{"id":337438,"date":"2026-03-19T13:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337438\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:09:14","slug":"inside-marianne-faithfulls-final-gift-to-the-world-she-was-a-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337438\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Marianne Faithfull\u2019s final gift to the world: \u2018She was a force\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Marianne Faithfull is watching an old interview, in which Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham is asked about \u201cdiscovering\u201d her. \u201cIs it literally possible that you can go to a party and pick up someone with no evident talent and make a star of her?\u201d Oldham chortles. \u201cEr, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it was good for me,\u201d Faithfull says, of her reaction upon first seeing that interview. \u201cBecause maybe I thought\u2026 \u2018I\u2019ll show you, you c***.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Faithfull, who died in January 2025 at the age of 78<\/a>, certainly did show Oldham, and the rest of the world. Her extraordinary life, much of which was lived out under the relentless glare of the media, was one of rebellion and resilience. Now, it\u2019s the subject of a milestone docu-drama, Broken English, that sets out to \u201crecalibrate\u201d a legacy that has, too often, been overshadowed by Faithfull\u2019s association with the Stones and Mick Jagger<\/a>, her ex-boyfriend, as well as a crude \u2013 and inaccurate \u2013 story involving Faithfull, a chocolate bar, and a police raid of Keith Richards\u2019 home in 1967.<\/p>\n

Directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, the Bafta-nominated duo behind 2014\u2019s acclaimed Nick Cave<\/a> docu-drama, 20,000 Days on Earth, Broken English veers far from the formulaic music documentary tropes: the rags to riches story, the fame, the fortune, the drugs spiral, the phoenix rise from the ashes\u2026 Tilda Swinton appears amid whirling tape machines and clicking typewriters as the head of a mysterious institution called The Ministry of Not Forgetting. Faithfull <\/a>has been carefully chosen as its first subject \u2013 her life and work archived through an extensive cache of interviews, archive footage, performances and conversation. Among its starry contributors are friends and collaborators, including Cave, Warren Ellis, Courtney Love and Jehnny Beth, while actors George MacKay<\/a>, Zawe Ashton and Calvin Demba act as employees at the ministry, diligently working towards their end goal.<\/p>\n

\"TildaTilda Swinton as the head of the ‘Ministry of Not Forgetting’, in ‘Broken English’ (Amelia Troubridge)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019d started the project, Marianne had recently arrived at [care home] Denville Hall, so this was an exciting opportunity for her to be creative again, to make art and perform and sing,\u201d producer Beth Earl tells me. \u201cI feel like that really gave her a new lease of life, and we got to have her on board, being the one to tell her story.\u201d They had to work quickly, knowing Faithfull\u2019s health was not good \u2013 she was on oxygen, struggling to breathe after contracting Covid in 2020. During filming, though, something changed in her: \u201cOnce those triggers were pushed, the muscles began to work again, and she could remember lots of detail about [recording albums], or teaching songwriting with Allen Ginsberg\u2026 it all came back,\u201d Forsyth says.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t exactly a surprise to the team working on Broken English. \u201cA lot of her life has been about showing people who underestimated her what she\u2019s actually capable of,\u201d Pollard points out. \u201cShe was a force,\u201d Earl agrees. \u201cShe was smart and funny and talented and quick and so dynamic. I feel like all of us really had to be on our feet every time we saw her, and like a few steps ahead. She definitely didn\u2019t slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarianneMarianne Faithfull with George McKay in ‘Broken English’ (Joseph Lynn)<\/p>\n

They were keen not to sugarcoat anything, not least when Faithfull was feeling less cooperative. \u201cWe wanted to let her be snappy, to expose that at some point, because if it was a male artist, we\u2019d perceive that behaviour differently,\u201d Pollard says. \u201cWe would see it as a strength of character and a byproduct of genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacKay, known for roles in the war epic 1917 and the critically praised 2023 thriller Femme, plays an earnest researcher who shows Faithfull artefacts from her career. Her reactions vary. Sometimes she lights up, beaming, at the sight of an old friend (Ginsberg, or Bob Dylan). Others she bristles at, such as when MacKay pulls out a copy of The Evening News, with the front page screaming: \u201cNaked girl at Stones\u2019 party.\u201d The odious legend goes that, at the notorious police raid on Keith Richards\u2019 Redlands estate in February 1967, Faithfull was discovered wearing nothing but a fur rug and performing a sex act with a Mars Bar. The fur rug detail was true. The Mars bar was not. \u201cOh gawd,\u201d Faithfull says at the sight of the front page. \u201cI don\u2019t care for it. No, I\u2019m not going there. You can put it away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is where a roundtable of women are introduced, including the presenter Edith Bowman, who agree that this moment was \u201cthe start\u201d of Faithfull being perceived in the public eye as someone \u201cscandalous\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"ScandalousScandalous sisters: Marianne Faithfull with her friend, actor Anita Pallenberg, at Heathrow Airport in 1967 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very clear at the beginning,\u201d says Earl. \u201cOne thing she did say was that she never felt she was a victim. She never wanted that kind of label on her at all. And I think the way we move through the Ministry allowed her not to be that and to have her voice, and if we felt like anything needed a little bit more careful consideration, that\u2019s where we brought in the [group]. It wasn\u2019t something that she really wanted to dwell in. I think she felt that she\u2019d gone through it and she\u2019d come out of it on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

She never felt she was a victim. She never wanted that kind of label on her at all<\/p>\n

Producer Beth Earl<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that the film skirts around the genuine traumas that Faithfull went through. In the space of two years, she developed a drug addiction while playing Ophelia at the Roundhouse in 1969 and suffered a miscarriage while seven months pregnant with her and Jagger\u2019s child; their relationship ended (she was back onstage with the Stones two weeks later). Stones\u2019 guitarist Brian Jones died, aged 27, and she lost custody of her son, Nicolas. She also had the song \u201cSister Morphine\u201d taken off the shelves because it was deemed too controversial for a woman to have written those lyrics. \u201cIt was quite a long time before I could sit down and write another song, which is a shame,\u201d she says. \u201cHurts. It really hurts\u2026\u201d She tells MacKay that she\u2019s \u201csorry\u201d when he asks about the song being taken away. \u201cDon\u2019t apologise,\u201d he replies, stricken. \u201cWell, I am,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m sorry that I didn\u2019t [protest].\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarianneMarianne Faithfull in her Kensington flat, August 1965 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reclaiming of Faithfull\u2019s work throughout Broken English, both in her own recollections of her life, and through interpretations of her songs by other artists. We witness a striking cover of 1983\u2019s \u201cTimes Square\u201d by Courtney Love, and another from French rock musician Jehnny Beth, formerly of the band Savages, who dances to her take on Faithfull\u2019s caustic Broken English closer, \u201cWhy D\u2019ya Do It?\u201d. Its themes of infidelity, jealousy and rage suit Beth perfectly: \u201cI was so flattered [to be asked to take part],\u201d Beth tells me. \u201cThe film is incredible \u2013 it\u2019s very much a movie about Marianne in the present, in that moment, and it\u2019s a movie about death.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Faithfull, she sees a kindred spirit when it comes to her songwriting. \u201cThe way we approach love and relationships is not as evolved as we pretend it is,\u201d she says.\u2029\u201dWe\u2019re still coding these possessive attitudes towards sexuality; jealousy is a condition of love, even a proof of love for some people.\u201d Faithfull, she points out, was fearless in her exploration of the human condition.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018It\u2019s\u2018It\u2019s a movie about Marianne in the present, in that moment\u2019: Jehnny Beth on \u2018Broken English\u2019 (Johnny Hostile)<\/p>\n

Pollard and Forsyth wanted to end the documentary with one final performance. Faithfull\u2019s doctor advised her against it. But she returned a year after filming had concluded with her friend, the jeweller David Courts, who\u2019d convinced Earl and the team that she was ready. \u201cWhen we brought her in, we were prepared for every scenario, like\u2026 if she doesn\u2019t want to sing, if she just wants to read poetry,\u201d Earl recalls. It is undoubtedly the most moving scene of the film, as Faithfull is accompanied by Nick Cave, who sings and plays the piano, and Warren Ellis on the violin. \u201cIt was a beautiful thing, because in that time we knew Marianne, it was the most alive I ever experienced her,\u201d Earl says. \u201cIt was like we were meeting a lifetime\u2019s worth of Marianne in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Broken English\u2019 is in UK cinemas from 20 March<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-337438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}