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Love Left the Masquerade: Peter Medak's Cinema of Pretenders

Playing at games, acting out names, guessing the parts they played
Jun 17, 2025 · 14m
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Documentary

PLOT

Peter Medak's films toy with notions of cosplay, masquerade, gamesmanship, and how power and permission structures figure into these human diversions. His filmography includes The Ruling Class (1972), The Changeling (1980), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), The Krays (1990), and others, all which capitalize on these ideas. Sanity is fragile, ephemeral, and suspended from a very thin tether in all his films. This piece gets to the bottom of why Medak centers his work on such themes, and why they carry biographical weight for him personally.

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CAST

Peter Medak
Self
Daniel Kremer
Narrator
Peter O'Toole
Archive
Glenda Jackson
Archive
Alan Bates
Archive
Peter Sellers
Archive
Directed by Daniel Kremer

DETAILS

Status
Released
Original language
EN
Budget
—
Revenue
—
Country
US
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