Lord Attenborough hits out at films glamourising violence
By Oliver Poole, Jonathan Petre and David Bamber

LORD ATTENBOROUGH, a grandee of the British film industry, has provoked fresh controversy about violence in films by accusing Guy Ritchie, the director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, of succumbing to the "pornography of violence".

 In an interview with The Telegraph, Lord Attenborough said the young British film-maker, who is the boyfriend of Madonna, the pop star, was debasing movies by glamorising violence to sell his films. His bitter attack follows warnings by Lord Puttnam, the producer of films like Chariots of Fire, and leading police officers that the glorification of violence in movies was influencing the behaviour of young people. 

Lord Attenborough, who directed the Oscar-winning film Gandhi, said that film-makers such as Ritchie were pandering to the demands of Hollywood, which he claims dictate that only films with "sex and violence" are screened at cinemas.

 He said: "I don't want to make a film like Snatch. I'll accept Two Barrels or whatever it was called, because that was the first - but to do that crap again for purely commercial reasons, to succumb to the pornography of violence because it is a prerequisite for commercial success, that I want no part of."

 Lord Attenborough said: "Violence on screen is much worse than sex. It makes us lose the capacity to be shocked or moved. I don't want to be guilty of that. And if that means that I make movies that some people find boring, then so be it."

 Lord Puttnam said: "Violence begets violence. It creates a casualised attitude to violence. It stirs people up."

 Ritchie's film Snatch, which was released in August, covered the same ground as his debut, the highly successful Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Both are set in the East End of London and deal with a group of cartoonish villains carrying out acts of great brutality interlaced with scenes of slapstick humour.

 The cast included Vinnie Jones, the former footballer who once released a video of his favourite fouls, and Brad Pitt, the American actor. It was condemned by a number of critics as a callous, cynical retread of his previous film.

 Ritchie is presently living in Los Angeles with Madonna and their son, Rocco. However, a friend of the director said: "I do not think this will worry him too much. I mean, how old is Attenborough? He must be nearly 107."

 A spokesman for Jones, who is also in Los Angeles where he is working to establish himself as a Hollywood actor, said that he was proud of Snatch and his performance in it. The spokesman said: "Lord Attenborough is entitled to think what he wants to think. He has had a long and distinguished career in the films but surely he appeared in enough war movies to try and glamorise that. I think he should get back in his box." 

Lord Attenborough's outburst follows the news that his latest film Grey Owl, starring Pierce Brosnan, will only be available on video in the United States, although it will be released in British cinemas later this month. Studio executives in Hollywood decided that the story would not be popular with American audiences and would flop if it were given a cinema release. By sending it straight to video they accepted that few people would see it, but saved around £10 million by not attempting to establish it as a mass-market feature film.

 Grey Owl is based on the true story of an Englishman who fell for a Mohawk woman in Canada in the Thirties and became an Indian environmentalist. It cost £20 million to make. Lord Attenborough believes that if he had been happy to include gratuitous scenes of sex or violence then the movie would have gained a general release in the United States.

 Leading police officers have also criticised Snatch and the current crop of British gangster films. Glen Smythe, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, yesterday said that violent films like Snatch glamorised gangsters.

 Mr Smythe said: "The people who commit these type of crimes are vicious nasty thugs, not glamorous film stars. If you had seen the consequences of violence like I have you would not glamorise it."