Peter Handford

Born: 21 March 1919, London
Died: 6 November 2007, Wickham Skieith Suff

Highlighted works

The Go-between

A schoolboy learns the sexual and social rules of the game at the dawn of the 20th century in Joseph Losey’s Palme d’Or-winner.

Darling

Julie Christie created one of the indelible images of Swinging London in this disapproving yet glamorous look at a fashion model ascending the social ladder.

Tom Jones

Tom, the adopted son of Squire Allworthy, is the roguish but good-hearted hero in Tony Richardson’s uproarious screen adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel.

Room at the Top

This drama of social mobility in a northern factory town proved a landmark British film thanks to director Jack Clayton’s mature treatment of sexuality and class.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Albert Finney’s powerhouse performance as a Nottingham factory worker changed British screen acting, just as Karel Reisz’s incisive and authentic film changed British cinema.

Billy Liar

John Schlesinger’s film features a bravura central performance from Tom Courtenay as an undertaker’s assistant escaping dreary reality through daydreams.

Hope and Glory

Drawing on his own memories, writer-director John Boorman shows us a suburban family’s experience of World War II through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy.

The Railway Children

In this evergreen adaptation of E. Nesbit’s 1906 novel, three children and their mother are forced to swap Edwardian city luxury for genteel rural poverty up north.

Filmography

1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1984
1985
1987
1988
1990
2010
Unknown year