Total Eclipse

Set in Paris in the late 1800s, Total Eclipse is the story of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, two of France's greatest poets. Verlaine is a volatile alcoholic torn between his lovely yet conventional wife and the seductive, dangerous and brilliant Rimbaud, a young poet whose life and work is fuelled by an insatiable hunger for intense experience, unbounded by rules or consequences.
Total Eclipse is the audacious, demanding and provocative story of a volatile romantic triangle and the lives it consumes. This screenplay is based on Christopher Hampton's highly successful stage play, originally written in 1967.

Christopher Hampton was born in the Azores in 1946. As a child he travelled around Aden, Egypt and Zanzibar. He was educated at Lancing College and in 1966 he went to New College, Oxford to study German and French, graduating in 1969 with a First Class degree. He wrote his first play, When Did You Last See Your Mother?, at the age of eighteen. It was first performed by Oxford undergraduates and subsequently moved to the Royal Court in June 1966. Since then, Christopher Hampton has worked on numerous original plays, adaptations and translations in the theatre, television and cinema. Hampton's plays are published by Faber in its Contemporary Classics series.