Advocates: Alain Resnais (1922 - 2014)

Alain Resnais was a major French film director / auteur and screenwriter. Best known for his ground-breaking films Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year At Marienbad, he would adapt three of Alan Ayckbourn's plays into films (Intimate Exchanges, Private Fears In Public Places and Life Of Riley). A huge fan of Ayckbourn's work, he would frequently travel to Scarborough to see the world premieres of Alan's work, where the two men struck up a friendship. Alain would even marry Sabine Azema in Scarborough with Alan and his wife as the witnesses.

Quotes

"I enjoyed myself so much [seeing Absurd Person Singular in London] that afterwards I tried not to miss a single play. I made the pilgrimage to Scarborough and was very impressed by his theatre in the round. I tried watching the same play from different sides - one side one night, the other the next. The pleasure was undiminished. All his plays have a formal idea that, for me, makes the characters more moving, more comic."
(1994)

"I am always inspired by my friend Alan Ayckbourn, one of my favourite playwrights, along with Henry Bernstein or Jean Anouilh."
(2013)

Copyright: Alain Resnais. All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd, please credit this website if reproduced.