Lindsay Anderson's career is central to the entire post-war period
in British cinema. His first critical article appeared in the journal
Sequence in 1947 and he directed his first documentary film, Meet the
Pioneers, in 1948; his last film, Is That All There Is? in 1992, was
a cinematic self-portrait. He published two books on the cinema, one
on the production of Thorold Dickinson's
Secret People
(1952) and one on his favourite film-maker, About John Ford. He also
acted in a few films, for instance as the sculptor in James Broughton's
surrealist The Pleasure Garden (1952), as the Master of Caius College,
Cambridge, in Hugh Hudson's Chariots
of Fire (1981), and as the Minister of War in Ken
Russell's film about the aftermath of the Dreyfuss affair, Prisoners
of Honor (1991). Anderson also lent his strong voice as narrator to
a series of television documentaries on film history - on D.W. Griffith,
Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Ingmar Bergman - produced by Kevin Brown
and David Gill.
Anderson directed six feature films, three of which were adaptations:
This Sporting Life (1963) was adapted
from David Storey's novel. In Celebration (1974) was a film version
of Anderson's production of Storey's play at the Royal Court Theatre
in London in 1969; and The Whales of August (1987), Anderson's last
feature film, was an adaptation of David Berry's play. The experimental
side of Anderson's work is his film trilogy, If...
(1968), 0 Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia
Hospital (1982), which all involve the character Mick Travis, played
by Malcolm McDowell. These films
were his most controversial works and also his most important contribution
to the history of British cinema.
