Peter Greenaway

The Profile

Peter Greenaway (born 1942, Newport, Wales) is a film director, screenwriter, and visual artist known for rigorously composed, painterly films. He rose to prominence with works such as The Draughtsman’s Contract, A Zed & Two Noughts, The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Numbers, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, and Prospero’s Books.

Noted for baroque tableaux, numerical and literary structures, and frequent collaboration with composer Michael Nyman in the 1980s–90s.

Three reviews dive into Greenaway’s visual rigor and thematic obsessions. The Belly of an Architect becomes a Roman autopsy of death and ego; Prospero’s Books dazzles as total art while keeping emotions at bay; 8½ Women spars with Fellini, sex, and voyeurism in a cool, cynical key. Music by Wim Mertens and Michael Nyman surfaces as crucial texture.