Magic Rays season: the documentaries
John Wyver writes: As noted earlier in the week, I have curated a screening season at BFI Southbank in January to tie in with the publication by Bloomsbury and the BFI of Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain. Two of the programmes, to which I will contribute introductions, are of documentaries from the 1930s and ’40s, together with Jack Rosenthal’s drama about Alexandra Palace, The Fools on the Hill. I will return to the play in another post, and also to the three programmes of 1930s’ feature films, but here I want to highlight the documentaries that will have a rare outing on a big screen.
6.15pm, Thursday 8 January, NFT2: Television Arrives!
The first programme features four documentaries that give the best contemporary sense of what television from Alexandra Palace was like. None of them features recordings of live broadcasts, but the reconstructions for film give a strong sense of the BBC’s high definition service.
Television Comes to London, 1936: Dallas Bower’s 17-minute film, made for the first night of the service, features shots of the conversion of AP, the buidling of the iconic transmitter mast, and an advance staging of how it was imagined the station would go on the air.
BBC Television Demonstration Film, 1937: another film made by Bower, with numerous reconstructions of early broadcasts, including John Piper presenting Around the Galleries (above); this was made to be screened every morning at 11am so that in the days before the testcard television showrooms could present the medium in action to potential purchasers of receivers.
The Coronation Broadcast, 1937: a short film made to document and celebrate the BBC’s all-important first remote outside broadcast, of the Coronation procession passing Hyde Park Corner, in May 1937.
Television is Here Again, 1946: produced to mark the return of transmissions in June 1946, with numerous vivid scenes from the pre-war days.
6.10pm, Thursday 15 January, NFT2: Fools and a Flower
Along with The Fools on the Hill, this progeramme includes a fascinating item made for the BBC2 arts magazine Review in 1970, which re-united the team that made the 1930 30-line Baird/BBC co-produced broadcast of Luigi Pirandello’s short drama The Man with the Flower in his Mouth.
Review editor and presenter James Mossman gathered together the original cast and producer Lance Sieveking, engineers Tony Bridgewater and D.R. Campbell, effects men George Inns and Brian Michie, and make-up expert Mary Eversley, and after reminiscing they re-made a few minutes of the transmission as red-toned, rapidly flickering images
At the close Mossman speaks with Bridgewater, who in later years proved to be the most articulate and clear-eyed of the pioneers. Was there a chance, Mossman asked, that Baird’s 30-line mechanical television system used for The Man with the Flower in his Mouth could have caught on, rather than being swept aside by Marconi-EMI’s electronic cameras.
‘Sadly, I don’t think so’, Bridgewater replies. ‘Mechanical television was cumbersome, inefficient, and it really never had a chance of competing in the long run with the electronic methods.’ Was Baird then, Mossman probed, a failure? Bridgewater demurred, scrupulously fair-minded: ‘He was the first man in the world, wasn’t he, to demonstrate true television. And I think he made everyone aware of the potential of television.’
Booking for the screenings opens for BFI Members at midday on Tuesday 2 December, and for non-Members at midday on Thursday 4 December; start at BFI Southbank Home.
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