Watch Order
0 / 8 watchedEight features in release order.
About Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway moved from shorts to features with The Draughtsman's Contract in 1982, a Restoration murder mystery drawn like a diagram. The Belly of an Architect in 1987 and Drowning by Numbers in 1988 built his reputation for symmetrical frames and numbered games. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover in 1989 remains his most notorious film, a banquet of cruelty that outraged censors.
Prospero's Books in 1991 layered video over Shakespeare, The Baby of Macon in 1993 courted scandal at Cannes, and The Pillow Book in 1996 turned calligraphy into cinema. 8 1/2 Women in 1999 closed this selection with a droll homage. None of the plots connect, so release order tracks the visual tricks compounding. Later multimedia projects like the Tulse Luper films sit outside this core eight.
Good to know
Greenaway's full credits run past one hundred shorts and experiments, so these eight are the arthouse essentials, not the complete works. He remains alive and active with installation and film projects, which means this order can grow. The Cook, the Thief and The Baby of Macon are sexually explicit and deliberately confrontational, so check content warnings. The Pillow Book splits dialogue across English, French and Japanese.
