An Oscar winner for his documentary Man on Wire and the filmmaker behind 2014’s awards juggernaut The Theory of Everything, James Marsh has been away from the big screen for a few years (his last project was the 2018 heist film King of Thieves). But he comes to Cannes with two buzzy projects in the market. In Night Boat to Tangier, he takes on Kevin Barry’s New York Times bestseller with a cast including Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Negga.
That film hasn’t shot yet, but Marsh has already completed a rather different feature, Dance First. A sweeping account of the life of literary icon Samuel Beckett (the title is taken from his ethos, “Dance first, think later”), the film sees Gabriel Byrne as the Nobel Prize winner in a story that covers the many aspects of his younger years: from Parisian bon vivant to WWII resistance fighter and philandering husband. The film, which Film Constellation is selling in Cannes, was written by BAFTA-winner Neil Forsyth with a cast that also includes Sandrine Bonnaire, Maxine Peake, Aidan Gillan and Finn O’Shea (playing a young Beckett).
Speaking exclusively to The Hollywood Reporter in Cannes, Marsh discusses bringing Beckett to the screen in a somewhat unexpected way.
I have to admit, I thought I knew about Beckett, but when I read about Dance First I realized there was so much I didn’t know.
That’s why I wanted to do the film. Beckett is such an interesting proposition, because of how he wrote what he wrote, and how he stands in the literature of the 20th century. And the script was actually kind of playful — it ambushes you early on. You don’t normally think of Beckett as laugh-out-loud or funny, but the script riffs on his work and his way of seeing the world. Essentially, it’s a review of his life through his mistakes, and he’s dwelling on the things that he most regrets. Which sounds like downer, but in fact it’s mainly love affairs.
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