Dissent & Disruption: Alan Clarke at the BBC

[antnield]

Trailer.

[manicsounds]

The Digital Fix continues its series of reviews of each individual disc by covering the one containing George's Room, The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel and Sovereign's Company.

It's a race between Digital Fix and DVDCompare to who will finish reviews of each disc individually!

[Calvin]

Does anyone know just how limited BFI sets usually are? I feel comfortable in my preorder but I figured it might be good information for people to know if they're on the fence.

The BFI told me that there are 3000

[Big Ben]

Does anyone know just how limited BFI sets usually are? I feel comfortable in my preorder but I figured it might be good information for people to know if they're on the fence.

The BFI told me that there are 3000

Well that certainly makes me glad I ordered mine early! This looks like it will be a real treat for the lucky 3000!

[tenia]

Taking into account the rather expensive price of the set (as a "1 product" purchase. If you look at the content for value, it's a steal), I'm wondering if these 3000 copies will fly out, or even just sell out. We'll see. I don't know how popular Clarke is in the UK.

[Calvin]

It depends on whether the press coverage will offset the cost, as other BFI limited editions (Dreyer, Rossellini) are still readily available

[Paul Moran]

Update from base.com this morning:

"We thought you would like to know that the following [Dissent & Disruption, etc.] have been successfully processed and will shortly be dispatched to you by Royal Mail Post."

[peerpee]

They're now in the BFI Shop at BFI Southbank too. 15% off for BFI Members, makes it £93.50 I think?

[Big Ben]

Got a good laugh out of the BFI page. In a good way. They included a quip from the Socialist Review. The one review that was greeted with much laughter here.

[thirtyframesasecond]

They're now in the BFI Shop at BFI Southbank too. 15% off for BFI Members, makes it £93.50 I think?

It is SO SO tempting to get that today and cancel the Amazon order I have - wonder when they're going to ship it. They keep changing the date!

[Big Ben]

The opening of Baal and the beginning of Baal's Hymn courtesy of The Guardian.

[criterion10]

Posting this here for those North American users still searching for a viable method to watch this set: I spoke with someone at 220-electronics today, who claimed that the Sony Region Free Blu-Ray/DVD Players I asked about (specifically, the S1500, S3500, and S5500) can all handle the 50 to 60hz conversion without any issues. The players themselves seem to do the conversion, and thus even if your TV cannot handle 50hz, there should not be any problems.

I went ahead and ordered the S5500 (only difference between that model and the S3500 is 3D, but for just $15 more, why not?).

[frankiecrisp]

They're now in the BFI Shop at BFI Southbank too. 15% off for BFI Members, makes it £93.50 I think?

It is SO SO tempting to get that today and cancel the Amazon order I have - wonder when they're going to ship it. They keep changing the date!

same here don't understand why amazon are not shipping its tempting cancel and buy from BFI

[Big Ben]

This post is also a reminder that you can use a computer to play these discs so as long as you can bypass the region restriction. Your monitor should handle the 50hz issue without any problems.

[thirtyframesasecond]

They're now in the BFI Shop at BFI Southbank too. 15% off for BFI Members, makes it £93.50 I think?

It is SO SO tempting to get that today and cancel the Amazon order I have - wonder when they're going to ship it. They keep changing the date!

same here don't understand why amazon are not shipping its tempting cancel and buy from BFI

Went over there at lunch and bought it. Cancelled the Amazon order.

[tenia]

don't understand why amazon are not shipping

Because... the official release date is June 13th ?

[colinr0380]

Mondo Digital review

[MichaelB]

Posted ages ago - Mondo Digital was so quick off the mark that this predated the kerfuffle with the now-banned "Alan Clarke" a few days ago!

But I believe the latest instalment of the Digital Fix survey is brand new - this one covers The Hallelujah Handshake and To Encourage the Others.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I watched the Director's Cut of the The Firm last night. I couldn't imagine something like this being on TV now, even though we live in less shocking times. Clarke's lack of explanation or justification for the violence isn't just the case for The Firm but also Elephant and Contact - violence is violence, there's no context that gives it any credence. I didn't realise that Yusef was played by Benny from Grange Hill. He died recently; really sad - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... attenstone

There was a C4 series a while back called Men Only. It starts with some guys playing five a side football, badly of course. They're "normal" guys with families. Then their collective behaviour worsens. It would make a decent double bill with The Firm for that look into masculinity. It's hard to find, even though a pre-fame Martin Freeman and Stephen Moyer are in it.

[Manny Karp]

I couldn't imagine something like this being on TV now, even though we live in less shocking times

I'm sure the documentary in the set details this a bit more, but I have to ask those of you in Britain: When Clarke's work was shown throughout his career, what were the TV options? In other words, was it all state run channels? How many? When (if ever) did what we in the states call "cable TV," with its relative myriad of channels, come into play? Have you ever had the equivalent of "cable access" (not that anything of value has ever appeared on it in the US)?

Surely a great shame of Clarke's early death was that it occurred on the cusp of the introduction of the internet and long form TV and the various means of content distribution we have now. Not that he had difficultly having a career (did he?) but it certainly would have been interesting to see what he would have done in so many venues, and to see how much the subject of media and technology might have been included in the content of his films. I was considering comparing him to Peter Watkins - maybe not so aptly - and noticed that Watkins and Clarke were born just one day apart.

[RossyG]

My Blu-Ray box set's arrived from Base. Can't wait to dive in. I've only seen The Firm, Scum, and Penda's Fen; the rest will be brand new to me.

Quick query, the disc with Baal and Psy-Warriors is meant to be DVD only, right? There's not been a mix up at the factory?

[MichaelB]

'm sure the documentary in the set details this a bit more, but I have to ask those of you in Britain: When Clarke's work was shown throughout his career, what were the TV options? In other words, was it all state run channels? How many?

None of the channels were "state run" in the way that you're implying - or rather, the status and funding of the BBC is a rather more complex issue than that.

Anyway, when Clarke started in 1967, there were three channels - BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, only the latter of which showed commercials. Clarke initially made programmes for ITV (which is why the Half-Hour Stories are bisected into two halves, to allow for advertising breaks), but then switched to the BBC in 1969 and made the vast majority of his subsequent work for them. (Made in Britain and the feature films are the most obvious exceptions.)

Channel Four started in 1982, but - perhaps surprisingly given that it was dedicated to catering for unconventional tastes and materials and actually stuck to that brief in its first decade - it seemed to have no impact on Clarke's career, aside from the fact that it was a film broadcast on C4's opening night, Walter, that introduced him to the potential of the Steadicam: he hired both that and DOP Chris Menges to shoot Made in Britain. The latter feels like a Channel 4 production, but in fact it was made by ITV - although such a thing is utterly unimaginable today.

When (if ever) did what we in the states call "cable TV," with its relative myriad of channels, come into play? Have you ever had the equivalent of "cable access" (not that anything of value has ever appeared on it in the US)?

Clarke died in the year of the 1990 Broadcasting Act, which changed the television landscape completely - prior to that, there were basically four TV channels and cable/satellite reception was only for the well-heeled early adopter, and there wasn't much take-up because the four terrestrial (aka network) channels were so good*. The equivalents of what you're talking about only really became an issue in the 1990s and later.

(*circa 1990, Krzysztof Kieślowski said that British television wasn't quite as stupid as that in most other countries, which I think is precisely the right emphasis.)

Surely a great shame of Clarke's early death was that it occurred on the cusp of the introduction of the internet and long form TV and the various means of content distribution we have now. Not that he had difficultly having a career (did he?) but it certainly would have been interesting to see what he would have done in so many venues, and to see how much the subject of media and technology might have been included in the content of his films.

One of the great advantages of working mainly in television is that it was much easier to obtain continued employment. It was a rare year that didn't see two new Clarke productions, and sometimes there were even more than that.

An important cultural point is that back then there was much more focus on "the television play" - although that definition could span anything from something shot in the studio via the usual three-camera arrangement and edited "live" to something indistinguishable in terms of medium and approach from a cinema film (i.e. a lot of Clarke's late work). The BBC alone would broadcast something like one a week throughout the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, and this was an incredible opportunity for writers and directors - not least because the turnover and the comparatively low budget meant that they were given that all-important opportunity to fail, which encouraged genuine risk-taking. Some of the best British television ever made - The War Game, Cathy Come Home, Penda's Fen, Nuts in May, Stephen Frears' collaborations with Alan Bennett and the overwhelming majority of Clarke's output - falls into this category.

When Channel Four started, they got much more involved in collaborations with theatrical production companies and distributors, and referred to their productions as "films" rather than "plays" - and rightly so, as this included the likes of Angel, The Draughtsman's Contract and My Beautiful Laundrette. And by the end of the 1980s the term "television play" was beginning to seem quaint and outdated - there was much more pressure to be "cinematic" (a challenge that Clarke more than rose to: he started using the Steadicam in 1983 and rarely stopped thereafter).

How Clarke would have coped with the post-1990 landscape, no-one knows - although at the time of his cancer diagnosis he was making his first serious attempt to get a US-backed feature film off the ground. Although he might equally have gone down the Ken Loach route of primarily making feature films funded by multiple production companies in several EU member states - Loach's films tend to be British/French/German/Spanish/Italian co-productions, which helps minimise any financial risk. (Loach's films presumably had very similar budgets to Clarke and are just as parochial in terms of unapologetically dealing with British subject matter without any concessions made to the international market.)

I was considering comparing him to Peter Watkins - maybe no so aptly - and noticed that Watkins and Clarke were born just one day apart.

Three years and one day apart. Although Watkins was far more precocious - by the time Clarke made his small-screen directing debut, Watkins had already abandoned British television.

[MichaelB]

Quick query, the disc with Baal and Psy-Warriors is meant to be DVD only, right? There's not been a mix up at the factory?

Yes. They originated on SD video and it was felt that there wouldn't be any real benefit in transferring them to Blu-ray - or at least nothing that anyone other than a Caps-a-holic devotee with a magnifying glass would really notice. I strongly suspect that given increased production costs elsewhere, they were very grateful for the opportunity to make a small saving!

[RossyG]

Ah lovely. Cheers Michael.

[colinr0380]

How Clarke would have coped with the post-1990 landscape, no-one knows - although at the time of his cancer diagnosis he was making his first serious attempt to get a US-backed feature film off the ground. Although he might equally have gone down the Ken Loach route of primarily making feature films funded by multiple production companies in several EU member states - Loach's films tend to be British/French/German/Spanish/Italian co-productions, which helps minimise any financial risk. (Loach's films presumably had very similar budgets to Clarke and are just as parochial in terms of unapologetically dealing with British subject matter without any concessions made to the international market.)

The telling exception in Loach's career being Bread and Roses.