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Stephen Woolley told the annual Graham Greene festival this
weekend that he would like to produce "A Burnt-Out Case," the
story of an architect named Querry who moves from Europe to the
colony to escape fame and women.
"It would be a great film - we can give the claustrophobia
that's so important to the book of going into this jungle. We
can make that place fetid," he said.
Issues over rights with Greene's estate meant he could not yet
commission a film script for the book, Woolley told the festival
in the southern English town of Berkhamsted, Greene's
birthplace.
Woolley's other films include the Oscar-winning "The Crying
Game".
Greene's most famous novels include "Brighton Rock" and "The
Power and the Glory". Many have been adapted for film, some more
than once. But "A Burnt-Out Case" is one of the few of which no
film has been made.
Among more recent adaptations, Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore
starred in "The End of the Affair", set in wartime London, and
Michael Caine starred in "The Quiet American," set in 1950s
Vietnam and released in 2002.
"His writing is so cinematic," film critic Quentin Falk told the
festival.
Greene, who died in 1991, wrote some screenplays himself,
probably the most famous being "The Third Man", a thriller of
the "film noir" genre set in post-war Vienna and starring Orson
Welles.
The dark themes of film noir classics are similar to the world
of Greene's literature - known as Greeneland - in which the
characters often face moral dilemmas.
"Greeneland is a territory of the embattled psyche - Greeneland
could be called the land of noir," said Brian McDonnell, a
senior lecturer at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand.
Attendees at the festival included Greene's daughter Caroline
Bourget, as well as local residents and students and academics
of film and literature, from as far afield as Canada, Japan, New
Zealand and the United States.
Festival activities ranged from Graham Greene reading groups and
a literary quiz to a walking tour of Berkhamsted, one of the
settings for Greene's novel "The Human Factor."
(Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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