Directed by Derek Jarman • 1979 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter Bull, David Meyer, Neil Cunningham

Derek Jarman transforms William Shakespeare’s final great play—about the magician Prospero (Heathcote Williams), who lives on an enchanted island with his daughter, Miranda (Toyah Willcox), and exacts revenge on his shipwrecked enemies—into an original and dazzling spectacle, mixing Hollywood pastiche, high camp, and gothic horror. Shot on location at the ancient and ghostly Stoneleigh Abbey, THE TEMPEST channels the innocent homoeroticism of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s versions of classics, while its lush sense of decor and color worthy of Vincente Minnelli. Jarman’s master stroke is the finale, a wedding feast designed and choreographed as a full-scale production number, with the veteran musical-comedy star Elisabeth Welch wafting her way through a chorus line of hunky sailors as she belts out “Stormy Weather.”