The Return of the Classic Films Obituary Thread

[CBHagman]

79. Playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard, 88

For the theater: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The Real Thing. Arcadia. Leopoldstadt. For the big screen: Shakespeare in Love.

I barely know where to begin with such a complex, influential, and acclaimed writer, but the obituary in The Guardian and the credits at IMDB will be of great help.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/nov/30/sir-tom-stoppard-obituary

When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened at the Old Vic, Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times dubbed it the most important event in the British professional theatre of the past nine years (ie, since Pinter’s The Birthday Party). The influence of Samuel Beckett was palpable, but this was the first play to use another as its décor, and there were elements of Kafka and European absurdism; anyone who ever thought that Stoppard was an apolitical writer from the outset, said Irving Wardle, only had to see a stunning Russian/Israeli production that visited London in the 90s to be thoroughly disabused of its reputation for triviality.


His political engagement became more visible over the years. He supported Havel’s Charter 77 in Prague, and was active on human rights issues with PEN, the international writers’ association. Every Good Boy and the superb television play Professional Foul (also 1977, dedicated to Havel), about human rights and football, were overtly political. In 1984, another television play, Squaring the Circle, celebrated the Polish Solidarity movement in a drama of politics and geometry.

Stoppard’s commitment as a citizen never clouded his dedication as a writer, and he baited his less rigorously intellectual critics with such pronouncements as “Personally, I would rather have written Winnie the Pooh than the collected works of Brecht,” or “Skill without imagination is craftsmanship; imagination without skill gives us modern art.”


His IMDB credits:

]https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001779/