Dissent & Disruption: Alan Clarke at the BBC

Discuss releases by the BFI and the films on them.

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peerpee
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Re: Alan Clarke

#51 Post by peerpee » Fri Dec 28, 2012 8:44 pm

RossyG wrote:BD would be great, but I'd be more than happy with a DVD set. Don't forget, they were quickly made productions, shot on 16mm and with TV in mind. A good DVD will still be a lot better than their original broadcasts.
I think if they were remastered in HD (like the Mike Leigh TV works were) then they could make absolutely superb looking DVDs. Just putting the existing SD TV masters onto DVD would be less exciting. I agree a massive set of Blu-rays is probably overkill, but it doesn't stop me wanting everything on Blu-ray!

More realistically, I'd like to see a well-planned, exhaustive, DVD chronological set. Rather than a half-hearted cherrypicked set of 5.

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warren oates
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Re: Alan Clarke

#52 Post by warren oates » Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:58 pm

Looks like Kino has the U.S. rights to Scum now and will be releasing a Blu-ray of the theatrical feature. Doesn't seem like they'll be including the original TV film. I wonder if they have any more Alan Clarke films or this is just a one-off?

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zedz
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Re: Alan Clarke

#53 Post by zedz » Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:23 pm

It's great to hear that more Clarke will be coming out in HD, but I think they picked the wrong Scum.

Let's just hope that the BBC version was unavailable because it's being held back as the centrepiece of an 'Alan Clarke at the BBC' complete set by somebody.

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RossyG
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Re: Alan Clarke

#54 Post by RossyG » Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:26 am

warren oates wrote:Looks like Kino has the U.S. rights to Scum...
Can Americans understand what they're saying? :D

"Shaaah tit yooo slaaaaagggg!!!"

"Dahn, grahhhhsss. Arm ver daddy nah!"

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colinr0380
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Re: Alan Clarke

#55 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:18 pm

I agree with zedz - the theatrical version is good but not quite up to the standard of the BBC version. It is difficult to put my finger on but the theatrical version feels a bit more mannered - not as raw as the television version and with the feeling of seeing actors doing a compelling piece of (re-)acting of the material. I guess it neatly illustrates how difficult it is to go back to re-do something with the intent of capturing the same impact, even if you do have the licence to make certain scenes more graphic for the cinema.

RossyG's comment reminded me: did I ever post on the forum about the time my whole year group in secondary school (around 14 or 15 years old) were called into the school hall and for some reason were given a talk about prison life from an ex-offender, flanked by guards! I don't remember too much about the talk itself but I do vividly recall that for some reason he showed the scene of Winston doing the 'snooker balls in a sock' beating from Scum in order to illustrate his point about how casually and quickly violence can occur in such a setting!

(Even more memorably terrifying was after the talk going for lunch and ending up standing just in front of him in the queue at the cafeteria - luckily there were no snooker balls around!)

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zedz
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Re: Alan Clarke

#56 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:43 pm

colinr0380 wrote:I agree with zedz - the theatrical version is good but not quite up to the standard of the BBC version. It is difficult to put my finger on but the theatrical version feels a bit more mannered - not as raw as the television version and with the feeling of seeing actors doing a compelling piece of (re-)acting of the material. I guess it neatly illustrates how difficult it is to go back to re-do something with the intent of capturing the same impact, even if you do have the licence to make certain scenes more graphic for the cinema.
For me it's a little like the remake of Funny Games, except that in Clarke's case the theatrical version of Scum had a much more compelling reason to exist, since the original was suppressed at the time. Once the original became available, the remake became more of a fascinating (and extremely well-executed) footnote. With Clarke you've really got to reverse the standard prejudices: it's the television material which is the core body of work and the reason why he's one of Britain's most important filmmakers. And, oddly enough, the TV work is often more 'cinematic' than the cinema films as well.

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MichaelB
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Re: Alan Clarke

#57 Post by MichaelB » Mon Mar 18, 2013 4:07 pm

If Clarke had only made Scum, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire and Rita, Sue and Bob Too!, I doubt very much we'd be discussing him now. Not that those films are completely devoid of merit (even the much-maligned Billy the Kid undoubtedly deserves credit for originality, as I argued here), but they don't have more than a fraction of the potency of his best TV work. And his best TV work, as occasional collaborator David Leland memorably put it, "was alien enough to make people want to go round the back of the set to see if it was plugged in properly; in other words, 'How did this get on our screens?'".

Thanks to all sorts of cultural and economic factors, British filmmakers often had an incredibly important relationship with the small screen, and it's only thanks to lack of access to their television work that the latter isn't as celebrated as much as it frequently deserves. Ken Russell's work in the 1960s is eye-poppingly astonishing (for sheer risk-taking brilliance, it dwarfs anything that came later). Pawel Pawlikowski's in the 1980s and 90s hardly less so. Stephen Frears and Mike Leigh made hugely impressive bodies of work (and substantial bodies at that) between what were notionally their first and second features (1971-84 in Frears' case, 1971-88 in Leigh's). Prior to his post-1990s flowering, Ken Loach's major work was largely for television - Kes aside, I can't think of any pre-1990s Loach features with the impact of Up the Junction, Cathy Come Home, Days of Hope and much else besides.

It's a tragedy that Clarke died when he did, as there's every possibility that his career could have seen a Loach-style big-screen resurrection - in fact, he was planning a US-based production when he died, which might have been a one-off, but it could have done wonders for his profile. Not least his critical profile, because it's a sad indictment of criticism in the UK that television has traditionally been taken much less seriously than film until very recently, and Clarke was definitely a victim of that.

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zedz
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Re: Alan Clarke

#58 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:06 pm

MichaelB wrote:Prior to his post-1990s flowering, Ken Loach's major work was largely for television - Kes aside, I can't think of any pre-1990s Loach features with the impact of Up the Junction, Cathy Come Home, Days of Hope and much else besides.
In terms of cultural impact, no (and I'd say that includes anything post-1990), but I'd argue that Family Life is the best thing he ever did.

Actually, if you're interested in any British director operating between the 60s and the 90s, their television work is often a very large part of the picture that you ignore at your peril. I can only think of a handful of major filmmakers that are exceptions (Greenaway, Jarman, Douglas, Losey, Davies). (I'd originally included Anderson in there as well, but even though I don't think any of them are among his major works, there's a hefty number of TV productions in his filmography, and his feature output was slender enough that they can't be easily discounted).

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MichaelB
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Re: Alan Clarke

#59 Post by MichaelB » Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:13 pm

zedz wrote:Actually, if you're interested in any British director operating between the 60s and the 90s, their television work is often a very large part of the picture that you ignore at your peril. I can only think of a handful of major filmmakers that are exceptions (Greenaway, Jarman, Douglas, Losey, Davies). (I'd originally included Anderson in there as well, but even though I don't think any of them are among his major works, there's a hefty number of TV productions in his filmography, and his feature output was slender enough that they can't be easily discounted).
You certainly can't ignore The Old Crowd if you want to do Anderson justice - it must be one of the most confrontationally experimental pieces ever broadcast by a mainstream channel in a peak-hours slot.

In fact, a desperately overdue compilation of the six plays that Alan Bennett wrote for ITV in 1978-79 would fill several gaps, as it would include three early Frears films as well (including One Fine Day, one of his best). And talking of Bennett, none of John Schlesinger's 1980s or 90s feature films come anywhere close to An Englishman Abroad or A Question of Attribution.

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knives
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Re: Alan Clarke

#60 Post by knives » Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:23 pm

It strikes me as a bit strange to count Losey in that group if just by the virtue of him being American. (and also I realize this is probably coming from a different definition of great, but guys like Collinson and Fisher don't have much in the way of television work).

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zedz
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Re: Alan Clarke

#61 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:29 pm

knives wrote:It strikes me as a bit strange to count Losey in that group if just by the virtue of him being American. (and also I realize this is probably coming from a different definition of great, but guys like Collinson and Fisher don't have much in the way of television work).
Yeah, it was a bit of an iffy inclusion, and not least because we should really exclude filmmakers who started directing feature films before the sixties, because that was quite a different landscape. I was trying to find five names to make up the metaphorical handful.

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knives
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Re: Alan Clarke

#62 Post by knives » Mon Mar 18, 2013 6:12 pm

There's probably also the doc directors to deal with as a whole other kettle of fish (and to which Greenaway probably belongs to).

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RossyG
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Re: Alan Clarke

#63 Post by RossyG » Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:11 am

Image

Out on the 26th of August, this Thames TV series from 1976 series includes:
FAST HANDS Written by Roy Minton Directed by Alan Clarke
Jimmy is a gifted young boxer, but neither parents nor girlfriend share his enthusiasm.
In other words, the sort of thing modern ITV wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Alan Clarke

#64 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Wed Jul 10, 2013 6:41 pm

Volume 2 box coming from Potemkine includes Christine (1987) / Contact (1985) / Road (1987) / Rita, Sue and Bob too (1986)

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warren oates
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Re: Alan Clarke

#65 Post by warren oates » Wed Jul 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Awesome! Those are pretty much all the ones I've been dying to see. Don't see it listed on their site yet. Do you know the release date?

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Alan Clarke

#66 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Wed Jul 10, 2013 6:49 pm

Just says coming in 2014...along with finally the Epstein box

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zedz
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Re: Alan Clarke

#67 Post by zedz » Wed Jul 10, 2013 8:59 pm

Magnifique!

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MichaelB
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Re: Alan Clarke

#68 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jul 11, 2013 2:40 am

Contact and Road would be worth it on their own, Finally I can retire my long-play VHS recordings!

Calvin
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Re: Alan Clarke

#69 Post by Calvin » Sun Jul 28, 2013 2:14 pm

You can only read snippets of Dave Rolinson's book on Clarke via Google Preview but the appendix seems to indicate that A Man Inside, The Gentleman Caller, Which Of These Two Ladies Is He Married To?, Thief and Everybody Say Cheese are lost, while only 12 minutes of George's Room survives.

Horace
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Re: Alan Clarke

#70 Post by Horace » Thu Mar 06, 2014 5:36 pm

I'm a bit late to this discussion but nonetheless: have just watched Road on youtube and blown away by it. Just as potent, if not more so, than I remember from viewing when it was first shown. I'm wondering does anyone know if it is available on DVD yet as I would dearly love to own a copy?

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Alan Clarke

#71 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:30 pm

MichaelB wrote:Contact and Road would be worth it on their own, Finally I can retire my long-play VHS recordings!
Sorry to disappoint Michael, but these are exactly the titles that have been dropped from the box. No reasons given whether bad elements or rights problems. Dommage!

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MichaelB
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Re: Alan Clarke

#72 Post by MichaelB » Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:31 pm

I'm guessing rights, since the materials should be fine - I watched both off Digibeta masters when I was at the BFI.

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pricey
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Re: Alan Clarke

#73 Post by pricey » Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:11 am

Contact is on a rather ropey looking VHS rip in full on YouTube here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3Bf2zN_JY

Stunning film. Probably my favourite Alan Clarke (This week at least).

ricardo
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Re: Alan Clarke

#74 Post by ricardo » Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:03 am

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:
MichaelB wrote:Contact and Road would be worth it on their own, Finally I can retire my long-play VHS recordings!
Sorry to disappoint Michael, but these are exactly the titles that have been dropped from the box. No reasons given whether bad elements or rights problems. Dommage!
I contacted Potamkine and they say the release date is October 7th. They also said they couldn't comment on rumors that Road and Contact would not be on the release which i thought a bit strange, does this come from a reliable source?

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Alan Clarke

#75 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Mon Jun 23, 2014 7:44 am

ricardo wrote:
NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:
MichaelB wrote:Contact and Road would be worth it on their own, Finally I can retire my long-play VHS recordings!
Sorry to disappoint Michael, but these are exactly the titles that have been dropped from the box. No reasons given whether bad elements or rights problems. Dommage!
I contacted Potamkine and they say the release date is October 7th. They also said they couldn't comment on rumors that Road and Contact would not be on the release which i thought a bit strange, does this come from a reliable source?
Well there's always this from their own site which appeared after the initial announcement of 4 films
A suivre...

Coffret Kenneth Anger
Cycle Lanterne Magique. Ce cycle réunit des films courts réalisés entre 1947 et 1981 :
Fireworks (1947) / Puce Moment (1949) / Rabbit's Moon (1950) / Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) / Scorpio Rising (1964) / Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965) / Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) / Lucifer Rising (1971-81)

Alan Clarke 2
Poursuivez l'aventure Alan Clarke avec deux nouveaux films inédits du réalisateur anglais :
Rita, Sue and Bob too - 1986 - 93'
Christine - 1987 - 52'
There were also follow uo comments on DVDKlassik supporting this

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