Lost visionaries of British cinema

[dremble wedge]

The Independent has an article today about the later days of some of the luminaries of British cinema. Although Nic Roeg did make Puffball recently but no-one seemed to like it...

Nic Roeg and the lost visionaries of British cinema

As 'the country's greatest film-maker' is celebrated, Geoffrey Macnab asks why Nic Roeg and others can't get a movie made

Take snapshots of Britain's most adventurous film-makers in the latter part of their careers and the images are likely to be both surprising and disheartening. Lindsay Anderson, the director of This Sporting Life, If... and O Lucky Man!, was directing pop videos and making a film about Wham! in China. Ken Russell went from Women in Love and The Devils to collaborating with Cliff Richard. Charlie Chaplin ended up in retirement in Switzerland. The Boulting brothers, among the boldest young British directors in the 1940s, were directing sex comedies.

British cinema has never much cared for its visionaries. Film-makers who are too daring and too offbeat invariably end up neglected or working in the farthest margins of the industry. The cautionary tale of how Michael Powell's career unraveled after Peeping Tom (1960) is often told. The greatest British director of his generation scandalised the critics with his film about a voyeuristic murderer who tried to capture the moment of his victims' deaths on camera. ("Flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer," one reviewer, notoriously, suggested.) The net result was that Powell ended up living forgotten and near poverty until he was rediscovered by American admirers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Equally glaring is the case of Nic Roeg (whose career is being celebrated at BFI Southbank.) According to Time Out magazine in London, Roeg is the greatest British film-maker of all. His 1973 feature Don't Look Now topped the magazine's recent list of the 100 best British films; Performance (1970), which he co-directed with Donald Cammell, was likewise in the top 10, and Roeg's Walkabout (1971) and Bad Timing (1980) also feature. Despite this roll-call of glory, the dismaying fact remains that Roeg hasn't only made one feature film in the last 15 years.

Producer Jeremy Thomas, who produced Bad Timing, Eureka and Insignificance for Roeg, argues that it is a matter of "historical fact" that visionary directors seldom thrive in British cinema.

The French treat their visionary auteurs very much more sympathetically. As has been regularly pointed out in recent years, when film-makers like Roeg and Terence Davies have struggled to raise finance for new projects in Britain, veteran directors on the other side of the Channel, like Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais blithely carried on working.

"The subsidy system in France is very consistent. Generally, it is looking for excellence. It doesn't always achieve it but it is willing to back film-makers who have this kind of personal vision and want to make a very particular kind of film," Sandy Lieberson (producer of Performance and of Ken Russell's Mahler) states. By contrast, he adds, the British public funding system is "erratic" and has been "rather ungenerous" to visionary film-makers. Jeremy Thomas makes a similar point, referring to "the very strange disease" that has seemed to infect public funding bodies when it has come to supporting the most radical talents. He refers darkly to a system where "young equals good.... that is something everybody feels as they age".

The main problem with visionaries, from financiers' points of view, is that their work simply doesn't make money at the box office. Years down the line, their films may achieve cult status but, by then, the financiers have long since lost faith.
Below, we profile some of British cinema's most visionary talents and ask why, so often, their careers seem to end so badly.

William Friese-Greene (1855-1921)
British film pioneer William Friese-Greene is called, on his memorial stone in Highgate cemetery, "The Inventor of Kinematography". Whether or not that claim can be sustained, he was one of the visionary inventors of his era – British cinema's very own answer to the Lumière brothers. He made little money from his cameras, often skirted close to bankruptcy and is not well-remembered today. Not even The Magic Box (1951), the Boulting brothers' film about him made during the Festival of Britain, and starring the personable Robert Donat, made him a household name.

Alexander Mackendrick (1912-1993)
Mackendrick was the most talented of the directors to work at Ealing Studios in its golden period. Under the benign patronage of studio boss Michael Balcon, he directed such gilt-edged classics as The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers and Mandy. When he decamped to Hollywood in the mid-1950s, he made arguably his finest film of all, The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), starring Tony Curtis as an unctuous publicist. But after some juddering collisions with big Hollywood beasts like actor-producer Burt Lancaster, he sought refuge in teaching at CalArts: "I found that, in order to make movies in Hollywood, you have to be a great deal-maker... I have no talent for that... I realised I was in the wrong business and got out."

Michael Powell (1905-1990)
Now commonly acknowledged as one of the towering figures in British cinema history, Powell was close to being forgotten in the 1970s. The British critics had excoriated Peeping Tom in 1960. He made a few films afterwards, including the oddball Australian comedy They're a Weird Mob, but he was living in near-poverty and the memories of his magnificent movies like The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus (scripted by Emeric Pressburger) were fast fading. Thanks to the efforts of historians like Kevin Gough-Yates and Ian Christie, and the wild enthusiasm for his work from US directors like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma, Powell was rediscovered before his death. There wasn't time for him to make any more movies, though.

Lindsay Anderson (1923-1994)
The waspish British film-maker of If... and O Lucky Man!, whose motto was "never apologise", certainly didn't feel sorry for himself, but it's striking how few movies he made in his career and how under-appreciated they often were, especially in Britain. His last feature, The Whales of August (1987), was dignified, moving and had a fascinating cast (Bette Davis, Lillian Gish.) Nonetheless, when you remember the machine guns on the roof in If..., you can't help but ask why a director as subversive was reduced to chaperoning elderly Hollywood legends.

Ken Russell (b. 1927)
The belligerent and colourful Ken Russell is such a flamboyant personality that it's easy to overlook what a consummately gifted film-maker he once was. His early television work, for example his documentary on Elgar, is still feted. His best feature films, like Women in Love and The Devils, are likewise regularly revived (and The Devils is still the focus of considerable controversy). However, it is now two decades since he has made a film with a proper theatrical release in the UK.

Kevin Brownlow (b. 1938)
Brownlow won an honorary Oscar late last year, so he isn't entirely neglected. It's also a moot point whether a film historian, archivist and documentary-maker can really be classified as a visionary. Nonetheless, Brownlow has done astonishing work in preserving silent cinema and proselytising on its behalf. It is depressing how British broadcasters, who used to support his restorations of silent films, and aired the great series on silent cinema he made with David Gill, have pushed him to the margins. When he made a documentary about Lon Chaney, Brownlow's support didn't come from Channel 4 or the BBC, but from Turner Classic Movies and Playboy boss Hugh Hefner.

Terence Davies (b.1945)
Terence Davies, the visionary director of Distant Voices, Still Lives, is revered by the French – always a very suspicious sign in the eyes of the British industry. His low-budget, archive-based documentary about Liverpool, Of Time and the City, was rapturously received in Cannes three years ago. Even so, British financiers have been in no hurry to support him. He spent years trying to make an adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song. You could hardly blame him when he railed bitterly against the broadcasters and public funders who made him jump through hoops and then still wouldn't back his film. But, at last, he is back at work. His Terence Rattigan adaptation, The Deep Blue Sea, should be out this year, but if it doesn't win prizes or score a big box-office hit, he will very quickly be back in purdah.

Lynne Ramsay (b. 1969)
When she made Ratcatcher in 1999, young Scottish director Lynne Ramsay was heralded as a visionary young talent. Her second feature, Morvern Callar, in 2002, underlined her credentials as a film-maker with an adventurous and utterly personal style. Why, then, has it taken her well-nigh a decade to make another film? She was bounced off The Lovely Bones, eventually made by Peter Jackson instead. Now, she has adapted Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, to be released later this year.

Jonathan Glazer (b. 1966)
In between his Guinness ads and pop promos, Glazer has made only two films. Sexy Beast (2000), with Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley as overheated gangsters on the Costa del Sol, was a commercial success. Birth (2004), starring Nicole Kidman as the bereaved woman convinced that a young boy is the reincarnation of her dead lover, flopped. However, Birth was grievously underrated. His next project, if it gets made, promises to be even more offbeat. It's an adaptation of Michel Faber's Under the Skin. Scarlett Johansson is lined up to play the lead – an extra-terrestrial who scours the highways looking for men to seduce, and then turn into food for the benefit of her fellow aliens.

Nic Roeg (b. 1928)
"I love that his films are so bold and so shocking. You go to see your view of the world exploded with Roeg. A starburst of the mind is what his work is," Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle enthuses of Roeg, whose collaborators speak about him with awe. "To me, Nic Roeg's work is more like a very, very fine piece of art-work. There is more than meets the eye in the way it is shot, the way it sounds, the thoughts behind it. You keep on seeing more and more and more," says Jenny Agutter, who starred in his Walkabout. However, aside from his Fay Weldon adaptation Puffball, there have been no new Roeg movies since the mid-1990s. The BFI hails "his astonishing legacy". Time Out has acclaimed his films as the best of British. The dispiriting side to all these tributes is the presumption that his best work is long since behind him. He is the quintessential visionary of British cinema – one reason why financiers seem determined to ignore him.

Nicolas Roeg, BFI Southbank, London SE1 (020-7928 3232) to 18 March. Jenny Agutter will attend a Q&A screening of 'Walkabout' on 5 March (the newly restored version will show in selected cinemas) and producer Sandy Lieberson will introduce 'Performance' on 4 March

[DB7]

Always find it odd that some expect filmmakers to maintain a balance of critical and commercial appeal throughout their career but it's accepted that other artists like writers and musicians will tail-off as time passes. Bottom line is that a film costs millions and people wll want a roi. Danny Boyle is perhaps an example to Glazer, went to Hollywood and got his fingers burnt, then returned home and worked in tv and on low-budget DV - now back in Hollywood.

[Spasuit]

The simple reason is the British like vulgar, easy to swallow films and do not have a sophisticated film literate audience as does France.

[Cooper S]

I think there is a sophisticated literate audience for films in Britain - the problem is they have no interest in seeing British made films ! They'd rather see something French... Japanese... Italian... Armenian... etc....

[orpheum2]

there are a lot more you could add to the list.George pearson,a very distinguished director from the silent era,ended up directing quota quickies till these dries up in the late thirties.Adrian brunel who ended up bankrupt and filmless in the 40s,the list goes on.

[m35541]

I disagree with quite a bit of this. The fact is that many of these people got too old to be relevant and lost whatever it was about them that made them so radical in the first place.

Do we really want to see children of the 1960s and 1970s still making movies today rather than new, younger more relevant directors (who they themselves replaced in the 1960s).

Anderson essentially lost it with Britannia Hospital (1982) which got terrible reviews and didn't make any money. Still remaking If 13 years later. This was 20 years after This Sporting Life - his time had passed.

Roeg made Castaway in 1986, which could have been made by anybody.

The dispiriting side to all these tributes is the presumption that his best work is long since behind him.

- the man is over 80 years old; that his best work is behind him is self-evident.

After Peeping Tom, Michael Powell made a terrible film called The Queen's Guards which in many respects was worse for his career than Tom (it was "old fashioned", the worst thing you could be in the 1960s).

I don't think we lost out on anything by these guys not making films anymore. They had their time. Although called "visionaries" the likes of Powell, Roeg, Russell and Anderson were mainstream filmmakers working for major studios. Money always talks and once their films stopped making money they were disguarded.

[Moor Larkin]

They seem to have forgotten about The Man Who Fell To Earth

[Steve Crook]

After Peeping Tom, Michael Powell made a terrible film called The Queen's Guards which in many respects was worse for his career than Tom (it was "old fashioned", the worst thing you could be in the 1960s).

There were lots of films that Powell wanted to make, but after the debacle that was the London critics reaction to Peeping Tom he couldn't get funding.

The one that I think could have been most interesting was a Powell version of The Tempest. A few of his other classics were heading in that direction and he could have done some amazing things with it, if he had been allowed to.

But the industry was changing and that was more of a problem than people thinking he was old fashioned. The accountants had taken over film production and there was no room for artistic consideration.

Powell [& Pressburger] - Films not made

Steve

[m35541]

The accountants had taken over film production and there was no room for artistic consideration.

Hardly. Joseph Losey managed to successfully reinvent himself in the 1960s with a series of arthouse successes. This from a man in his 50s who could easily have finished his career directing episodes of The Saint. There was plenty of room for artistic consideration if you made something that was relevant.

I personally think The Queens Guards sunk Powell's career as much as Peeping Tom if not more. This whole story that Tom sunk Powell's career single handedly is a myth he created about 20 years later. Queen's Guards was given a Gala premiere (not much evidence of him being balckballed by the British film community in these photos) and had backing from Twentieth Century Fox. If it had made loads of money then he would have been back in business. But, it was a big flop and was completely the wrong sort of movie for the 1960s. I wouldn't have funded a Powell version of The Tempest either after seeing this - in any case the definitive version had already been made in 1956 with Robby the Robot !!

[Steve Crook]

Hardly. Joseph Losey managed to successfully reinvent himself in the 1960s with a series of arthouse successes. This from a man in his 50s who could easily have finished his career directing episodes of The Saint. There was plenty of room for artistic consideration if you made something that was relevant.

I personally think The Queens Guards sunk Powell's career as much as Peeping Tom if not more. This whole story that Tom sunk Powell's career single handedly is a myth he created about 20 years later. Queen's Guards was given a Gala premiere (not much evidence of him being balckballed by the British film community in these photos) and had backing from Twentieth Century Fox. If it had made loads of money then he would have been back in business. But, it was a big flop and was completely the wrong sort of movie for the 1960s. I wouldn't have funded a Powell version of The Tempest either after seeing this - in any case the definitive version had already been made in 1956 with Robby the Robot !!

Yes, Joe Losey did a few adequate films

See Peeping Tom: The Myths

Steve

[DB7]

Powell [& Pressburger] - Films not made

Steve

I was expecting there to be some good pitches amongst them but they're quite similar to the flat films he did in his latter career like 'River Plate' and 'Moonlight'. PT is shoulders above them.

Neither would I say Powell was 'lost'.

[Robin Davies]

I disagree with quite a bit of this. The fact is that many of these people got too old to be relevant and lost whatever it was about them that made them so radical in the first place.

Do we really want to see children of the 1960s and 1970s still making movies today rather than new, younger more relevant directors (who they themselves replaced in the 1960s).

Roeg made Castaway in 1986, which could have been made by anybody. - the man is over 80 years old; that his best work is behind him is self-evident.

I don't think we lost out on anything by these guys not making films anymore. They had their time. Although called "visionaries" the likes of Powell, Roeg, Russell and Anderson were mainstream filmmakers working for major studios. Money always talks and once their films stopped making money they were disguarded.

Some fair points there, but I think when a film-maker works hard to make a great movie and it then gets treated with contempt by censorship or poor distribution they may well start to think "Why should I bother?"

Roeg's decline may be partly due to a natural reduction in creativity, but it may well have been hastened by the shabby treatment that some of his films received. Performance had to be recut and was shelved for years, The Man Who Fell To Earth was hacked to pieces in America, Bad Timing was called a sick film by its own production company and, worst of all, Eureka was not given a proper release at all. It could only be seen at selected cinemas if Roeg accompanied it to talk about it afterwards. The distributors even sent people to check up on him to see if he attended!

When I saw it in Bristol there was a sound fault near the end and the picture ratio was wrong. Roeg ruefully said that he'd kept a good copy for himself ("I pirated my own film!"). Though he put a brave face on it, Theresa Russell said in an interview that he "went into a deep depression after Eureka". It may be a coincidence but I think his films after that were lacking a lot of his usual magic (though I disagree that Castaway "could have been made by anybody").

[Moor Larkin]

The Man Who Fell To Earth was hacked to pieces in America,

Oh come on..... How can you criticise a Trailer voice-over that deeply intones....

a mind-stretching experience.... in sight.... in space...... in SEX ....

[m35541]

Roeg is an interesting case; he got carte blanche with the Man Who Fell to Earth after Don't Look Now but as pointed out it was hacked around in the USA although it got a better reception in the UK. Its an interesting film but very much a vanity piece as are Bad Timing and Eureka, the latter a tedious film. We screened Bad Timing at my University film society (and also Eureka) mainly because ithe Roeg fan on the panel convinced the rest of us we would be seeing something very risque. Most of us students were bored by it and couldn't see what the fuss was about - Art Garfunkel seemed to have Marlon Brando's ability in Last Tango of engaging in sex without even undoing the flies of his trousers. The audience just jeered at the ridiculously staged scene where he has sex (well at least i think that's what he is doing but the act is not physically possible) with a prone Teresa Russell.

Steve - thanks tor the link to your site. I'd add that Peeping Tom was still playing in a Liverpool cinema in 1962 on a double-bill with Revak the Rebel- it seemed to have got a re-release at one point in late 1961/early 1962. On the US release, the book Ghouls, Gold and Gimmicks by Kevin Heffernan devotes a whole chapter to its release in Philidelphia (?!). Heffernan doesn't discuss what print of the film was actually shown.

Age of Consent was another Powell film that got messed around - in the UK it was originally given an X uncut but then just prior to release the distributors went for an A (resulting in the nude scenes biting the dust) and also hacked around with the running time and changed the music score. The DVD release a few years ago seems to be Powell's original cut at last. Few people saw this at the time I would guess. If it had been a big arthouse hit he might have been back in business for a while.

[Robin Davies]

Roeg is an interesting case; he got carte blanche with the Man Who Fell to Earth after Don't Look Now but as pointed out it was hacked around in the USA although it got a better reception in the UK. Its an interesting film but very much a vanity piece as are Bad Timing and Eureka, the latter a tedious film. We screened Bad Timing at my University film society (and also Eureka) mainly because ithe Roeg fan on the panel convinced the rest of us we would be seeing something very risque. Most of us students were bored by it and couldn't see what the fuss was about - Art Garfunkel seemed to have Marlon Brando's ability in Last Tango of engaging in sex without even undoing the flies of his trousers. The audience just jeered at the ridiculously staged scene where he has sex (well at least i think that's what he is doing but the act is not physically possible) with a prone Teresa Russell.

Maybe younger generations can't get into Roeg's films the way old-timers like me can.
Sad.
To my taste Roeg's first six films are as good as cinema gets.
Each to his own I suppose, though I would seriously quibble with your description of three of his films as "vanity projects". What do you mean?

[Steve Crook]

Steve - thanks tor the link to your site. I'd add that Peeping Tom was still playing in a Liverpool cinema in 1962 on a double-bill with Revak the Rebel- it seemed to have got a re-release at one point in late 1961/early 1962. On the US release, the book Ghouls, Gold and Gimmicks by Kevin Heffernan devotes a whole chapter to its release in Philidelphia (?!). Heffernan doesn't discuss what print of the film was actually shown.

Age of Consent was another Powell film that got messed around - in the UK it was originally given an X uncut but then just prior to release the distributors went for an A (resulting in the nude scenes biting the dust) and also hacked around with the running time and changed the music score. The DVD release a few years ago seems to be Powell's original cut at last. Few people saw this at the time I would guess. If it had been a big arthouse hit he might have been back in business for a while.

Thanks, I've added that first paragraph to the page about Peeping Tom: The Myths.

Yes, that Sony DVD is as full a restoration of Age of Consent as seems possible. It does restore the original Peter Sculthorpe score.

Steve

[Elaine]

Talking about lost visionaries. I noticed that one of the co-producers of Sabastian, was Michael Powell. So sad that was his fate.

[Moor Larkin]

We screened Bad Timing at my University film society (and also Eureka) mainly because ithe Roeg fan on the panel convinced the rest of us we would be seeing something very risque. Most of us students were bored by it and couldn't see what the fuss was about - Art Garfunkel seemed to have Marlon Brando's ability in Last Tango of engaging in sex without even undoing the flies of his trousers. The audience just jeered at the ridiculously staged scene where he has sex (well at least i think that's what he is doing but the act is not physically possible) with a prone Teresa Russell.

How ironic, given that the web is awash with the idea that Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland were really engaged in actual real physical sexual intercourse in "Don't Look Now" ....

I wonder if Roeg has ever been asked why he did it that way in Bad Timing, given that he clearly knew how to make it look much more real.

I recall being surprised in the cinema when I saw David Bowie's dangly bits....... although I hasten to add they were dangling. I suppose the Americans never got to see them at all.



PS... Great post by the way m ....

[Steve Crook]

Talking about lost visionaries. I noticed that one of the co-producers of Sabastian, was Michael Powell. So sad that was his fate.

He had worse jobs than that. What about being the "Western version supervisor" on the Russian made Pavlova: A Woman for All Time (1983)?
Or as an actor (scenes deleted) in Bertrand Tavernier's Que la fête commence... (1975)

Some of these jobs were just old friends and admirers helping him out when he was broke and couldn't get any projects made.

But then he was "rediscovered" by Scorsese, worked for Coppola for a while, did a year teaching at Dartmouth, and married Thelma.
So it all turned out reasonably OK for him

Steve

[will.15]

I think it is pretty bizarre he directed a Defenders episode. By that time the show had been on for years and the janitor probably could have directed it and no one could have told the difference. Despite being a critically acclaimed show that had a goon run, it hardly aired in reruns. I just caught the ending of one when I was a kid. Just before the jury rendered the verdict of an accused murderer, the familiar character actor whispered in E.G. Marshall's ear, "Whatever the verdict is, I want you to know I did it." The jury found him not guilty. You never would see that on Perry Mason.

I found the Defenders epsode, Judgment Day, and the director was also British, David Greene.