All screenings will be shown with Descriptive Subtitles (HOH).

The screening on Sunday 9 June, will be introduced by Professor Melanie Williams and will be followed by a discussion between her and Dr. Lawrence Napper.

The Passionate Stranger is a highly satirical takedown of romantic novel tropes - so formally experimental that it feels decades ahead of its time. Muriel Box is Britain’s most prolific female director but is often overlooked. Box directed 13 feature films in the 1950s and early 60s and was the first woman to win an Oscar for best original screenplay.

Upper-middle-class housewife Judith Wynter (Margaret Leighton) has a closely guarded secret: Under a pen name, she's a best-selling author of steamy bodice-rippers. As her beloved husband, Roger (Ralph Richardson), convalesces from a serious illness, the couple's new driver, Carlo (Carlo Justini), discovers Judith's latest manuscript about an unhappy housewife's passionate affair with the family chauffeur. He jumps to conclusions that create increasingly awkward situations for them all.

Melanie Williams is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. A historian of British cinema, she has written and edited books on directors David Lean, J. Lee Thompson and Shane Meadows, on Ealing studios, 1960s British cinema, women’s cinema and female stars. Her most recently published book was A Taste of Honey for the BFI Film Classics series, and she is currently working on a monograph on the filmmaker Muriel Box, to be published by BFI Bloomsbury.

Lawrence Napper gained his PhD at the University of East Anglia in 2001, and is also a graduate of UEA’s Film Studies with an Archiving MA. He was senior researcher on UEA’s British Cinema History Research Project from 2001-2005, and taught on the MA and BA courses at UEA. Since 2005 he has taught at a variety of institutions, including Southampton University, De Montford University, Birkbeck College and The University of Greenwich. He is currently a full time lecturer at King's College London.

Cast:
Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton, Patricia Dainton