--- name: "Martin Rosen" canonical: "https://film.one/person/martin-rosen" roles: ["Director","Producer","Screenwriter"] born: "31 August 1938" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T06:17:53.046796+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Martin Rosen Director and producer. Born 31 August 1938 in New York City, New York, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Director, Producer, Screenwriter - **Born:** 31 August 1938, New York City, New York, USA - **Also known as:** 마틴 로젠 - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q976133, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0742034/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/70663 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*Watership Down*](https://film.one/film/watership-down.md) (81) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Martin Rosen > Martin Rosen made two animated films from Richard Adams novels, and neither will tell a child that animals do not die. *Watership Down* (1978) is rough, painted and frightening, and we rate it; it was never meant to reassure anyone. The first thing Martin Rosen puts on screen in *Watership Down* (1978) is a warning. Flat ochre shapes, like a cave painting that has learnt to move, show the sun god Frith giving the first rabbit a thousand enemies and a pair of fast legs, and telling him that when they catch him they will kill him. Then the picture opens out into watercolour fields and nothing softens. The rabbits are long-backed and grey-brown, animals rather than toys; men are boots, a shovel, a shadow across a burrow mouth; the dog is a set of teeth. Rosen keeps the camera at rabbit height and paints the snares into the hedgerows. He came to it sideways. Rosen was a literary and theatre agent in the United States before moving to Britain, where he produced *A Great Big Thing* (1968) and co-produced *Women in Love* (1969). A production manager pressed Adams's novel on him, he bought the rights, and he meant only to produce the film; when the original director left he took over the direction and wrote the screenplay himself. He did all three jobs again on *The Plague Dogs* (1982), a second Adams adaptation about two dogs escaped from a laboratory, with John Hurt's voice again. Then came *Stacking* (1987), a live-action drama, and no more features as director, though he returned to the book as executive producer on television versions in 1999 and 2018. So the career is short and it is nearly all one idea: draw animals as animals, move the camera as a live-action director would, and take a novel written for adults straight, killings included. In *Watership Down* the idea survives the drawing, which wobbles, and a plot squeezed hard into 92 minutes. The faces hardly move, so the voices do the acting, and Rosen cast for it. Hurt's Hazel is tired, decent and unsure of himself, which is how a leader of frightened animals should sound; Denholm Elliott's Cowslip is courteous, oily and never quite answers the question. There is something in the old complaint that it plays like a radio play with pictures. We took it anyway. What got us, watching it again, was not the blood but the moment before it: a burrow mouth, a shadow crossing it, and a rabbit that has not yet noticed. Rosen trusts a child to be frightened by the right things. The price is that his films have always been called too dark for the family audience they were sold to, and *The Plague Dogs* was released more narrowly and seen by far fewer people. He does not appear to have regretted it. Asked in 2015 why *Watership Down* has lasted, Rosen said, "I wish I had an easy answer". We have one: he told children the truth about the countryside, and they remembered. Watch it with a child old enough to ask questions, and be ready to answer them. ## Biography Martin Rosen is an American-British filmmaker, producer, director and screenwriter. He began his career as a literary agent and theatre producer before moving to the United Kingdom, where he co-produced Ken Russell's *Women in Love* (1969). Rosen produced the animated adaptation of Richard Adams's novel *Watership Down* (1978) and took over as director and writer after the original director departed. He later wrote, produced and directed the animated film *The Plague Dogs* (1982), also adapted from an Adams novel. His other credits include producing *Smooth Talk* (1985) and directing the live-action feature *Stacking* (1987). He has also worked as a theatre producer. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Watership Down* (1978), Fi1m 81, Director, Producer, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/watership-down.md) ## Also known for - *The Plague Dogs* (1982), Director, Screenplay --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/martin-rosen