Nick Riddle
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781911325529
- eISBN:
- 9781800342330
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781911325529.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on the location and the first scenes of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). The Damned was Losey's first feature film in CinemaScope, though not, as most sources claim, his debut ...
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This chapter focuses on the location and the first scenes of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). The Damned was Losey's first feature film in CinemaScope, though not, as most sources claim, his debut with the format; his short for Hammer, A Man on the Beach (1955), was shot in CinemaScope. Perhaps this previous experience gave Losey the confidence to take such full advantage of the possibilities offered by this ratio in the opening sequence. Losey chose Weymouth and Portland Bill as the locations partly because of his love of the Dorset of Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. He referred to Portland Bill in an interview as 'a place where the British were developing germ warfare and also undersea warfare' — not quite accurate, as others have pointed out.Less
This chapter focuses on the location and the first scenes of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). The Damned was Losey's first feature film in CinemaScope, though not, as most sources claim, his debut with the format; his short for Hammer, A Man on the Beach (1955), was shot in CinemaScope. Perhaps this previous experience gave Losey the confidence to take such full advantage of the possibilities offered by this ratio in the opening sequence. Losey chose Weymouth and Portland Bill as the locations partly because of his love of the Dorset of Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. He referred to Portland Bill in an interview as 'a place where the British were developing germ warfare and also undersea warfare' — not quite accurate, as others have pointed out.
