Providence (1977 film)

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Providence
Directed by	Alain Resnais
Written by	David Mercer
Starring	Dirk Bogarde Ellen Burstyn John Gielgud David Warner
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Release date(s)	January 25, 1977
Running time	110 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Providence is a French/Swiss 1977 film directed by Alain Resnais and starring Dirk Bogarde, David Warner, Ellen Burstyn, and John Gielgud.

1 Plot
2 Reception and influence
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Over a drunken, tormented night, dying writer Clive Langham (Gielgud) struggles with the plot of a novel. The characters are based on Langham's own family, who are depicted as spiteful, treacherous and decadent. Langham makes these people interact in a variety of settings - courtrooms, mortuaries, werewolf-haunted forests. Although it is obvious that the writer's perceptions are distorted by bitterness and guilt, the extent of this is not made clear until the end, when the "real" family members come to Langham's house to celebrate his birthday.

[edit] Reception and influence

The film won seven César Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Editing, as well as the New York Film Critics Circle Award for John Gielgud.
Although he was one of the preeminent theatre actors of the twentieth century, John Gielgud felt that this was his only completely successful attempt at film acting.^[1]
The bipartite structure of Providence was hailed by films critics as a precursor to David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2002).^[2]