Dissent & Disruption: Alan Clarke at the BBC

[Gregory]

In case anyone missed them, there were already a bunch of recommendations for where to start with Clarke earlier in the thread, starting here.

[criterion10]

What if I told you Harmony Korine's favorite film was Alan Clarke's Elephant?

Ha! I've known that for a while, and I've long been meaning to see Elephant (even before I knew anything about Korine). That's one I definitely plan to watch before buying the box set.

In case anyone missed them, there were already a bunch of recommendations for where to start with Clarke earlier in the thread, starting here.

Thanks, I'll be sure to check that out!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I watched Made In Britain last night and even if half the films in this set are a total repeat of that style/aesthetic it's still bound to be an utterly engrossing experience. Roth alone - utterly terrifying - made me quite eager to see what other calibers of performance Clarke drew from the actors in these BBC films.

[colinr0380]

Since we're on that subject, I'm pretty sure that the Denis Lavant starring, Jonathan Glazer directed music video for UNKLE's Rabbit In The Headlights also took its inspiration from that scene in Made In Britain with Tim Roth defiantly striding through the tunnel and ranting against the passing cars. Which is an interesting take on aesthetisising something originally intended to be very raw.
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[Alan Clarke]

Anyone have a favorite? I'm looking for a good place to start.

I'll further this question and ask for a handful of Clarke's films to start with. (Just trying to figure out if this box set is for me before I drop nearly $160 on it!)

What if I told you Harmony Korine's favorite film was Alan Clarke's Elephant?

Oh dear.

I would say that is extremely disappointed to hear that such a downright bizarre, misogynistic and racist filmmaker would have the absurdity to even name check Alan Clarke. Clarke is against everything this Korine guy seems to stand for and would be turning over in his grave if he knew he had influenced somebody like Korine.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

would have the absurdity to even name check Alan Clarke.

The defence rests.

[domino harvey]

Slow clap

[peerpee]

The BFI have published a "Where to begin" for Alan Clarke.

[MichaelB]

The BFI has unveiled a newly-cut trailer for The Firm.

[Big Ben]

Thanks for the replies and feedback guys I appreciate it. I think I'll take MichaelB's suggestion and watch Road first.

The BFI has unveiled a newly-cut trailer for The Firm.

Looks great! I'll watch it after Road. Now all I have to decide is whether to watch the Director's Cut or the Broadcast Version.

[MichaelB]

Well, the director's cut was the version that Clarke wanted to show...

[Big Ben]

Well, the director's cut was the version that Clarke wanted to show...

Sounds perfect. Thanks for all your help.

A review of sorts is up at The Guardian for the set by the way. I can't attest to how close he is to Bresson but that's the comparison made in the article.

[MichaelB]

A review of sorts is up at The Guardian for the set by the way. I can't attest to how close he is to Bresson but that's the comparison made in the article.

Bresson is namechecked fifteen times in Richard Kelly's book and twenty in Dave Rolinson's. It may seem like an unlikely comparison on the face of it, but Clarke and Bresson have much more in common than you might expect - in fact, Rolinson argues that the 1975 play Diane is very close indeed to Mouchette in a great many respects, not least Janine Duvitski's carefully controlled, calculatedly flat and expressionless lead performance (the later Christine is similar). And Elephant must be the most stripped-down and essentialist - in other words, authentically "Bressonian" - drama ever commissioned by a mainstream British television channel.

[warren oates]

Further to what Michael says, the relentless, impersonal and strictly procedural chains of events in Elephant definitely share a kinship with the construction and worldview of a film like Bresson's L'argent.

[MichaelB]

Rolinson also compares the ambiguous last shot of The Firm with the final shot of L'Argent.

[Big Ben]

As a big fan of Bresson all I can say is that you keep making me more and more excited to have this box set in my home! The only thing that really bothers me is how he's gone under the radar, both mine and seemingly many others. I may be young but I can't believe I hadn't heard any of these comparisons until this set was announced (Most directors at least make some ping on my radar). Major props to the BFI for making this all possible.

[MichaelB]

This is the curse of mostly working in television - and much of his output dates from before the VCR had really taken off.

[zedz]

This is the curse of mostly working in television - and much of his output dates from before the VCR had really taken off.

Contrary to received opinion, the UK actually had a vibrant art cinema tradition in the 1970s / early 80s, but you had to look for it among the experimental margins (Jarman, Potter, Mulvey / Wollen), one-off features (Loach, Cooper), short films (Greenaway, Douglas, Davies) or television (Clarke, Leigh, Frears). Artistically ambitious British directors who could maintain a continuous career of theatrical features were frustratingly rare (Roeg and Russell are the obvious candidates), but there was still a lot of great work being produced.

[Big Ben]

Contrary to received opinion, the UK actually had a vibrant art cinema tradition in the 1970s / early 80s, but you had to look for it among the experimental margins (Jarman, Potter, Mulvey / Wollen), one-off features (Loach, Cooper), short films (Greenaway, Douglas, Davies) or television (Clarke, Leigh, Frears). Artistically ambitious British directors who could maintain a continuous career of theatrical features were frustratingly rare (Roeg and Russell are the obvious candidates), but there was still a lot of great work being produced.

I've heard of, seen and enjoyed features by a several of these men (Jarman, Loach, Greenaway, Leigh and Roeg) and had heard of Alan Clarke only really in passing before but never really looked into him because I couldn't find much about him. For instance I had no idea he filmed a play with David Bowie in it (And I'm a Bowie fanatic who had thought he'd seen everything with him in it.). Even Baal was completely off my radar.

Actually reading about many of the films in the set now on the BFI Screenonline site I'm really quite surprised that many of these apparent accessible works (Maybe not Elephant) have not been discussed more. And the answer that keeps coming back in the very few articles I've read is that it's because they simply were on the television.

If anything I hope it galvanizes more people into the idea that television film is as worthy as the cinema film. This BFI set can't come soon enough.

[colinr0380]

In some ways I suppose we are lucky that Clarke was working in the 70s and 80s, given the BBC's seeming policy of wiping tapes of earlier decades, particularly anything made in black and white and therefore seemingly not commercially viable or able to be broadcast.

[GaryC]

In some ways I suppose we are lucky that Clarke was working in the 70s and 80s, given the BBC's seeming policy of wiping tapes of earlier decades, particularly anything made in black and white and therefore seemingly not commercially viable or able to be broadcast.

The usual Equity contract allowed for one broadcast and a repeat within two years. Often things got wiped when the two years were up as another showing would need a renegotiation of the contract and the powers that be clearly thought the programmes would no longer of use - especially black and white programmes, as you say, as more and more countries started broadcasting in colour. (Australia was a late adopter: 1975.) A BBC2 season of archival repeats in 1976 to mark the television service's fortieth anniversary did make people realise the value of the archive. But things were wiped well into the mid-Seventies. To give one example, Dixon of Dock Green has missing episodes as late as 1975. I probably saw some of them at the time.

I suppose if a programme was shot on film (like many of Clarke's and all of Mike Leigh's feature-length TV work apart from Abigail's Party) it stood a better chance of surviving?

[knives]

Perhaps a dumb question, but do these lost shows have kinescopes like their American brethren often do? I know the American kinescopes exist primarily for time zone reasons, but since it sounds like a lot shows were imported to ex-colonies perhaps they served a similar function? Obviously that would be less then ideal, but the idea of losing the master meaning the show must be forever lost is one that remains surprising.

[MichaelB]

I suppose if a programme was shot on film (like many of Clarke's and all of Mike Leigh's feature-length TV work apart from Abigail's Party) it stood a better chance of surviving?

Yes. Ken Russell shot virtually all his BBC pieces on film, and was able to secure his own personal 16mm prints of many of them. He donated them to the BFI in the early 2000s (thankfully just in time: his house burned down eighteen months later), and when the BFI and BBC pooled their Russell resources for a 2007 Southbank retrospective they found that all but one survived - an incredible achievement for someone whose BBC career dated back to 1959 and which mostly took place at the height of the tape-wiping and lack-of-preservation era.

But had he shot, say, the 10 to 15-minute Monitor fillers on videotape, they'd most likely have been wiped shortly after what was intended to be their only broadcast.

[Orlac]

Perhaps a dumb question, but do these lost shows have kinescopes like their American brethren often do? I know the American kinescopes exist primarily for time zone reasons, but since it sounds like a lot shows were imported to ex-colonies perhaps they served a similar function? Obviously that would be less then ideal, but the idea of losing the master meaning the show must be forever lost is one that remains surprising.

The BBC did make film copies of various programmes, and although these too were techically junked, they can turn up in funny places. A fair few 60's Doctor Who episodes survive as film copies sneaked out of the BBC by staff, or prints retained by foreign TV stations.

In 1953, the BBC experimented with making a kinescope of the repeat of Nigel Kneale's The Quatermass Experiment, but they gave up after episode 2 because a fly landed on the screen!

[thirtyframesasecond]

I'm looking forward to this so much that I'll even watch The Firm with fresh eyes. I usually hate football hooligan films as they usually (whether deliberately or not) glorify their subjects, but somehow I don't think that's what Clarke's doing, even if Nick Love's remake might've lacked the same social insight.