British producer who was hailed as the saviour of the commercial British
film industry in the early 1980s, when it seemed, for a brief moment,
that it would be saved. Coming to film from advertising, he brought
to the cinema a number of other first-time directors from the world
of advertising: Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, Hugh
Hudson. His first production, S.W.A.L.K/Melody
(1971), was written by Parker, with whom he went on to produce Bugsy
Malone (1976) and Midnight Express (1978). He engaged Scott to direct
The Duellists (1977), the first production of Puttnam's own production
company, Enigma; and hired Hudson to direct Chariots
of Fire (1981). The Best Picture Oscar for Chariots of Fire, followed
by the success and cultural prestige of Local
Hero (1983) and The
Killing Fields (1984), both of which he produced for Goldcrest,
seemed to herald a renaissance in the British commercial feature film,
which in the event proved to be short-lived. They did, however, establish
him as a major force in the British film industry.
Puttnam has been compared to Michael Balcon,
with his productions in the 1980s reflecting his own liberal morality
and mildly suburban sentimentality: an Ealing for the Thatcher years
most apparent in the 'First Love' films which Enigma produced for Channel
4. He is, however, unambiguously commercial, targeting and tailoring
his films as entertainment for an international market. In the late
1980s he had a brief, and unhappy, flirtation with Hollywood as head
of production for Columbia Pictures, before returning to Britain as
a producer and campaigner (with Richard
Attenborough) for the revitalisation of Britain as a centre of European
film production. He was knighted in 1995.
