 "I do not believe that the anti-globalisation protest will
ever reach its true fruition if we leave the cinema and television and the radio
in the present position we're in."
- Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins is something of an enigma in the history of moving image
production. He is celebrated as an innovator of the docudrama form, yet the
socio-political elements in his work go largely undiscussed. The films he made
in the 1960s are rightly lionised in the UK but his later films have,
historically, been almost entirely ignored. The quote above has much to do with
these omissions, even if indirectly.
Taken from a 30-minute monologue delivered direct to camera in 2001 in a
communist theme park in Lithuania (his nation of residence at the time),
Watkins' words reflect a media critique developed through the course of his
entire filmography and more recently expressed in the lengthy and regularly
updated media statement on his website. Troubled by the passive, hierarchical,
spectacle-based relationship he feels cinema or television establishes with the
viewer, Watkins has, through his own work, sought to deconstruct this dynamic
and explore possible alternatives. Inevitably, by engaging with the political
structures of media delivery, he has frequently fallen into conflict with the
very institutions that once supported him.
Watkins was born in Norbiton, Surrey, in 1935 and was quickly initiated into
the cultures of war and conflict though house moves necessitated by World War
Two and later national service. After education at Cambridge and the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, he settled in Canterbury and joined and
later directed the local acting group, Playcraft. The group helped him with his
early amateur films and established Watkins' practise of working closely with
actors. He liked to use everyday faces to emphasise and bring home the legacies
of violent conflict. The Diary of An Unknown Soldier (1959) and The Forgotten
Faces (1961) (following the now lost or incomplete films The Web (1956) and
Field of Red (1958)) made clear this intention and used handheld cameras and
tight framing to generate immediacy. The latter transposed the Hungarian
Revolution of 1956 onto the streets of Canterbury and posed the radical
question: what would the oppressed do in the shoes of the oppressors? It was
recognised as one of the 'Ten Best' non-professional productions of the year by
Amateur Cine World and received national distribution. Watkins was then invited,
like one-time amateurs Ken Russell and John Schlesinger, to join the BBC.
His time there was short, however, and marred by considerable controversy.
His first production, Culloden (tx. 15/12/1964), presented the 1746 Battle of
Culloden as a news report, complete with modern camera crew, interviews,
narration and dramatic action sequences. The press generally responded well.
Recognising its highly innovative deconstruction of television conventions, the
Guardian called it "an unforgettable experiment... new and adventurous in
technique." However, Watkins was disappointed that its provocations concerning
the severity of British violence and the dismantling of the Scottish Clans had
not been related to contemporary issues and concerns: namely the Vietnam War
which was being reported on television at the time.
The same could not be said of The War Game, intended for broadcast in 1966.
Using statistics extrapolated from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and
quotes from high-ranking officials, the film dared to consider the possible
consequences of a nuclear strike on Britain. Again realised in the documentary
style, using actors to present faux interviews and actuality, the shocking and
politically potent result prompted BBC director general Hugh Carlton Greene to
proclaim that "it was too horrific for the medium of broadcast". Concerns over
the notion of withheld information and the breakdown of normal behaviour had
been particularly singled out in the discussions. It emerged in 1985, however,
that Harold Wilson's Labour government had intervened to stop the broadcast.
The War Game was released to cinemas in March 1966 and won, with some irony, an
Oscar for best documentary feature. Although in many respects it prefigured
several of the docudrama techniques famously used in Cathy Come Home (BBC, tx.
16/11/1966), the film's innovative cross-framing of fact and fiction met with resistance in some quarters. In retrospect, this can be seen as an opening skirmish in what would become an increasingly rancorous battle over such hybrid drama/documentary forms during the 1970s.
Although the controversy certainly affected his career in Britain, it also
sharpened his developing critique of media practice and led to offers of funding
from abroad. Universal Studios produced Privilege (1967) and Stockholm based
distributors, Sandrews produced The Gladiators (1969, released under the title
The Peace Game in Britain, presumably to capitalise in least in part on the
controversy surrounding The War Game). Both films were shot on 35mm (the only
occasions Watkins used the format) by Peter Suschitzky and looked at the use of
scapegoats - respectively a pop star and an international gladiator competition
- to suppress the critical faculties of the populace and channel violent
emotions. Privilege broke with Watkins' practice of using amateur actors, but
drew power instead from the use of a real pop star; Paul Jones from Manfred
Mann.
The Gladiators had been made against the political disquiet of 1968 but
Watkins' temporary move to the USA brought him even closer to the increasingly
polarised politics of the age. Punishment Park (US, 1971) told of a fictional
detention system that challenged potential subversives to either surrender to
detention or undergo a physically challenging ordeal in the heat of the American
desert. Using a small crew and just one camera, Watkins worked with actors
genuinely critical of the system and increased the scope of improvisation. The
results brought a startling immediacy to the film and a palpable sense of
realism - often people's lines and actions seemed wholly 'real'. The lines of
fact and fiction further blurred when one actor was later convicted of a bombing
charge and sent to federal prison.
The importance of camera movement and the giving of space to Watkins'
collaborators - to both research their roles and improvise - were extended
through a series of Scandinavian productions made through the 1970s. The
Seventies People (70-Talets Människor, Denmark, 1975) looked at the relationship
between modern living and suicide, a significant and current concern for the
television production's country of origin, Denmark. Though the story focused on
two families it had been developed from newspaper ads that asked for volunteers
to step forward and talk about modern stress - again the actors' involvement was
crucial. In contrast, The Trap (Fällan, Sweden, 1975) was set in the future and
imagined a difficult family reunion in underground living quarters close to a
nuclear waste station. Here the freedoms were given to the Swedish television
crew who were asked to direct their own cameras rather than follow orders.
1977's Eveningland (Aftenlandet, Denmark, 1977) was another political story
placed in the future.
The earlier Edvard Munch (Norway/Sweden, 1974) had also encouraged personal
research and improvisation but it incorporated significant and highly
sophisticated editing techniques too. This was intended to encourage a more
involved response on the part of the audience. Highly personal, this biopic of
the Norweigan artist vividly explored the complexity of meaning contained in a
work of art via fragmented narrative and impressionistic montage. It suggested,
for example, that Munch's visceral etching action was directly linked to his
traumatic life and memories, vividly presented here. It implied that Watkins'
personal narration (a consistent trope in his work) and mobile camera work
belonged to a similar relationship. Like all his films from The Diary of an
Unknown Soldier onward, Edvard Munch highlighted the difficulties individuals
experience and the pressures they undergo, both personal and political. Perhaps
for the first time though, it implicitly implicated the director.
If Edvard Munch was complex, then The Journey (Sweden/Canada, 1983-87)
elevated the scope of Watkins' ambitions to a whole new level. An
internationally funded 14-hour, 30-minute discursive education package, it
simultaneously updated much of the information contained in The War Game about
the nuclear threat, critiqued the manipulative and heavily edited mainstream
media practice - here after labelled by Watkins the 'Monoform' - and initiated
and documented a dialogue between several families separated by ideology and
considerable expanses of geography. Like much of his work, particularly his
Scandinavian films, The Journey encountered much production and exhibition
difficulty. Its lengthy duration effectively ruled out standard presentation,
but Watkins encouraged the film to be seen in chapters, dividing it into
45-minute sections to this end. Each concludes with a question mark to prompt
discussion - another dialectical technique.
The debates in and reaction to The Journey have remained central to a
consideration of Watkins' films. Its complex concerns mirror the quote that
opens this text, in that it recognises the international status of political
debate but argues that new maps through which to engage in communication need to
be constructed. The media statement on his website addresses these issues, as
have his last two films, The Free Thinker (1994) and La Commune (2001). The
latter uses various Brechtian techniques to explore the story of the Paris
Commune, a radical, non-hierarchical collective that formed in Paris in the wake
of the Franco-Prussian War. These techniques include the characters' use of a
television station to report on clashes with the army and the actors admitting
the bias of both their character's actions and their own.
Although plagued with production difficulties - often amounting to outright
obstruction - and in many cases very hard to see, the scope, critical weight and
level of experimentation in Watkins' films is undeniable. In an age when the
media stranglehold on both our lives and the means by which we communicate is
ever tightening, his films remain a vital tool for considering new forms of
image-making and a vibrant and engaging force in their own
right.
Will Fowler
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FILM & TV CREDITS
