Lindsay Anderson's Biography

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was born on 17 April 1923 in Bangalore, South India. He was the son of an officer in the Indian army.

Lindsay Anderson died of a heart attack on 30 August 1994.

He directed film, television and theatre. Lindsay Anderson directed his first documentary, Meeting The Pioneers, in 1948. In the fifties he became a leading character in the 'Free Cinema' movement. Anderson won an Academy Award for Thursday's Children (1953).

From 1969 to 1975 he was an associate director at The Royal Court Theatre.

Lindsay Anderson made his debut as a feature film director in 1963, with an adaptation of a David Storey novel, This Sporting Life starring Richard Harris, which along with his next film, If ... were well received.

Mark Cousins in Prospect Magazine explains how Lindsay Anderson portrayed England, "In This Sporting Life, England was dirt poor and sexually repressed. His later films If ... and Britannia Hospital made no attempt to hide his hatred for what he saw as the timidity, inertia and conservatism of his adoptive nation".

In this interesting BBC look at If it mentions that:

"The apparently haphazard switching between black and white and colour footage is not for artistic reasons. Anderson shot the film out of sequence and was over budget by the end of shooting so the last scenes were made with cheaper black and white film."

According to David Thomson's New Biographical Dictionary of Film:

"...there was never any doubt that he [Anderson] was more talented than his contemporaries - Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz ..."

Thomson recommends Gavin Lambert's biography, Mainly About Lindsay Anderson.