Taglines: Vladimir Nabokov’s tale of suspense and cruelty.
Laughter in the Dark movie storyline. Set in London and the Riviera, Laughter in the Dark stars Nicol Williamson as Edward, a wealthy, knighted art dealer who falls hard for tartish usherette Margot (Anna Karina). She is kept by a glorified pimp (Jean-Claude Drouot), who conspires with the girl to take Edward for everything he’s got.
The art dealer is blinded in an auto accident, after which he switches emotional gears and plans to kill the girl and her keeper. Somehow this all worked better back when Hollywood people like Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea were involved. Based on a 1938 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the film version of Laughter in the Dark “updates” the piece with flash shots of “mod” London, which now seems more anachronistic than anything in the 1930s.
Laughter in the Dark (French: La Chambre obscure) is a 1969 French-British drama film directed by Tony Richardson and starring Nicol Williamson and Anna Karina. It is based on the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. Nicol Williamson was brought in as a very late replacement for Richard Burton, who had already shot several scenes. The director, Tony Richardson, found Burton’s lack of punctuality intolerable.
For the film, the story’s setting was changed from nineteen-thirties Berlin to the swinging London of the sixties. The film drew respectable reviews, but for reasons that are unclear, it was subsequently removed from distribution. The film has only twice been shown on British television, (in 1974 and 1981 on BBC2), and has not been released on any home video format. Laszlo Papas was slated to direct a 1986 remake of the film which would have starred Mick Jagger as Axel Rex and Rebecca De Mornay as the young seductress; De Mornay was replaced by Maryam d’Abo after disagreements with the director, but ultimately the project went nowhere and the film was never made.
Laughter in the Dark (1969)
Directed by: Tony Richardson
Starring: Nicol Williamson, Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Drouot, Peter Bowles, Kate O’Toole, Sian Phillips, Sheila Burrell, Willoughby Goddard, Sebastian Breaks, Basil Dignam
Screenplay by: Edward Bond
Production Design by: Gavrik Losey
Cinematography by: Dick Bush
Film Editing by: Charles Rees
Costume Design by: Jocelyn Rickards
Art Direction by: Julia Trevelyan Oman
Music by: Raymond Leppard
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists (UK)
Release Date: September 1969
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