Hugh Hudson (25 August 1936 – 10 February 2023) was an English film director. He was among a generation of British directors who would begin their career making documentaries and television commercials before going on to have success in films.
Hudson directed the 1981 Academy Award and BAFTA Award Best Picture Chariots of Fire, a film ranked 19th in the British Film Institute's list of Top 100 British films. He continued to direct commercials while making films, which included the British Airways face advertisement from 1989 made in collaboration with London-based advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
Early life
Hugh Hudson was born at 27 Welbeck Street, London, the son and only child of Michael Donaldson-Hudson and his second wife Jacynth Mary Ellerton, from Cheswardine in rural northeast Shropshire. Michael's father was Ralph Charles Donaldson-Hudson, and his great-grandfather was Charles Donaldson-Hudson, a one-time Conservative Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. His paternal ancestors came from Scotland and Cumberland. He was sent to boarding school in 1942 at the age of six, and thereafter was educated at Eton College. He began his National Service in the Dragoon Guards from 28 January 1956, reaching the rank of second lieutenant and remained as a lieutenant in the Army Reserve of Officers until he was discharged on 16 January 1960.
Career
1960s
In the 1960s, after three years of editing documentaries in Paris, Hudson headed a documentary film company with partners Robert Brownjohn and David Cammell. The company produced, among others, the documentaries A for Apple, which won a Screenwriters' Guild Award, and The Tortoise and the Hare, which was nominated for a BAFTA Award. The company emerged with much success in the 1960s, winning many awards and pioneering a new graphic style for documentary and advertising films.
Hudson then began a career in advertising, producing and directing many television commercials. He worked alongside Alan Parker, Ridley and Tony Scott for Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a British film and commercial production company founded in 1968. His first filmmaking job was as a second-unit director on Parker's Midnight Express (1978).
1970s–1980s
Between 1973 and 1975, Hudson wrote and directed Fangio, A life at 300 km/h, a documentary film about motor racing seen through the eyes of Juan Manuel Fangio, five times the world Formula One Champion.
From 1979 to 1980, Hudson directed his first and most successful feature film, Chariots of Fire (1981), the story of two British track runners, one a devout Christian and the other an ambitious Jew, in the run-up to the 1924 Olympic Games. The film is said to have revitalized the fading British film industry, and it won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Hudson earned a nomination for Best Director. His friend and colleague Vangelis created an Academy Award-winning score for the film.
Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote in 1981 "It's to the credit of both Mr Hudson and Mr Welland that Chariots of Fire is simultaneously romantic and commonsensical, lyrical and comic. ... It's an exceptional film, about some exceptional people." In 2017, some 37 years after its showing at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, it was shown to a large audience at the Classic Screenings beach cinema to help support the bid for the 2024 Olympic Games to be held in Paris.
Hudson had rejected numerous feature film offers before Chariots of Fires success. His next production was Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) which received four Oscar nominations, and was Ralph Richardson's last screen performance, for which he was nominated in the 1984 Oscars as Best Supporting Actor. It was a success at the box office and with critics.
In 1985, Hudson directed Revolution, which depicted the American War of Independence, and which was released before it was a fully completed film. The film was a critical and commercial failure at the box office and earned Hudson a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Director.
Hudson's next theatrical feature film was Lost Angels (1989), nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. The film was an American-based drama starring Donald Sutherland and Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and dealing with disaffected youth in California.