How to make a scandalously good movie
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 26/01/2007




Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett's star turns have helped Notes on a Scandal to four Oscar nods. David Gritten meets its director, Richard Eyre

Before Richard Eyre began work directing Notes on a Scandal, the film adaptation of Zoë Heller's bestselling novel, its tough-talking American producer Scott Rudin told him candidly that he wasn't looking for "some small British movie".


Big movie: Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal
It's an intriguing comment. Eyre, after all, is known for capturing small, intimate moments – often on stage, in a career that includes a decade-long tenure as director of the National Theatre. He has made several TV films, mainly for the BBC, and latterly the modestly-sized cinema features Iris and Stage Beauty. He can do splashy – he directed Guys and Dolls at the National and Mary Poppins in the West End – but it's not his calling card.

As a film director, Eyre, 63, looks to have made a substantial leap with Notes on a Scandal. It feels like a big movie: it has a suspenseful, relentless, almost melodramatic quality that no one could mistake as made-for-TV. Yet Eyre's trademark virtues are detectable in the intimacy of scenes between its lead actresses, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, and it's a testament to his skill that both were nominated for Oscars this week. Like other British theatre directors (Daldry, Mendes, Hytner, Michell) hotly pursued by the film world, Eyre can elicit brilliant work from actors.

Notes on a Scandal is about the relationship between two teachers at a north London school: Sheba (Blanchett), an affluent, faintly bohemian wife and mother in her thirties, and the veteran Barbara (Dench), stern, acerbic and lonely. When Sheba unwisely starts an affair with a boy pupil of 15, Barbara finds out, urges her to end it, and becomes her friend and confidante. But Barbara soon emerges as a schemer, playing a nasty, manipulative game.

"I'm thrilled with it, and I love being in audiences when it's shown," says Eyre. "I also love it that Judi, who has this utterly merited status in Britain as secular saint, completely subverts expectations. The relish with which she does it is so enjoyable. Also there's great wit about Cate's performance as a character who isn't very self-knowing."

advertisementThe courteous, modest Eyre flinches at the suggestion that he breaks new ground as a film director with Notes on a Scandal. He grudgingly concedes that it feels different from others he has directed: "It may be partly me progressively feeling more confident, but I think it's more about being a better script than my last two.

"It's always hard to describe what transforms something from a movie for TV into something that comfortably sits in movie theatres. It's something to do with intensity, with narrative rhythms and genre.

"In post-production [editing], we locked