Dissent & Disruption: Alan Clarke at the BBC

[MichaelB]

Clarke was categorically not glorifying them. He was a lifelong football fan and thought that hooliganism was doing the game serious and possibly irreparable damage, especially in the late 1980s.

In fact, while I haven't checked this myself, someone in Richard Kelly's book claims that you barely see a football in the whole of The Firm because Clarke was so keen to separate hooliganism and football.

[Big Ben]

Clarke was categorically not glorifying them. He was a lifelong football fan and thought that hooliganism was doing the game serious and possibly irreparable damage, especially in the late 1980s.

In fact, while I haven't checked this myself, someone in Richard Kelly's book claims that you barely see a football in the whole of The Firm because Clarke was so keen to separate hooliganism and football.

This is exactly what I've read about the film. One of the real victims of the film is apparently football itself. It apparently caused quite the controversy when first released which makes me quite curious as to why. I'm hoping the disc and the two hundred page book have some history behind it.

[MichaelB]

You won't have any difficulty working out why it was controversial! Even the broadcast version, never mind the director's cut.

[Alan Clarke]

Just so that i'm straight, all of Clarke's work on the Dissent and Disruption boxset were shot on film, yes?

[MichaelB]

Just so that i'm straight, all of Clarke's work on the Dissent and Disruption boxset were shot on film, yes?

A lot of the early work and one-off later pieces like Baal (which uses special effects that were easier/cheaper to realise on video) was shot on video. Although certainly the bulk of the famous stuff was shot on film.

[Alan Clarke]

Just so that i'm straight, all of Clarke's work on the Dissent and Disruption boxset were shot on film, yes?

A lot of the early work and one-off later pieces like Baal (which uses special effects that were easier/cheaper to realise on video) was shot on video. Although certainly the bulk of the famous stuff was shot on film.

Hmm, so by early works you mean pre 70s? Or are there many in the 70s collection that are shot on video? I can't see how the video stuff will benefit on blu ray, so if more than half are shot on video, I may just end up buying the DVD after all.

[AidanKing]

There's a pretty good survey of Alan Clarke's work in the latest issue of Film Comment, prompted by the imminent release of the BFI set.

It's interesting that the issue of glorifying hooliganism has come up now considering last night's events at the West Ham v Manchester United match. For what it's worth, I think it's patently obvious that The Firm is in no way glorifying hooliganism and, as Phil Davis pointed out in the two recent radio interviews linked to earlier, has absolutely no interest in finding excuses for the behaviour of hooligans. There are always going to be viewers who misunderstand that, though, as is also clear when Phil Davis talks about being greeted with chants of 'Yeti! Yeti!' in an East London pub and feeling he had to make a hasty exit. I suppose it's similar to someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia misunderstanding Taxi Driver: I don't think you can blame Scorsese and you certainly can't blame Clarke.

With regard to the BFI list of where to start with Alan Clarke's work mentioned earlier, I'm a little surprised at the choice of Rita, Sue and Bob Too (although I imagine Clio Barnard wouldn't be) as the starting point as I don't think it's particularly typical or as good as his best work. Of the films I've seen, I'd probably go for Made in Britain to start with, while acknowledging that it's not in this set because it was made for ITV.

Whatever you think of Harmony Korine (and I have mixed feelings), I suspect he's absolutely genuine in his admiration of Clarke. There are certainly some formal similarities, especially with the use of prowling steadicam, and I wonder whether there are some similarities in content between Spring Breakers and Rita, Sue and Bob Too, with James Franco's character as an equivalent to George Costigan's character and the Breakers taking the Rita and Sue roles?

[MichaelB]

Hmm, so by early works you mean pre 70s? Or are there many in the 70s collection that are shot on video? I can't see how the video stuff will benefit on blu ray, so if more than half are shot on video, I may just end up buying the DVD after all.

Analogue videotape will always benefit from a much higher bitrate regardless of resolution, and in any case this makes up a distinct minority of the collection as a whole. It's certainly not "more than half", or anywhere close.

[Alan Clarke]

Hmm, so by early works you mean pre 70s? Or are there many in the 70s collection that are shot on video? I can't see how the video stuff will benefit on blu ray, so if more than half are shot on video, I may just end up buying the DVD after all.

Analogue videotape will always benefit from a much higher bitrate regardless of resolution, and in any case this makes up a distinct minority of the collection as a whole. It's certainly not "more than half", or anywhere close.

Ok MichaelB, thank you my friend. I will still get the BLU RAY then. As long as it's only a few films, i'll get the blu ray

[MichaelB]

Sam Dunn, the mastermind of this project, has helpfully provided me with a full breakdown:

Film

• George's Room (1967)
• Sovereign's Company (1970)
• The Hallelujah Handshake (1970)
• Horace (1972)
• Penda's Fen (1974)
• Diane (1975)
• Scum (1977)
• Bukovsky (1977)
• Nina (1978)
• Beloved Enemy (1981)
• Contact (1985)
• Christine (1986)
• Road (1987)
• Elephant (1989)
• The Firm (both versions) (1989)

Videotape

• To Encourage the Others (1972)
• Under the Age (1972)
• The Love Girl and the Innocent (1973)
• A Follower for Emily (1974)
• Funny Farm (1975)
• Danton's Death (1978)
• Psy-Warriors (1981)
• Baal (1982)
• Stars of the Roller State Disco (1984)

Mixture

• The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel (VT with filmed location footage) (1969)

So that's sixteen authentically HD transfers, nine exclusively from SD videotape, and one production that's mostly SD but with genuine HD inserts.

Sam also confirmed my suspicions that because the VT material is from analogue rather than digital sources, they still look far, far better on the BDs than they do on the DVDs - analogue videotape is much harder to transfer satisfyingly to digital media (since there are more pronounced differences between each frame, something that video compression algorithms can struggle with), and so the bigger the file and the higher the bitrate, the better. Apparently this is particularly true of Stars of the Roller State Disco, which Sam says "knocked me out".

Incidentally, the pieces that are on DVD only even in the big Blu-ray box are the other six Half-Hour Stories, Psy-Warriors and Baal.

[Big Ben]

Looks good MichaelB. I await this set with great anticipation. Should I post some screens when I get my set to show how the set looks or is that discouraged here?

[Alan Clarke]

Sam Dunn, the mastermind of this project, has helpfully provided me with a full breakdown:

Film

• George's Room (1967)
• Sovereign's Company (1970)
• The Hallelujah Handshake (1970)
• Horace (1972)
• Penda's Fen (1974)
• Diane (1975)
• Scum (1977)
• Bukovsky (1977)
• Nina (1978)
• Beloved Enemy (1981)
• Contact (1985)
• Christine (1986)
• Road (1987)
• Elephant (1989)
• The Firm (both versions) (1989)

Videotape

• To Encourage the Others (1972)
• Under the Age (1972)
• The Love Girl and the Innocent (1973)
• A Follower for Emily (1974)
• Funny Farm (1975)
• Danton's Death (1978)
• Psy-Warriors (1981)
• Baal (1982)
• Stars of the Roller State Disco (1984)

Mixture

• The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel (VT with filmed location footage) (1969)

So that's sixteen authentically HD transfers, nine exclusively from SD videotape, and one production that's mostly SD but with genuine HD inserts.

Sam also confirmed my suspicions that because the VT material is from analogue rather than digital sources, they still look far, far better on the BDs than they do on the DVDs - analogue videotape is much harder to transfer satisfyingly to digital media (since there are more pronounced differences between each frame, something that video compression algorithms can struggle with), and so the bigger the file and the higher the bitrate, the better. Apparently this is particularly true of Stars of the Roller State Disco, which Sam says "knocked me out".

Incidentally, the pieces that are on DVD only even in the big Blu-ray box are the other six Half-Hour Stories, Psy-Warriors and Baal.

Brilliant!!! Thank you, MichaelB!!! You are a star, very helpful. And thank Sam Dunn personally from me please. I appreciate the effort you guys went to to display this information. Stars Of The Rollerstate Disco is the one I was looking forward to most, so while I am a tad dissapointed Clarke shot it on video, I believe Sam Dunn and yourself when you say it's a major upgrade, so still very much looking forward to that.

This is probably be my most definitive blu ray set yet. I've very excited by this and can't imagine a better filmmaker's boxset coming out like it. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's boxset by Arrow was wonderful, but this somehow dwarfs it. Well done you lot. Well done.

[TMDaines]

Incidentally, the pieces that are on DVD only even in the big Blu-ray box are the other six Half-Hour Stories, Psy-Warriors and Baal.

Why are these DVD only, if they look better on Blu-ray as you acknowledge?

[MichaelB]

Because they're both comparatively short, which means that they can be transferred to a single DVD while still maintaining a high bitrate.

My understanding is that this was an expedient measure - BDs are still much more expensive to produce than DVDs, and they ended up needing rather more BD50s than had originally been envisaged, so it helped claw back a bit of much-needed slack in the production budget with a pretty negligible impact on the end product.

The Half-Hour Stories fall into a similar category, although those were planned for DVD from the outset. That said, they're getting a higher bitrate than was envisaged thanks to George's Room getting promoted to 1080p - and despite the title, the pieces are only around 26 mins thanks to having to make room for commercial breaks, so we're only talking about just over two and a half hours of material.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

The BFI's The Great White Silence is region-free, mostly playable on any player, but has a couple of Discovery Channel docs in 1080i50. So that might be a good test disc, if only because you'll still be able to watch most of it regardless - including the main feature.

I'll be damned: that Discovery Channel doc "How Did They Do It?" played just fine on my LG BP220 through a Sceptre panel.

[MichaelB]

A disc-by-disc breakdown of the big Alan Clarke box, courtesy of Rewind.

By my reckoning, there's around seventeen and a quarter hours of extras in the package.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

By my reckoning, there's around seventeen and a quarter hours of extras in the package.

Good grief that's very nearly an armful.

[frankiecrisp]

A disc-by-disc breakdown of the big Alan Clarke box, courtesy of Rewind.

By my reckoning, there's around seventeen and a quarter hours of extras in the package.

Looks brilliant one minor irritation why couldn't they put the out of his own light documentary all on one disc splitting it over a number of discs means swapping discs to watch it, one disc only has a 13 minute part on .

[MichaelB]

Looks brilliant one minor irritation why couldn't they put the out of his own light documentary all on one disc splitting it over a number of discs means swapping discs to watch it, one disc only has a 13 minute part on .

I suspect this is because each section of the documentary pertains directly to the contents of the rest of the disc that it's on, and so it's by far the most logical method of organising it. Are you really going to sit through a nearly four-hour documentary about Alan Clarke in one go? Surely it makes much more sense to work through his career chronologically, watching the relevant bit of the documentary when the subjects under discussion are freshest in your mind?

[frankiecrisp]

Looks brilliant one minor irritation why couldn't they put the out of his own light documentary all on one disc splitting it over a number of discs means swapping discs to watch it, one disc only has a 13 minute part on .

I suspect this is because each section of the documentary pertains directly to the contents of the rest of the disc that it's on, and so it's by far the most logical method of organising it. Are you really going to sit through a nearly four-hour documentary about Alan Clarke in one go? Surely it makes much more sense to work through his career chronologically, watching the relevant bit of the documentary when the subjects under discussion are freshest in your mind?

sat through A constant forge the Cassavetes documentary that's almost 4 hours. I like a good documentary but its only a minor point it won't in anyway spoil my enjoyment of this incredible set

[MichaelB]

A lengthy rave review for the standalone The Firm disc from CineOutsider that concludes with:

If you have any doubt that Dissent & Disruption: The Complete Alan Clarke at the BBC is going to be the box set of the year then this brilliant, beautifully produced taster – which has effectively been lifted from the set unaltered – should confirm it beyond all doubt. For those uncertain about coughing up for the full Dissent & Disruption set but keen to get their hands on two of Alan Clarke's very finest works, I cannot recommend this release highly enough. The transfers are superb and the extra features are generous in quantity and first-rate in quality. A brilliant and inspiring Blu-ray release.

[Big Ben]

Thank you for posting the review Michael I appreciate it. I'm not one bothered by spoilers that much so the distinction between the Director's Cut and the original Broadcast version was very helpful to me.

As for the documentary I'm pleased it's been split up to give some space between the viewings. I'd rather not watch it all in one go. I'm quite pleased the BBC and the BFI have put so much effort into giving us this thing.

I'm as content as can be now and am eagerly awaiting the box set.

[swo17]

Wasn't the doc made especially for this release anyway? I wouldn't expect the breaks between discs to be at all jarring.

[MichaelB]

Wasn't the doc made especially for this release anyway?

It was, and aside from its one-off South Bank outing (which I suspect was in a somewhat different form, given that interviews were still being shot for it only a few weeks ago), it may never have been intended to form a continuous viewing experience. It certainly makes a huge amount of sense to present it like this.

[Alan Clarke]

I just can't wait. I really can't wait at all. The screen grabs are small, but the transfers look crisp going by them. If the rest of the set look as good as they do (at least the ones shot on film) then the price tag will be more than justified. I really can't wait. Counting down the days. 2 and a half weeks left..then it's over.

I'm wondering Michael, do you know if Fopp will have this in stock? If so, how much will they have it for? If they have it for a nice price, I may cancel my pre order and just get it from there.