‘Opus’ day

11th September 2013

This is a little story about the joy of serendipitous discovery in the archives. I am working on a research paper about the ways in which Henry Moore and his works featured on television and in films during his lifetime. Central to the story of Moore on screen are the six films about the artist made by the great BBC filmmaker John Read, about which I have posted on several occasions including here. But for this paper I am undertaking a survey of as many of the other British films that I can find. The search took me yesterday to the always-welcoming and all-round admirable archive of the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green. On my list for viewing was Opus (1967), about which I knew precisely nothing. But what turned out to be a dazzling kaleidoscope of the arts in mid-’60s London was definitely the highlight of my day – before I later discovered it is available on a DVD set released by the BFI that was sitting at home in a (tall) pile waiting to be viewed.

Opus was directed by Don Levy and made for the Central Office of Information (COI). The commission was for it to be screened continuously in Sir Basil Spence’s British pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal. (The link is to an informative page at the online archive of Sir Basil Spence – note the models with Union Jack tote bags adjacent to Henry Moore’s Locking Piece, 1963-64; the sculpture can also be seen in the photograph below.  There is an excellent discussion by Elizabeth Darling of the pavilion and the British presence in Montreal on the Designing Britain 1945-75 website – start here for that.)

Image from the Sir Basil Spence Archive, © Anthony Blee.

As I discovered last night, Opus is now available on the DVD set Portrait of a People, which is Volume 5 of The COI Collection released by BFI. (Note, however, that the original cut of the film included a sequence cut to The Beatles’ ‘Baby, You Can Drive My Car’; rights restrictions caused this to be replaced on the BFI version by something far more bland. The full DVD set is the focus of an extensive and informative online review by Cineoutsider.) In the programme booklet Linda Kaye notes that the COI was disappointed with the film and concerned about its experimental and impressionistic approach. Yet it was nominated for Best Short Film at Cannes in 1967 and for a BAFTA the following year – and watching it yesterday in the archive it came off the screen as a rich and rather wondrous trace of British culture towards the end of 1966.

There is no commentary, but rather an eclectric soundtrack accompanying extended sequences of artists, performance and montages of contemporary design, fashion, architecture and jewellery. David Muir’s fine camerawork is fluid and free-wheeling, and the editing by Hugh Raggett keeps it moving at a terrific pace. Especially when compared with what most television directors were doing at the time, Don Levy’s direction is imaginative and, as it feels now, very much of the moment. This is the world of Richard Lester’s Help!, 1965, and – especially – Antonioni’s Blow-up, 1966.

So we see Eduardo Paolozzi wandering through an industrial machine shop before crafting one of his multi-part metal sculptures. The artist Alan Davie participates in a Jackson Pollock-inspired sequence of ‘action painting’. Model Peggy Moffitt vamps for the camera and Twiggy (above) and friends cavort on the newly-built London Wall. There are remarkable recordings of a fragment of David Warner’s Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company (the only colour footage of this, I believe) and of the same company – and the same director, Peter Hall’s – production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming with Ian Holm and Vivien Merchant.

There is also an extended sequence (taken from the film version, I think) of Peter Brook’s production with Glenda Jackson of Peter Weiss’s The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of Marquis de Sade. Equally startling is a scene from Sir Frederick Ashton’s 1965 stripped-back (and little-remembered) ballet Monotones. Finally, at the climax, even though it seems far from the groovy gorgeousness of much of the rest, there is a sequence with Henry Moore and his works filmed at Perry Green.

Director Don Levy demands further consideration, not least because he made one of the most intriguing British feature films of the 1960s, Herostratus, 1967, the completion of which is more or less contemporary with Opus. This too, again as released by the BFI, is in that pile of DVDs waiting to be watched – and my serendipitous encounter with Opus will be the catalyst for that. So watch out for a further post, but in the meantime there is a site here devoted to Don Levy, who died in California in 1987 and online is this clip from Herostratus featuring Helen Mirren in her first film role – and some way away from impersonating the Queen.