Rent T.S. Eliot: The Search for Happiness (2019)
2.0 of 5 from 2 ratings
0h 50min
- General info
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- Synopsis:
T.S. Eliot was born in the United States in 1888, becoming perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century. 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock', 'The Waste Land' and 'Four Quartets' are amongst the finest poems ever written. Intriguingly, Eliot's collection 'Old Possum's Book of Cats' is also the inspiration for the enduring smash-hit stage show 'Cats' and recent released feature film. 'T.S. Eliot: The Search for Happiness' is both an exploration of Eliot's life as a poet, playwright, essayist and critic, and an examination of Eliot's personal and spiritual journey. Eliot's sudden first marriage ended unhappily. His first wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood, was disapproved of by Eliot's family. Soon after the marriage she had an affair with Eliot's friend and teacher Bertrand Russell. Vivien was committed by her brother in 1938 to an asylum in which she died in 1947, never seeing Eliot again. Of his first marriage he wrote: "To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came 'The Waste Land'! It was late in life that Eliot himself found happiness, when at the age of 68 he secretly married his secretary Valerie Fletcher, a woman thirty-eight years younger than himself. The marriage offered Eliot a deep and extraordinary happiness. Eliot was lifted from his loneliness; he had a social life for the first time; Eliot and Valerie travelled extensively together, they loved each others company - and they went to the theatre...something which, together with Eliot's own love of cats, must have influenced Valerie when, many years after her husband's death, she unexpectedly agreed that 'Old Possum's Book of Cats' could be adapted by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Trevor Nunn into the show we know now as 'Cats'! 'T.S. Eliot: The Search for Happiness' is a portrayal of how a man found happiness late in life - changing from writing of the 'stony rubbish' of 'The Waste Land' and 'the endless sad waste' of 'Four Quartets' to describing the 'leaping delight' evoked in the poem Eliot dedicated to his intensely loved second wife Valerie. It is also - amazingly - a programme about how T. S. Eliot came to write 'Cats'! - Actors:
- T.S. Eliot, Robert McCrum, Dr. Lyndall Gordon, Prof. Jason Harding, Bill Goldstein, Dr. Hannah Sullivan, Prof. Rachel Potter, Prof. Edward Mendelson, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Trevor Nunn, Dr. Sarah Kennedy
- Directors:
- Adrian Munsey, Vance Goodwin
- Producers:
- Adrian Munsey, Vance Goodwin
- Studio:
- Odyssey
- Genres:
- Children & Family, Documentary, Special Interest
