Philip Saville
| Philip Saville | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 28 October 1930 London, U.K. |
| Died | 22 December 2016 |
| Residence | St John's Wood, London, U.K. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Spouse(s) |
Jane Arden Nina Zuckerman (aka, Nina Francis) |
| Children | 3 sons and one daughter |
Philip Saville (sometimes credited as Philip Savile, 28 October 1930 – 22 December 2016) was a British television and film director, screenwriter and former actor whose career lasted half a century. The British Film Institute's Screenonline website has described Saville as "one of Britain's most prolific and pioneering television and film directors".
Saville was born in London in 1930. He studied science at London University and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). His National Service in the Royal Corps of Signals was ended by his discharge after he sustained a serious knee injury involving an armoured vehicle.
From the 1950s, Saville worked in television as a director working on plays such as Harold Pinter's A Night Out (1960) for ABC's Armchair Theatre anthology series. He directed over 40 plays for Armchair Theatre and helped pioneer the innovative visual style it became known for, including rapid and intricate camera movements during the often live productions. The critic John Russell Taylor, however, wrote that Saville had submerged the romance "Duel for Love" (Armchair Theatre, 1961) "under intricate camerawork of exquisite beauty and complete irrelevance".
Saville also directed Madhouse on Castle Street (1963) for the BBC, an example "of his interest in psychological states and subjective viewpoints", according to Oliver Wake. The (now lost) production was the first acting appearance of the folk singer Bob Dylan, whom Saville had flown over specifically to take part in the play. Saville's production of Hamlet at Elsinore (1964) for the BBC pioneered the use of videotape for location recording. An anonymous reviewer in The Times wrote that Saville "while creating handsome pictures, did not allow the setting to distract him from the business of the play". He also worked on an episode of Out of the Unknown, a version of the E.M. Forster short story "The Machine Stops" (1966) in this period. This won the main prize at the 1967 Trieste international science fiction film festival.
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