14° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Tribute to a Jerzy Skolimowski

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE
by Jerzy Skolimowski
Country: GFR, USA
Year: 1972
Duration: 92'


"There were some good things in the material shot, which could have been put together, taking care to preserve Nabokov's sense of irony, bitterness and cruelty. But it would have meant an intellectual's job in the cuttingroom, and this was impossible with an editor who was phoning Los Angeles many times a day to report to his chiefs on what I wanted to do. After two or three weeks of quarrelling, I threw it all in." (Jerzy Skolimowski, "Positif", January 1979)

"With Nabokov, there's something in his irony which is a untranslatable. One cannot fully translate it on the screen. I don't like this film. During production, I had problems with the actors. Working with Gina Lollobrigida was very tough. The script was weak in spite of it being written by two of Hollywoods specialists, David Seltzer and David Shaw, brother to the famous Irving Shaw. One would have thought that a couple of this calibre should produce a better script. In Nabokov, the attempt to look at the world sideways leads either to the grotesque or tragic... Instead, in this script it was neither ridiculous nor tragic. King, Queen, Knave was a professional flop and it took me a long time to recover from it." (Jerzy Skolimowski, "Film na swiecie", 1990)

"In this story of an adolescent... the forty-yearold aunt Skolimowski shies from the scripts clichés. Conventions are sufficiently revealed to enable us to understand where Skolimowski's irony comes from. But, as with The Adventures of Gerard, it's a pity he didn't go further in this formal play and that he didn't deal with a more productive piece. The grief expressed by David Niven after the accident which he witnessed, recalls the anguish which overcame us in Jane Asher's death scene in Deep End." (Hubert Niogret, "Positif", JulyAugust 1972)

Biography

film director

Jerzy Skolimowski

(Lodz, Poland, 1938), director, screenwriter, producer, and actor, after inconsistent studies and experience as a boxer and a poet, became involved in cinema thanks to Andrzej Wajda, who encouraged him to enroll in the film school in Lodz. With Polanski, he wrote the screenplay for Knife in the Water (1962) and he debuted as a director with Rysopis (1964), which, with his next film Walk over (1965), made him one of the major exponents of the international Nouvelle Vague of the 1960s. In 1967, his film The Departure won the Golden Bear in Berlin but that same year another movie of his, Hands Up!, was censored (it was released only in 1981) and he never made another movie in his home country. Skolimowski's international career is full of risky production adventures and great masterpieces and spans various countries (Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany, England, the United States). After the failure of King, Queen, Knave, he spent a great deal of inactive time in England and Poland, followed by the great success of his English movies The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982). In 1985, he directed his first all-American movie, Lightship and he moved to the US. After returning to his homeland, in 1991 he directed his first Polish movie after Hands Up!, 30 Door Key and over the years continued to work in cinema, writing and producing the film by his two sons Józef and Michal, The Hollow Men (1993). After a long hiatus from film, he returned to directing movies in 2008 with Four Nights with Anna, presented at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes, followed by Essential Killing (2010), Special Jury Prize in Venice; 11 Minutes (2015); and EO (2022), the Jury Prize in Cannes.

FILMOGRAFIA

Rysopis (Rysopis - Segni particolari nessuno, 1964), Walkover (1965), Bariera (Barriera, 1966), Le Départ (Il vergine, 1967), The Adventures of Gerard (Le avventure di Gerard, 1970), Deep End (La ragazza del bagno pubblico, 1970), König, Dame, Bube (Un ospite gradito... per mia moglie, 1972), The Shout (L'australiano, 1978), Ręce do gory (Mani in alto, 1981), Moonlighting (Moonlighting - Cittadini di nessuno, 1982), Success Is the Best Revenge (Il successo ad ogni costo, 1984), The Lightship (Lightship - La nave faro, 1985), Torrents of Spring (Acque di primavera, 1989), Thirty Door Key/Ferdydurke (1991), Cztery noce z Anną (Quattro notti con Anna, 2008), Essential Killing (id. 2010), 11 minut (11 Minutes, 2015), EO (2022).

Cast

& Credits

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski.
Screenplay: David Shaw, David Seltzer dal romanzo Korol, Dama, Valet di Vladimir Nabokov.
Director of photography: Charly Steinberger (Eastmancolor).
Art director: Rolf Zehetbauer.
Costume designer: Ina Stein.
Editor: Melvin Shapiro.
Music: Stanley Myers, Francis Monkman.
Sound: Karsten Ullrich, Hans Joachim Richter.
Cast and characters: Gina Lollobrigida (Martha Dreyer), David Niven (Charles Dreyer), John Moulder Brown (Frank Dreyer), Mario Adorf (prof. Ritter), CarlFoxDuering (Entricht).
Producer: Lutz Hengst.
Produttore associato: Gustave Brugger.
Produttori esecutivi: David L. Wolper, Horst Jaedicke.
Production company: MaranFilm (Monaco) Wolper Pictures (Los Angeles).
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