John Wyver writes: Seeing The Lost People a week or so ago piqued my interest in movies set in the middle Europe of the immediate post-war years, and in how they might have negotiated the complex politics of reconstruction and the start of the Cold War. Today’s watch was Berlin Express, a Jacques Tourneur-directed thriller (sort of) made at exactly the same moment as The Lost People, in 1948. Except that this RKO movie features extensive location shooting in the ruins of Frankfurt and Berlin, and instead of Dennis Price and Mai Zetterling boasts the rather punchier star power of Robert Ryan and Merle Oberon. The plot, frankly, is pretty nonsensical, but the film is fascinating nonetheless.
Apart from anything else, it’s made me start to think about what I’m going to call mittelnoir, a sub-category of film noir set in and concerned with Mitteleuropa, the mythical central European world that embraced Germany, Austria and more. I think we can definitely co-opt for this emergent grouping Carol Reed’s great The Third Man (1949) and also The Man Between(1953), also directed by Reed, shot in Berlin and starring James Mason. I think Billy Wilkder’s A Foreign Affair (1948) should perhaps be next on my playlist. Does any one have any other suggestions?
This Sunday, 17 March, Battersea Arts Centre are hosting a very special one-off showing of all the films made for the series Performance Live as collaborations between BAC, Arts Council England, BBC Television and a host of cultural organisations and independent producers – including Illuminations.
Two of the films on which we collaborated for the series, and which were broadcast on BBC Two last year are being shown. At 4pm there’s a showing of Winged Bull in the Elephant Case, directed by Robin Friend, Wayne MacGregor and Rhodri Huw, and created with Studio Wayne McGregor. And at 7pm Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns (above) will be screened, which Hofesh choreographed and directed, and for which he created the score.
This is a unique opportunity to see these films, and a host of other great work, on a big screen – and for free! Among the other artists and groups whose work is being showcased are Paul Mason and Young Vic, Slung Low, Tamasha, Eggs Collective, 20 Stories High and Contact, Akala, Ross Sutherland, Touretteshero, Alexander Zeldin and National Theatre, and Kate Tempest.
The films will be screened between midday (doors open at 11.30am) and 9.30pm, with a special live interlude at 5.45pm.
Our very latest production is the trailer for Anne Washburn’s play Shipwreck, directed by Rupert Goold, at the Almeida Theatre until 30 March. A tale of Trump’s America, it’s quite a ride – and the one-minute trailer aims to reflect the drama’s intensity and imaginative power. The trailer was filmed, edited and directed by Todd Macdonald.
John Wyver writes: following recent clutches of Links concerned with Photography, with Television, and with the Visual Arts, today’s offering draws together a few of the essential articles and videos about film that I have enjoyed recently. I’ll be adding to these across the day and in the coming days, as I have been updating the other posts.
John Wyver writes: To BFI Southbank on Thursday for a screening of the 1949 British film The Lost People, which proved to be almost laughably poor and entirely fascinating. There are three strands to just why I got so much from the showing. First, it was partly directed, as her first such assignment, by Muriel Box, whose later work I have recently been discovering with delight. Second, intertwinings between stage and screen are central to both the fictional world it depicts (a crumbling theatre in post-war Germany taken over as a dispersal centre for displaced persons) and to its production context (it was originally the stage play Cockpit by Bridget Boland, imaginatively staged in London in 1948). And third, it was made, and addressed to, a critical moment in the relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe. As I try to suggest below, drawing on the arguments of historian Anne Deighton, these dark, dark days just three weeks before the scheduled B-day, are the direct consequence of decisions taken at that time – and which the film, however clumsily, tries to explore.
John Wyver writes: Prompted by social media posts and World Book Day (and I know I’m a little late), above is an image of two of my bookshelves. These are part of my ‘cinema’ selection, with the volumes ordered in a way that makes sense to me even as it may be baffling to pretty much anyone else. I thought that through today (when I ought to be getting on with some writing of my own) I might compose a ‘reading’ of the two shelves, starting at the top left. I’m not going to comment on every volume, and I apologise if the image definition isn’t sufficiently good to allow you to make out each of the titles and authors.
John Wyver writes: Another of my occasional posts where I bring together stuff that has interested or intrigued me recently, on this occasion about the visual arts. You can also access a recent group of Photography links and one of Television links.
Introducing: Lee Krasner: an excellent presentation by Charlotte Flint from Barbican Art Gallery about the artist who is the subject of the major exhibition opening on 30 May (and which I am very excited to see). Above, one of her major works, Polar Stampede, 1960.
John Wyver writes:Most of my waking hours are currently occupied in compiling the index to my book Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History. Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but this is to be published by Bloomsbury in The Arden Shakespeare series in June. Instead of writing this blog post I should be compiling my index. Instead of eating – and indeed, probably, sleeping, I should be compiling my index. But, well, compiling an index is a process that is both fascinating and deeply, deeply dull, and the occasional distraction has to be a good thing.
I asked colleagues whether I should compile the index, or whether I should pay a professional to do it. Most professionals (see below) advise against an author doing it themselves. But that’s what I opted to do – and I’m not regretting that call. Really I’m not. Along with all else, the process has made me curious about the creation of indexes. So as another distraction I started poking around in the uber-index of Google – and below is some of what I found. Incidentally, one of the best bits of advice I heard was to look at indexes of books you like and respect, which I did – and took the image above from one of them.
For The New York Times, Martha Schwendener has written a fascinating response to the inaugural show at the new Brant Foundation in the East Village (until 15 May) of some 70 works by Jean-Michel Basquiat. ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat’ at the Brant shows his bifurcated life (which has terrific photographs by Charlie Rubin, one of which is above) is a nuanced consideration of the late painter’s place and myth in the contemporary art world:
There is something that feels almost not right about looking too long at a Basquiat because it’s like looking into an open wound. He didn’t go to art school (except for a few life-drawing classes) to learn this because it’s way beyond art, which is the best kind of art. But the words in Basquiat’s paintings often point to what it’s like to be turned into a masterpiece, a financial instrument, and a trophy.
Which is as good a reason as any to showcase once again the sequence with Basquiat that we filmed in New York in 1986 for our Channel 4/WDR series State of the Art. This extract is an embed of the better-quality version that we posted on Youtube fairly recently; the earlier version attracted more than 1.2 million views.
Our DVD of the six films of State of the Artcan be purchased here. Am I allowed to say that I think the films stand up exceptionally well, and remain full of interest for anyone interested in the art world and television about the arts?
Image credit: Installation view of ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat,’ the inaugural exhibition of the Brant Foundation’s New York space in the East Village. A salon-style wall on the second floor includes a grid of 16 paintings from 1982. Credi tThe Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York; via The Brant Foundation; Charlie Rubin for The New York Times.
John Wyver writes:Tomorrow night (less than four weeks from the scheduled B-Day), at 18.15 on Tuesday 7, I’m chairing a panel at BFI Southbank (tickets here, although there are not many left) with actor Cherie Lunghi (who is to be seen in the 1985 Sartre adaptation, Vicious Circle, screening at BFI Southbank on 16 March); the man behind Channel 4/All4’s hugely successful initaitive Walter Presents,Walter Iuzzolino; writer, producer and show-runner Stewart Harcourt, responsible for ITV’s Maigret and more; and Beatriz Campos, Head of International Sales Studiocanal TV. Expect provocative chat and a clutch of interesting clips, in a framework of what, according to the BFI’s blurb, we’ll be speaking about:
What does the representation of Europe on our TV screens today tell us about how we view Europe, and will this change with Brexit? Our panel of experts address this and explore the subject of European TV drama. Illustrated with clips of influential series such as Heimat and Das Boot (above), as well as the current crop of contemporary European favourites such as Deutschland ‘83, Spiral, Versailles, The Last Panthers and the many fascinating series brought to us by Channel 4’s Walter Presents strand, the discussion examines the current taste for European drama and where this might lead in the future.
