MIKE LEIGH

Britain’s maestro of improv may be feeling a bit vulnerable currently as the august Manchester University Press has just published a comprehensive book on his life.

What's to fear about that?

Only that every one of the MUP’s fourteen previous bios in the "British Film Makers" series feature people who are dead, in some cases a long time ago, or at least working relatively little.

Examples: Carol Reed, Karel Reisz, Joseph Losey. The most current names are Derek Jarman and Terence Davies.

So should Leigh be worried that someone at MUP thinks he is more past than present? Perhaps not, if the choice of Leigh signals that MUP will in future be focusing on more contemporary names.

Whatever the book signifies, Leigh should be happy with its attention to detail. Opting for a very simple format, it follows a brief introduction with chapters devoted to each of Leigh’s ten biggest films, from “Bleak Moments” in 1971 through a string of successes like “Naked” (main photo) and “Secrets and Lies” to the relatively recent “Vera Drake”.

There is also a decent filmography and selected bibliography. What might be thought lacking is any surfeit of photo stills – unless 8 B&Ws is a ‘surfeit” in someone’s mind.

The author is Tony Whitehead, a cinema programmer in Cardiff and part-time Lecturer in Film at the University of Glamorgan.

The book is a paperback measuring in a 216 pages and costing £14.99

Excerpt: “Leigh’s second cinematic venture into period drama was in a sense closer to home than “Topsy-Turvy”, being set within living memory for a substantial proportion of a 2004 audience; and dealing with a subject about which it is virtually impossible to remain neutral. In its way, it was clearly as personal a project as the earlier film, too: it’s dedicaton reads ‘In Lovely memory of my parents, a doctor and a midwife’.

Filed August 10, 2007