Dearden Carries Torch for Good Film Stories

The British Invasion--of movies, not rock ‘n’ roll--began with the early ‘80s explosions of “Chariots of Fire” and “Gandhi” and continued with the modest fireworks of “Mona Lisa,” “A Room With a View,” “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “Hope and Glory.”

It shows no signs of dissipating.

The latest shot from across the ocean (though it’s American-financed) is James Dearden’s “Pascali’s Island,” which stars Ben Kingsley as a sensitive, paranoid little man whose collapse matches the decline of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire in 1918.

But don’t call this Dearden’s personal invasion of Hollywood. He’s been here before, with a vengeance. Producers Sherry Lansing and Stanley Jaffe lured him from his London home in 1984 to develop his short film, “Diversion,” into “Fatal Attraction.”

Dearden found himself rewriting (“and rewriting and rewriting”) the script. Then, the famous disastrous preview screening, after which Lansing, Jaffe and the brass at Paramount decided it needed a new ending.

“Originally, I had Glenn Close’s character killing herself while framing Michael Douglas with the murder,” Dearden said. “The studio brought in one of their contract writers to write a new coda, which also didn’t work. After having shot my short film five years before and going through nine drafts in three years, I felt exhausted. But I did write a new coda, the one in the final cut.”

Dearden, 38, was coolly reserved in his West Hollywood hotel suite, and if he felt any reluctance about discussing “Fatal Attraction’s” controversies, it was well hidden.

“I never saw (Close’s) Alex as this ‘New Woman’ she was trumped up to be,” he said. “And I prefer to view that ending with the family portrait and the sentimental music as ironic, for that family will never be the same again. Not everyone viewed it that way.”

Dearden, who also co-wrote the 1984 HBO film “The Cold Room,” calls “Pascali’s Island” his most personal film to date. He said he was so struck by the cinematic possibilities of Barry Unsworth’s novel that he adapted a screenplay from it on spec in the mid-’80s.

“The primary attraction for me wasn’t the political and historical background . . . but the character of Basil Pascali (Kingsley),” Dearden said of the man who was a useless spy for Ottoman royalty. Pascali wrote long reports on suspicious island matters that were never read.

“He has a touch of Kafka’s absurdity,” Dearden added. “But he’s a heroic failure in a tragedy created by ‘the gods’ of that time, powers completely out of Pascali’s control. I wanted that quality of Greek tragedy that was in Unsworth’s novel.”

Dearden also appreciated the story’s complexities.

“Certainly Unsworth wrote a very literary novel, and I tried to remain faithful to that,” he said. “But I also feel strongly that audiences do not want stories served up to them on a plate. You’re seeing a trend toward more challenging films, that are still accessible.”

Dearden, the son of film director Basil Dearden, said that at Oxford he read French literature and modern history, a combination that enriched his imagination. His father’s successes had instilled in him a desire to make entertaining movies--on his own terms.

“I’m very proud of my father’s work,” he said, “but I don’t feel like I’m carrying a torch.”

If he’ll carry a torch for anyone, it might be for Ben Kingsley. Without him, Dearden said, “Pascali’s Island” would not have been made. Kingsley is that rare actor who can play a half-European, half-Levant; plus he’s part Russian. And like Pascali, he’s at a cultural crossroads.

“He has these large, amazing eyes that convey paragraphs of dialogue silently,” Dearden said, “which is the secret of great film acting.”