HUDSON)

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