Equus
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Sidney Lumet
Richard Burton
Peter Firth
Colin Blakely
Joan Plowright
Elva Hoover
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
A psychiatrist tries to learn why a teenage stable boy has been mutilating horses. In the process of exposing secrets which led to the boy's horrific acts, the doctor uncovers secrets of his own.
Director
Sidney Lumet
Cast
Richard Burton
Peter Firth
Colin Blakely
Joan Plowright
Elva Hoover
Jenny Agutter
Frazier Mohawk
James Hurdle
John Wyman
Harry Andrews
Kate Reid
Eileen Atkins
Patrick Brymer
David Gardner
Ken James
Karen Pearson
Mark Parr
Sheldon Rybowski
Crew
Guenter Bartlik
Richard Rodney Bennett
Ron Berkeley
Colin Brewer
Ken Brooke
Yakima Canutt
Doug Donor
Jack Fitzstephens
Bob Gray
Simon Holland
Gerry Holmes
Denis Holt
Elliott Kastner
Tony Lucibello
Angela Morley
Oswald Morris
Lester Persky
Sanford Rackow
Iris Rose
James Sabat
Peter Shaffer
Peter Shaffer
John Victor Smith
David Tringham
John Vanderpas
Richard Vorisek
Tony Walton
Tony Walton
Kit West
Videos
Movie Clip
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Nominations
Best Actor
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Writing, Screenplay
Articles
Equus
In 1976, Burton was in the process of a costly second divorce from Elizabeth Taylor and depressed over the untimely death of his friend and fellow Welshman Stanley Baker. Burton's legendary alcoholism required him to audition for the film role of Dysart by playing the part on the stage, where he hadn't done any serious work since 1964. Scared to death, Burton sobered up for the long rehearsal process, buoyed in part by the company of his new 27-year-old girlfriend Suzy Hunt (ex-wife of race car driver James Hunt), and turned the opportunity into a late life comeback. The critics were impressed, the public was pleased and Equus (1977) was his.
Traveling to Canada, Burton arrived to work on Equus under the direction of Sidney Lumet. A veteran of live television, the Philadelphia-born Lumet had enjoyed both significant wins (12 Angry Men [1957], The Pawnbroker [1964]) and losses (The Fugitive Kind [1959], Last of the Mobile Hot Shots [1970]) during the almost two decades since directing his first feature and was by this time coming off the back-to-back successes of Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976). Prior to the start of principal photography at Kleinberg's Toronto International Film Studio, Lumet had been working with playwright Peter Shaffer for over a year to turn the slightly stylized theatrical piece (in which the imperiled horses were played by muscular men wearing unitards and oversized, tribal-looking wire horse heads) into a viable motion picture. Lumet (who had taken on the project as a favor to Shaffer) had reservations about the philosophy of the piece, which he felt demonized psychoanalysis a tool upon which the director relied heavily during filming. Lumet also had been unhappy with Richard Burton's much-lauded Broadway performance, which he felt amounted to little more than the actor resorting to his usual bag of tricks to deliver a plummy recitative. Although opening up the stage play for the camera to ground the drama in a more cinematically palatable reality, Lumet took Burton back to his hardwired theatrical training to get the best possible performance out of the unstable actor and captured all of Dysart's eight monologues in a single day of filming.
Writer Peter Shaffer's inspiration for Equus (the name for the genus of animals to which horses belong) had been the true story of a Norfolk youth who blinded six racing horses who were the only witnesses to his role in a clandestine sexual act performed in a stable. Shaffer fictionalized the incident, to which he added dramatic levels of character mirroring (with Dysart and the 17 year-old Alan Strang revealed ultimately as kindred spirits) and game playing (Alan communicates initially only by advertising jingles) that might seem more at home in a play by Shaffer's twin brother Anthony, author of Sleuth. Equus received the "Tony" award for Best Play in 1975, while stage director John Dexter was similarly honored. Actor Peter Firth (who originated the role of Alan Strang in England) and actress Frances Sternhagen were nominated for their work, as was the production's lighting designer.
For the film version of Equus, Burton, Firth and Peter Shaffer all received Academy Award nominations; while the Oscars® went to others, Burton and Firth could content themselves with Golden Globes while costar Jenny Agutter received a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for "Best Supporting Actress." One extra bit of trivia: Between the stage and screen versions of Equus, Burton acquiesced to play the priest protagonist of John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), for which he received some of the most scathing reviews of his career.
In 2007, Agutter appeared in the West End revival of Equus as Hester Saloman, the magistrate who places Alan Strang in Martin Dysart's care. In this new production, controversy over the play's required nudity centered not around the fifty-something Agutter but on 17-year-old actor Daniel Radcliffe, star of the mega-successful youth-oriented Harry Potter films.
by Richard Harland Smith
Sources:
Peter Shaffer interview by Mike Wood, William Inge Center for the Arts
Richard Burton: A Life by Melvyn Bragg
Sidney Lumet interview by David Sterritt, 1977
Sidney Lumet interview by Ralph Applebaum, 1978
Sidney Lumet interview by Michel Ciment, 1982
Sidney Lumet: Film and Literary Vision by Frank R. Cunningham
Jenny Agutter interview by Mark Shenton
Internet Broadway Database
Equus
Quotes
Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.- Martin Dysart
There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain--and it never comes out.- Martin Dysart
When Equus leaves, if he leaves at all, it will be with his intestines in his teeth - and I don't stock replacements.- Martin Dysart
That's what his stare has been saying to me all this time: 'At least I galloped--when did you?'- Martin Dysart
I only know that he was my little Alan--and then the devil came.- Dora Strang
Here I am. Find me. Find me. Kill me. Kill me. Find me, and kill me. Kill me. Find me, and kill me. Find me, and kill me. Find me, and kill meeeeeeee.- Alan Strang
Trivia
Peter Firth, who plays the role of Alan Strang in this movie, had played the part before, in the original stage production of the play.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States October 1977
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1977
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1977
Released in United States October 1977