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Vanessa Redgrave, the fight continues for the veteran leftist

2020-11-28T07:03:32.799Z


The mythical actress, who today premieres in Spain 'The roles of Aspern', battle for the future of the theater. "Culture, devastated by the pandemic, is the soul of the human being"


Vanessa Redgrave, at the screening of 'The Aspern Papers, at the 2018 Venice Film Festival Stephane Cardinale - Corbis / Corbis via Getty Images

First thing in the morning, Vanessa Redgrave's voice sounds cracked.

But don't be fooled by the bell: the 83-year-old London actress maintains that character that has earned her a bad reputation when conducting interviews and clashes with the directors she has worked with since she rose to fame in 1961 as Rosalinda in a version of As You Like It by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Since then, the daughter of another great, Michael Redgrave, has not stopped combining successes in cinema and theater, nor put aside her political activity.

Not picking up his only Oscar, won in 1978 by his anti-Nazi activist in

Julia.

She was booed and spoke of "Zionist bullies" in her speech, although at the time she also criticized fascism, McCarthy's witch hunt and anti-Semitism.

Hollywood does not remember that, and does remember the "thugs", who for decades complicated its relationship with the film industry.

A few days before conducting this interview, the Labor Party had suspended its former leader Jeremy Corbyn from membership for his failure to crack down on anti-Semitism (two weeks later it backed down and reinstated him).

So to the minimum that the journalist says Corbyn, Redgrave responds: "Do not continue there, I will not make any comment on that subject."

  • Vanessa Redgrave gets behind the camera to save refugees

  • Vanessa Redgrave, by Vargas Llosa

At least in that answer she was polite.

Redgrave has never cared about being liked.

Like his character in

Los Papers de Aspern, an

adaptation of the novel by Henry James that opens today in Spanish cinemas, a story that mixes

thriller

and metal literature: an ambitious literary critic travels to Venice in search of the letters that the poet Jeffrey Aspern he wrote to his muse, Juliana Bordereau;

And although several decades have passed since that love story, Juliana (played by Redgrave) keeps the correspondence under lock and key with her niece Tina (Joely Richardson, Redgrave's daughter in real life).

Curiously, in theater, the veteran actress already played Tina in 1984. The first to join the project was Richardson.

Was she the one who convinced her mother?

"What nonsense.

My daughter is a great actress, no doubt.

I value her as a professional, not as a mother.

But the character of Juliana is fascinating, as is the story.

Don't get around it, I accepted because it is a novel by Henry James, a writing genius ”.

The British has had among her court of admirers playwrights Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams, who considered her among the most talented interpreters.

And one wonders if that supposes some fear of disappointment or not living up to those texts.

Redgrave angrily responds: “Are you equating James, a writer, with two playwrights?

It is not the same, they are not comparable ... ”.

Although then, after a long tirade of praise for James, he falls into a contradiction: "In any case, for sublime texts, remember that I have worked with the greatest, William [Shakespeare]."

The cinema has given him joys - and couples, like the director Tony Richardson, father of his daughters Joely and the late Natasha, or like the actor Franco Nero, father of his son Carlo -, and the theater prestige and intellectual joy.

“The theater is my great love.

Don't ask me in which medium I prefer to act ”.

Good grief, no.

"Very well.

But on stage you have the audience there ”.

And it has been overturned in these months: in saving those cultural spaces.

“To cultural sites and workers.

That it's not just the actors.

I am participating in an initiative that, in addition to urging the Government to increase aid, is raising funds among private philanthropists.

We cannot choose to save a few rooms.

You have to fight for all of them and because when they reopen they will enjoy improvements.

The same I say of the jobs.

Most of our colleagues have work contracts, and in the UK it is estimated that more than 5,000 art-related jobs have disappeared after the first wave ”.

Like the rest of the world, during the first confinement, in the United Kingdom culture was consumed through digital platforms or by reading books.

"That's.

Culture has been specifically swept away by the pandemic.

That is the problem, my dear friend.

And it saddens me [he gets emotional and cries] how we forget that culture is what differentiates us from the rest of the animals.

Culture is the soul [he says it in Spanish] of the human being ”.

Vanessa Redgrave, in 'The Aspern Papers'.

In the video, trailer of the film.

For decades, Redgrave's political commitment was intertwined with social activism.

"No, no politics," rejects someone who came to stand in the general elections with a Trotskyist party in his country.

"Politics don't matter.

And human rights ... Most do not know anything about human rights, laws and their processes.

Now I focus on small battles, which I think are more efficient ”.

And he begins to tell his current fight for refugees, for children, which can be summarized in his last sentence: "I know about wars and their causes."

Before ending the conversation, the actress insists that the United Kingdom is part of Europe, "we share the same culture."

And he makes one last compliment to the journalist: a few days before the telephone conversation another national glory, Sean Connery, has passed away.

The two worked together on

Murder on the Orient Express.

At first, Redgrave refuses to talk about him, but in the same sentence he changes his mind: “Sean was a huge artist, a wonderful actor.

And know?

Few people knew of his innumerable works of charity.

I will miss him ”.

In an old place in La Mancha

Vanessa Redgrave likes to use words in Spanish, such as alma or marvelous, during the interview, and when she explains the situation of culture in the United Kingdom and by extension in Europe (she rejects Brexit), she stops to ask about Spain: “Sure that the theaters of Bilbao or Madrid suffer the same hecatomb, right?

I remember a fascinating, wonderful, centuries-old place in La Mancha [he refers to the Corral de Comedias de Almagro, where he received an award in 2006].

What a good place for a Don Quixote! ”.


Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-11-28

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