Wolf Rilla

Wolf Rilla (1920–2005) was a film director and writer of German background, although he worked mainly in English.

Early life and career

Rilla worked on both versions of Village of the Damned, in the first as director and in the second as a writer. He wrote many influential books for students, such as The Writer and the Screen: On Writing for Film and Television and The A to Z of Movie Making.

Rilla was born in Berlin, where his part-Jewish father Walter Rilla was a prominent actor. In common with many others in entertainment and the arts, Walter recognised the dangers when Hitler came to power, and the family moved to London in 1934 when Wolf was 14. He completed his schooling at the enlightened co-educational Frensham Heights school, Surrey, and went on to St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1942 he joined the BBC World Service's German section, transferring to television in the late 1940s.

He left the BBC staff in 1952 to pursue his ambition to make films, but continued to take on television productions as a freelance. In the cinema he was dependent at first on Group 3, an idealistic production company set up by the National Film Finance Corporation with Michael Balcon, John Baxter and John Grierson in charge. The idea was to give young talent a chance to make low-budget quickies, unfortunately - as it turned out - to no great acclaim. But by 1960 Rilla was working regularly for MGM in Britain. He directed his father, along with George Sanders and Richard Johnson, in Cairo (1963), a remake of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, with Tutankhamun's jewels in a Cairo museum now the target of the robbers.

His masterwork remains Village of the Damned, from John Wyndham's sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos. As well as directing it, Rilla was responsible, with Geoffrey Barclay and the American screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, for the adaptation. George Sanders also starred in this, with Barbara Shelley.

For television he dabbled in all manner of series, from The Adventures of Aggie, a 1956 BBC sitcom aimed chiefly at the American market, to the TV version (1969–71) of radio's popular Send for Paul Temple detective series. His novels included Greek Chorus, The Dispensable Man, The Chinese Consortium and one simply entitled Movie.

Personal life

Rilla married the actress and director Valerie Hanson after they appeared together in a BBC TV production of The Portugal Lady, and they had a daughter, Madeleine, in 1955. In 1958 he married Shirley Graham-Ellis, a publicist for tea suppliers Jacksons of Piccadilly and London Films. Rilla and Graham-Ellis had a son, Nico, who as a filmmaker himself continues a family tradition that now spans three generations and 85 years. His daughter Madeleine died in a car crash in 1985.

After Rilla had held office in both the film technicians' union ACTT and the Directors' Guild, he and Shirley moved to the south of France, to buy and run a hotel at Fayence in Provence.

Filmography

• Noose for a Lady (1953)
• Glad TIdings (1953)
• The Large Rope (1953)
• Marilyn (1953)
• The Black Rider (1954)
• Stock Car (1954)
• The Blue Peter (1955)
• Pacific Destiny (1956)
• The End of the Road (1957)
• The Scamp (1957)
• Bachelor of Hearts (1958)
• Jessy (1959)
• Witness in the Dark (1959)
• Die zornigen jungen Männer (1960)
• Village of the Damned (1960)
• Piccadilly Third Stop (1960)
• Watch it, Sailor! (1961)
• The World Ten Times Over (1963)
• Cairo (1963)
• Pax? (1968)
• Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman (1973)
• Bedtime with Rosie (1975)

External links

• Wolf Rilla at IMDb
• Amazon page showing works including books he wrote