R.I.P. Hugh Hudson, director of Chariots Of Fire

Hugh Hudson has died. The documentarian and director—best known for his 1981 Oscar winner Chariots Of Fire—directed a dozen or so feature-length movies across a long career (in addition to a number of award-winning commercials, created while working alongside other prominent up-and-coming British directors of the era like Ridley Scott), splitting his time between the words of feature and non-fiction film-making. Per THR, Hudson died in London today after a brief illness. He was 86.

Born in London in the 1930s, Hudson got into filmmaking in the 1960s, editing documentaries in Paris before setting out to create his own films. After working on shorts like A Is For Apple, though, Hudson moved into the world of commercial film-making, where he, alongside contemporaries like Alan Parker and Ridley and Tony Scott, cut his teeth—and paid his bills—by directing a number of well-received commercials. (Hudson would continue to work in the form from the 1980s onward, returning to it regularly; meanwhile, Parker also employed him as a second-unit director on 1978's Midnight Express.)

In 1981, Hudson returned to filmmaking in full, directing his first full-length documentary, racing doc Fangio: Una vita a 300 all’ora. He followed that dip into sports with another, even more celebrated one: Chariots Of Fire, a historical drama focused on a pair of British track runners competing in the 1924 Olympic Games. Directing from a script by Colin Welland—and employing a secret weapon in the form of an instant-classic synth-heavy soundtrack from his friend and colleague Vangelis—Hudson was heralded for making a relatable, funny, and very human film out of the story of runners Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson). The film was a crossover international success, ultimately scoring Hudson a Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, and winning for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.

Hudson followed one success with another, throwing his new prestige into Greystoke, a serious attempt to bring the story of Tarzan to film. Taking over direction from Robert Towne (who co-wrote the script, but was forced to leave the project due to other commitments), Hudson and star Christopher Lambert managed to make a Tarzan movie that people actually took seriously, focused on the ways the character was split between the two worlds in which he’s forced to live. The film garnered another slate of Oscar noms.

Chariots and Greystoke mark the critical high points of Hudson’s career; his reputation was dinged—fairly or not—by his next feature, the Al Pacino Revolutionary War movie Revolution, which was raced into theaters uncompleted by the studio in hopes of scoring an Oscar push. (It didn’t get one; critics tore the film apart, and audiences refused to see it, losing some $28 million in the process.) Hudson, unhappy with leaving a job unfinished, returned to the movie in 2009, releasing a director’s cut that is generally held up as a far better example of what he and Pacino were trying to achieve.

Nevertheless, Hudson continued to direct features throughout the 1990s, including Lost Angels in 1989, My Life So Far in 1999, and I Dreamed Of Africa in 2000; although the first two were received with some warmth, the last—starring Kim Basinger as a 1970s Italian socialite who moves with her new husband to Kenya—was a notorious flop, essentially ending Hudson’s movie-making career. He would return to documentaries fully 12 years later for Rupture: My Broken Brain, a collaboration with his wife Maryam d’Abo, about the brain hemorrhage she suffered in 2007. Hudson’s final film was the Antonio Banderas feature Finding Altamira, which was released to mixed reviews in 2016.