Peter Greenaway

[Tommaso]

And that's what almost everybody says. It's not underrated, it's just not f***ing available in any normal manner for a 1991 film. I mean, 165$ for that Dutch set?! What keeps normal DVD companies from releasing it? There are many, many much more obscure films out on dvd....

[jsteffe]

And that's what almost everybody says. It's not underrated, it's just not f***ing available in any normal manner for a 1991 film. I mean, 165$ for that Dutch set?! What keeps normal DVD companies from releasing it? There are many, many much more obscure films out on dvd....

Normally, I'd say when a film like this is not available on DVD there are some underlying rights problems. But I also doubt that it was very profitable at the box office. And who knows, maybe the producers (or Greenaway himself) are asking too much money. Keep in mind that the Tulse Luper Suitcases films are hardly released anywhere, as was Nightwatching until last year. My guess is that there's something behind the scenes holding up a normal release.

[Fiery Angel]

David Sterritt on Rembrandt's J'Accuse

[jsteffe]

Has anyone seen the Dutch DVD of Prospero's Books in this set? Is it a decent transfer, and is it widescreen?

I have. It is indeed widescreen and it is indeed a decent transfer. Probably the best we'll ever get of this sadly underrated film, unfortunately.

Thanks! We ordered that Dutch set for our library at my recommendation. I haven't watched the other films in the set yet, but I was very pleased with how Prospero's Books turned out. It's only single-layered, but the encoding is OK as far as I can tell.

Considering all the fine details in the image and the deep shadows on the sets, this is one film that would really benefit from Blu-ray. But that ain't likely to happen anytime soon.

[Nothing]

Perhaps the real question is not so much whether Nightwatching represents a return to form for Greenaway, but rather whether such form has any place in today's cinemas. Nostalgic fans of the director are likely to get exactly what they want from Nightwatching - but for all its experimentation, intellectualism and intricacy, it has little to offer that's new."

Un-fucking-believable! And yet, at the same time, a precise encapsulation of the mindset of the present British film establishment.

[colinr0380]

Yes, I must admit that I was surprised to read that experimentation, intellectualism and intricacy were not elements to be prized in cinema, or only to be thought significant by nostalgists (especially also in an issue when 'slow cinema' is taken to task in an editorial for trading too much on the viewer without apparently bringing any ideas of its own to the table).

However the reviewer of Nightwatching does end the piece by suggesting that this is likely too unfair a criticism of the film. The sentence immediately following, and ending the review, is as follows: "Perhaps, though, this is an unfair criticism of a film that in fact invites us to look again, with unblinkered eyes, at the old" Now, this doesn't completely nullify the rather dismissive sentences that you quoted but to me it suggests that the reviewer is actually quite sympathetic to Greenaway's film but perhaps got too caught up in their attempts to play devil's advocate about why he has seemingly fallen out of favour. The reviewer also brings up Greenaway's 'fall from grace' with distributors and funders over the last decade in an interesting way, and tries to link the trajectory of his career (from adulation to ignorance) with that of the subject of the film itself, Rembrandt.

So I'm less worried by these review comments than I was on noting for the first time during this years BAFTAs that Greenaway's regular producer, Kees Kasander, was also one of the producers on Fish Tank. Hopefully this isn't an example of a patron seeking out a different (more currently in favour?) artist to fund at the expense of a previous relationship?

[Nothing]

But where does this new/old dichotomy come from? Nick James would never approve such negative copy in relation to Arnold or her progenitors (Frears, Loach, etc.) - yet The Draughtsman's Contract looks like the work of a super-evolved alien in comparison...

'Old', of course, in the sense that state, industry and exhibitor support for new and adventurous approaches to cinema is now practically non-existent in the United Kingdom. The question THAT begs, however, is why the BFI and what, many moons ago, used to be a fairly serious periodical or record, are cheerleading this all along...

[MaxCastle]

Nick James would never approve such negative copy in relation to Arnold or her progenitors (Frears, Loach, etc.)

The Sight and Sound review of Fish Tank, while broadly positive, also sniffily calls it "more derivative" than Arnold's previous film, makes reference to "one or two over-facile images", faults it for a lack of ambiguity and remarks that "the fish-tank metaphor feels a little rammed home". The Nightwatching review you quoted from seems to me to be somewhat more positive overall.

Nick James' own brief review of Fish Tank following its Cannes debut, meanwhile, is even less positive: "What spoils it for me are clumsy editing decisions and a reliance on such meagre poetic clichés as a white horse, a silver balloon and the pathetic misreading of an advert for dancers. Every year certain American critics quiz me as to why British cinema is so obsessed with the grim lives and rebarbative relationships of the social underclass - and increasingly, with each passing film in this vein, I find myself as nonplussed as they are."

[zedz]

the truth, based on actual research

Sshhh! You're interfering with his conspiracy theory!

[Nothing]

Yeah... they nevertheless managed to put Fish Tank on the cover of the magazine and vote it the second best film of 2009...

Their opinion of either film isn't the central issue here. I'm not saying they have a duty to rave about every single film Peter Greenaway ever makes. What I take issue with is the suggestion that Greenaway's work (as a whole), ie. the work of the greatest film artist to emerge in this country in the last thirty years, doesn't have a place on British cinema screens - the (barely) tacit suggestion that the three year delay in the film's release, and the lack of exhibition space the film is now being afforded, is somehow acceptable. The failure, also, to cover the film outside of the review pages.

zedz - stay out of this, you don't know what you're talking about.

[MichaelB]

Yeah... they nevertheless managed to put Fish Tank on the cover of the magazine and vote it the second best film of 2009...

Which vote are you referring to? I initially assumed you meant the official 2009 critics' poll (published in the January 2010 issue), but Fish Tank doesn't feature there at all.

[Duncan Hopper]

Of the 62 'Critics' polled, only 5 had Fish Tank on their list. (Ian Christie, Charles Gant , Mark Le Fanu, Colin Maccabe, Anna Smith)

[starmanof51]

zedz - stay out of this, you don't know what you're talking about.

Nothing - stay out of this, you don't know what you're talking about.

See how easy that was? Also, later today I'll be producing my authoritative list of "criterionforum.org members who are allowed to post on the Greenaway thread" - don't miss it!

[Robotron]

Greenaway has apparently decided to kill himself in 13 years.

[Noiretirc]

But I also doubt that it was very profitable at the box office.

Please don't take this in a bad way, but I laughed so hard at this statement......I was in tears for a long time. I mean, we are talking Prospero's Books, right?

Anyway, I adore the pure audacity of it. My first viewing of it in the early 90s was actually my intro to John Gielgud, and later on I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that he was also in (the criminally underappreciated) Secret Agent from.......1936! I mean, there he was at 87, the only time he ever felt he was playing a part at the right age, with that voice of his, poncing about with fat nude women and kids pissing, in the film he always wanted to make. It washed over me like a fucking tidal wave. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm still recovering!

Release it already!

[MichaelB]

Actually, if I remember rightly, up to The Baby of Mâcon (his first serious critical and commercial flop), it was a proud boast of Greenaway's that the only one of his features to lose money was A Zed and Two Noughts. Between 1982 and 1991 he was a surprisingly bankable proposition - certainly more so than peers like Derek Jarman, Terence Davies or Bill Douglas.

[Duncan Hopper]

Indeed, I remember Prospero's Books advertised in Empire magazine, it was a pretty high profile release at the time.

In fact all of Greenaway's films up to the pillow Book were fairly well known in the UK.
Prospero's Books benefited from following Greenaway's hugely successful the cook the thief, his wife and her lover.

[MichaelB]

Changing the subject, Greenaway completists might like to know that the second volume in the BFI's ongoing COI Collection DVD project, Design For Today (out on Monday) includes his films about Terence Conran and Zandra Rhodes, both of which have music by an uncredited Michael Nyman.

[Nothing]

I initially assumed you meant the official 2009 critics' poll (published in the January 2010 issue), but Fish Tank doesn't feature there at all.

Sigh... Yes, you are correct... Looking at that issue of S&S again, what tainted my recollection is that Fish Tank is one of 13 new films to be illustrated in the article - a particularly prominent photograph, at the top of page 24. Given that the film only received 5 actual votes, this editorialising remains rather interesting. The film has, of course, won numerous other smug plaudits - the London Critics Circle Film Awards, Evening Standard British Film Award, BAFTAs, BIFAS, etc. And what IS correct is that, in October 2009, the cover of Sight & Sound was given over to Fish Tank + a an extremely positive five-page article that tries to claim that "there's more to her than social realism" and compares Arnold to Michael Powell...

In fact, then, this only underlines my point:

Their opinion of either film isn't the central issue here.

The issue being that Arnold was given the maximum of coverage, whilst the Greenaway was given the minimum - with his very right to a presence on British cinema screens questioned into the bargain. That the real story in regards to the Nightwatching release - ie. Why has the film sat on the shelf for three years, only to be given the most threadbare of releases? Why is this the first Greenaway film to receive any kind of UK distribution in a decade? Would any of these films even have been made if Greenaway hadn't decamped to the Netherlands (this last question is rhetorical...)? - has been ignored and twisted into some kind of criticism of Greenaway himself, as if Greenaway himself is to blame for these circumstances (through lack of 'newness') and not the institutions involved.

Zedz invokes the word 'conspiracy', to try and make me sound like some kind of loon, when, in fact, what you're talking about are a small group of people from the same small industry and the same part of London, who socialise frequently and who are, to a greater or lesser extent, mutually dependent on each other. Of course these people try and set the agenda, especially those who hold the largest purse strings. As Christine Langan of BBC Films said to Screen International on 12th Nov 2009: "The British film industry is entirely dependent on the three of us (BBC Films, Film Four, UKFC, aka. the unholy trinity of arts administrators)." And, yet... it appears this is not the case for Mr. Greenaway. Unlike, say, Terence Davies, Greenaway has continued to work prolifically during the UKFC years, although Nightwatching is the only instance where he has received any British public funding since 1996 (UKFC being a reluctant minority co-producer at a time when they were half-heartedly and very briefly attempting to deflect the very criticisms I am making here). The result? That Greenaway must be 'punished'; that his work must be marginalised at the expense of the films and filmmakers that the establishment now favours. Note that the formation of the UKFC coincides exactly with the disappearance of Greenaway from British screens (the disappearance also of Davies, Keiller, Newby, etc).

...Which is not to say that the institutions and individuals that I am refering to always think as a hive. A small spat does occur from time to time. Over the last year or so, the BFI has been trying to strengthen its position, disliking the current arrangement whereby its funding is supplied through the UKFC and not directly from the government. This resulted in the announcement, at the end of last year, of a possible merger between the UKFC and the BFI, this being a compromise solution compared to the BFI's original proposal, which would, amongst other things, have given them control over a limited production fund. Prior to this announcement, the BFI was secretly trying to make a case for its continued relevence; we saw for example, a whole string of BFI Production Board titles suddenly being released on DVD and Bluray (Douglas, Davies, Brownlow, Arden, Newby, etc). There was also an extremely rare article in S&S last summer which allowed four blacklisted filmmakers to criticise the policies of the UKFC; a minor row resulted, and Lenny Crooks, then head of the UKFC New Cinema Fund, insisted on a 'right to reply' interview with Nick James (editor of S&S). To Nick's credit, he allowed this immensely revealing quote from Crooks to remain in the interview (S&S, Sept '09, 'Rising to the challenge', page 12): "What I felt [when the article came out] was that you (Nick James) and I should be looking more towards Dwayne Hopkins, Martin Radich and their contemporaries." In other words, the reason for the upset was not that the four filmmakers in the article felt the way they did but, rather, that S&S gave column inches to their opinions. THAT was the faux pas, as far as Crooks was concerned. In any case, since then, the proposed merger with the BFI has become public, the unholy trinity have managed to ingratiate themselves with the shadow culture minister, and it all appears to be returning to business as usual, as the treatment of Nightwatching demonstrates.

[colinr0380]

Unlike, say, Terence Davies, Greenaway has continued to work prolifically during the UKFC years, although Nightwatching is the only instance where he has received any British public funding since 1996 (UKFC being a reluctant minority co-producer at a time when they were half-heartedly and very briefly attempting to deflect the very criticisms I am making here). The result? That Greenaway must be 'punished'; that his work must be marginalised at the expense of the films and filmmakers that the establishment now favours. Note that the formation of the UKFC coincides exactly with the disappearance of Greenaway from British screens (the disappearance also of Davies, Keiller, Newby, etc).

In addition to this the creation of Film4 probably didn't help. There's a whole story to be written about the creation of both the Film4 satellite subscription channel in late 1998 (with a run of funded by Channel 4 Productions shown on Channel 4 itself in the run up to the launch night, including The Baby of Macon in its last television showing, and then the premiere of The Pillow Book in the launch night itself...again the last time it, or any other Greenaway film for that matter, has been screened on UK television. This perhaps illustrates Duncan Hopper's point about Greenaway's films being relatively well known up to that point - they all at least had a guaranteed screening on Channel 4. 8 1/2 Women has never been shown on television but at least got a DVD release, unlike the Tulse Luper films of course), along with Film4's unfortunately overambitious attempts to fund blockbuster Hollywood studio-styled and budgeted films such as Charlotte Gray and Death To Smoochy which ended up almost destroying them. A consequence of that failure of the production arm was that the subscription satellite channel of Film4 had to become free to view, which itself had the consequence of lowering the standards of films shown on the channel (i.e. bought in Hollywood films that had an in-built audience rather than rarities).

Even now, despite its drawbacks, Film4 still continues to fund the Slumdog Millionaires and Kick-Asses (and they will until they stop making money or getting awards for them, or put all their eggs into one overreaching basket again) rather than a wider variety of different types of films.

Greenaway has apparently decided to kill himself in 13 years.

That reminds me of the ironic ending of Zed and Two Noughts! (spoilers for final scene!)

It is a shame that maybe there couldn't have at least have been a tie in Greenaway article in Sight & Sound this month, especially if this becomes his last film with the chance of a big release that may become 'worthy' of such an article.

However the thing that most annoyed me relating to the release of Nightwatching was remembering when Martin Freeman made an appearance on the teeth-grindingly annoying Richard & Judy chat show (think Oprah but with twice the middle class smugness) back in 2007/8, when they were still big draws for Channel 4 in their weekday tea time 5 p.m. slot. In between all the inane, approaching decade old, questions about The Office, Freeman managed to find a couple of minutes to derail the conversation into how he had just been in the Greenaway film but didn't know anything about when it would be released in the UK.

Now I couldn't care less about Richard & Judy's opinion on anything, but that was a lost opportunity to at least raise the profile of the film amongst a general audience by releasing the film at the same time, and maybe getting Freeman to promote it instead of seeming to have to shoehorn it into an otherwise unrelated interview. Instead years later and post US DVD release, the film limps into British cinemas as an almost embarrassing afterthought.

[Tommaso]

Couldn't agree more. And they don't seem to have much hope for it to do well at the box office, because the UK dvd release is scheduled for April 26 already...

[lubitsch]

One can wonder about Greenaway's critical neglect, one can wonder why he became so famous at all.
Not so long ago Greenaway visited our university for a little chat and a film presentation. he refused to leave the car until he got his pacheck, entered jovially our little circle trashed the whole currect German cinema (wonder what he has seen anyway) and then in the discussion talked about his favorite subject, the death of cinema and the search for new visual expressions. he was very amusing, very overbearing, a real dandy and if I may say so a profoundly hollow person. Cultured, cynical, stuck in a rut of theses he has probably repeated hundreds of time before similar audiences.
He was exactly like I would picture the man who made these films. They are playful, experimental, intellectual and shallow. For decades this man is telling us that cinema is dead and there must be something finer than illustrate books, but why are his own efforts such half-hearted affairs and exercises in style?
As for his decline it's undeniable that he dug himself deeper and deeper into a pit from Baby of Macon on forwards, small wonder taht backers get more cautious and DVD producers begin to hesitate. His glory era is now fully 20 years gone and this kind of creative burnout is for these "more style than substance" directors a la Roeg or Russell not unusual. They've exhausted their limited bag of tricks and as commercial directors they're useless.

[Tommaso]

In a way, I have to agree more with you than I want to, given that I still consider myself a Greenaway fan of sorts. But I also see a general artistic decline after "Prospero", with a certain return to form with the Trilogy, but another fall with "Nightwatching".

The story about his visit at your university is telling and exactly like everything else that has been reported about him. I guess that he simply follows the 100-years-old (at least) idea of making his own life into art, creating a public persona as if he was a pop star, or the artwork himself. I have little problems with that per se, as he indeed is always very amusing, but it creates the problem that no-one takes all too seriously anymore what he has to say, especially as he has been repeating his 'cinema is dead' idea in the same way for 20 years now. Despite his serious lack of knowledge of film history (otherwise his statement that we've only had 'cinema as illustrated text' so far is completely incomprehensible) and his self-centredness, he HAS a point if one looks at the general decline of an expressedly 'artistic' or 'experimental' cinema these days, looking at feature films at least. Where are the Jarmans, the Makavejevs and the Paradjanovs of the 21st century? Certainly not in Germany; looking for Asia might be a better option (perhaps). Films like Lynch's "Inland Empire" or the works of Matthew Barney have become rare beasts indeed, and it's a bit funny that one has to consider even Lars von Trier as one of the few 'original' and provocative filmmakers today.

His glory era is now fully 20 years gone and this kind of creative burnout is for these "more style than substance" directors a la Roeg or Russell not unusual.

Agreed, but you can say the same for more story-telling directors like Wenders and Jarmusch. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, though, especially as filmmaking doesn't seem to be his most pressing concern these days. When his films began to get weaker in the early 90s, he began to make pretty exciting art exhibitions and installations, and the accompanying books/catalogues are mostly very beautiful artworks in themselves, unto this day. And even a weak film like "Nightwatching" is at least a treat for the eye. But perhaps that indeed isn't enough after all the films that went before it.

[Dr Amicus]

I'm not entirely sure the S&S review quite means what Nothing reads into it - but without the full thing in front of me I can't be sure. Just from the extract, it seems broadly positive but (a) Greenaway is out of place in contemporary cinemas and (b) it is ultimately more of the same from Greenaway.

Now, as MichaelB has noted, Greenaway was a solid commercial (arthouse) prospect in the 80s and early 90s. But even Prospero's Books had reviews along the lines of 'formally / technically remarkable, but Greenaway is starting to repeat himself', which was certainly echoed with the release of Pillow Book, probably his last big release (by comparative standards) and whose reviews were rather decent, especially after the slating the Baby of Macon received. Although, probably one of the reasons for the attention Pillow Book received was of course an appearance by that ubiquitous star of mid-90s Britfilm, Ewan McGregor's todger.

But, back to the 80s and British cinema when Greenaway was a key figure. This is based largely on memory - it's just outside the period I covered for my thesis, and it was only the end of the decade when I made it to the UK and a decent supply of cinema screens. My feeling of the 80s it that they were dominated on the one hand by Goldcrest and costume drama (mainly Merchant Ivory and their imitators) and on the other by Film on Four. The annual (?) Film on Four season was usually a good chance to catch up on British cinema from the past couple of years, and covered a wide range from Room With A View (just to show there wasn't quite an either / or) to My Beautiful Laundrette to Caravaggio. What's missing is largely the kitchen sink tradition - neither Loach nor Leigh were terribly active (at least in the cinemas) during the decade, and even the more 'realist' works (eg My Beautiful Laundrette) have a more stylised approach.

In other words, the default critical paradigm for approaching British cinema - realism - was not really being met on a regular basis by British films, which allowed a different model to slip through. (It's probably coincidence, but this was the decade that saw Julian Petley's important article 'The Lost Continent' - arguing for the wonders of non-realist British films - published in a major collection of essays.) Look at the films / filmmakers that got serious attention over the period - in addition to Merchant Ivory and Roland Joffe, Jarman, Davies and Greenaway were all given serious column inches that just seems unlikely now. It probably also helped that 'commercial' British cinema was largely absent - Carry On, the sex comedies, Hammer etc had all wound up in the 70s - I would guess that, outside of Bond, the biggest Brit hit of the decade was A Fish Called Wanda in 1988 (and Cleese's Clockwise would probably be in the top 10).

My suspicion is that the comparative scarcity of British films, and of course that far fewer films were released per week (about 4 or 5) then are now (about 10 or so) allowed a greater variety of British films to get the kind of attention that they did - and Greenaway benefitted from this.

[Tommaso]

Now, as MichaelB has noted, Greenaway was a solid commercial (arthouse) prospect in the 80s and early 90s. But even Prospero's Books had reviews along the lines of 'formally / technically remarkable, but Greenaway is starting to repeat himself',

This is a notion I never understood, though it certainly goes for most of his works after "Prospero". But in "Prospero", you have the first use of several frames within the frame, his later trademark text writings, an even fuller use of the music as a driving and structuring element, and so on. The film is the essence of Greenaway, not a repetition.

In other words, the default critical paradigm for approaching British cinema - realism - was not really being met on a regular basis by British films, which allowed a different model to slip through. (It's probably coincidence, but this was the decade that saw Julian Petley's important article 'The Lost Continent' - arguing for the wonders of non-realist British films - published in a major collection of essays.)

Yes, the question of realism is probably the key issue here, and might also inform the above-mentioned Sight and Sound article. It seems that 'realist' films enjoy a new heyday currently, at least as far as 'serious' critical opinion is concerned. But the 80s might have indeed been different. I don't know Petley's article, but remember that the late 80s and 90s were the main period of rediscovery of the Powell/Pressburger films, too, and if Greenaway (and Jarman) have any antecedent in British cinema, it must be Powell's dance and opera films. Actually, my admiration for "Prospero" dropped a little after I saw "The Tales of Hoffmann", which is remarkably similar in many aspects as a 'composed film' (Powell's term); remember also that Powell wanted to film "The Tempest" in the late 60s/early 70s, with Gielgud as Prospero and apparently also with several Ariels. There is certainly some kinship of spirit here, even though Powell famously dismissed "The Draughtsman's contract" as far too talkative