The Secret Agent

1996

95 Min

Color

1.85:1

English

Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
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SCR Joseph Conrad, Christopher Hampton

CAST Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette, Gérard Depardieu, Jim Broadbent, George Spelvin, Christian Bale, Roger Hammond, Eddie Izzard, Ralph Nossek, Robin Williams

Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s novel, this spy thriller set in 1894 London centers on Verloc (Bob Hoskins), who harbors a bigger secret than the porn photos he sells: He’s an anarchist and an operative for the Russian government. But when he botches an attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, it sets in motion events that sweep the guilty and the guiltless into the jaws of justice. Patricia Arquette, Jim Broadbent and Robin Williams co-star.

Director

Christopher Hampton

Christopher James Hampton, CBE, FRSL (born 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

Personal life

Hampton was born in Faial, Azores, to British parents Dorothy Patience (née Herrington) and Bernard Patrick Hampton, a marine telecommunications engineer for Cable & Wireless. His father’s job led the family to subsequently settle in Aden and Alexandria in Egypt and later Hong Kong and Zanzibar. The Suez Crisis in 1956 necessitated that the family flee under cover of darkness, leaving their possessions behind.

After a prep school at Reigate, Hampton went to the independent boarding school Lancing College at the age of 13, where he won house colours for boxing and distinguished himself as a sergeant in… read more

Christopher James Hampton, CBE, FRSL (born 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

Personal life

Hampton was born in Faial, Azores, to British parents Dorothy Patience (née Herrington) and Bernard Patrick Hampton, a marine telecommunications engineer for Cable & Wireless. His father’s job led the family to subsequently settle in Aden and Alexandria in Egypt and later Hong Kong and Zanzibar. The Suez Crisis in 1956 necessitated that the family flee under cover of darkness, leaving their possessions behind.

After a prep school at Reigate, Hampton went to the independent boarding school Lancing College at the age of 13, where he won house colours for boxing and distinguished himself as a sergeant in the CCF. Fellow dramatist David Hare was a school contemporary; poet Harry Guest was a teacher.

In 1964 he attended New College, Oxford, as a Sacher Scholar, to study German and French and graduated with a starred First Class Degree in 1968.

Career

Hampton became involved in the theatre while at Oxford University where OUDS performed his play When Did You Last See My Mother?, about adolescent homosexuality, reflecting his own experiences at Lancing. Hampton sent the work to the play agent Peggy Ramsay, who interested William Gaskill in it. The play was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and that production soon transferred to the Comedy Theatre, resulting in Hampton, in 1966, becoming the youngest writer to have a play performed in the West End in the modern era. From 1968-70 he worked as the Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre, and also as the company’s literary manager.

Hampton won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1988 for the screen adaptation of his play Dangerous Liaisons. He was nominated again in 2007 for adapting Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement.

Hampton’s translation into English of Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay’s Austrian musical Rebecca, based on Daphne du Maurier’s book, premiered on Broadway on April 22, 2012. —Wikipedia

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