Maggie Smith Season at the BFI

The illustrious career of Maggie Smith is certainly one worth celebrating. Having debuted on stage in 1952, she has performed in over fifty films and countless plays and TV shows. With seven BAFTAs and two Academy Awards to her name, her standout performances in countless movies are fêted in an exclusive season at the BFI.
Starting in December, the BFI will screen both well known, and lesser known films from the early stages of Smith's career. The 1959 television drama Play of the Week: For Services Rendered is perhaps not one that immediately springs to the minds of her fans, but it nonetheless demonstrates the early promise of her raw talent. Perhaps more familiar will be her international breakthrough performance alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in The VIPs (1963) and her pièce de resistance as Desdemona in the Oscar winning Othello, in which Lawrence Olivier played the title role. Acting fans will also be intrigued by the rarely seen BBC documentary entitled Acting in the Sixties: Maggie Smith, which reveals Smith's unadulterated memoir of her experience with Olivier himself. ‘I was in awe of him… at first’, the actress ominously relates.
Come January the season delves into her more recent work including modern classics such as A Room with a View (1985). Directed by James Ivory and co-starring Helena Bonham Carter and Denholm Elliot, this E. M. Forster adaptation explores the travails of a young woman in the repressed culture of the Edwardian era. Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea with Mussolini (1999) exemplifies Smith’s comic aptitude; the film recounts the heart-warming tale of a group of elderly women who, in 1935, choose Italy to explore their love of Italian art and culture. Closing the season will be the screening of California Suite (1978), in which the misadventures of four groups of guests at the Beverly Hills hotel snowballs into what one critic describes as ‘an all-star bitch fest’. The film occasioned Smith’s second Oscar and is a fitting end to what will be a feast of gripping performances.