Currently reading.....

     This arrived in the post yesterday.  The final instalment of Anthony Powell's great, patrician novel sequence 'A Dance to the Music of Time'.  I've been reading them on and off for years with varying levels of enthusiasm.  The first three novels in particular are slow going.  Things, however, pick up with 'At Lady Mollys'.  I am currently reading the penultimate novel 'Temporary Gods', set in Venice and London. 

     A quick word about the front covers.  'A Dance to the Music of Time' has had various cover designs in its time.  However, two series stand out.  The first is that designed by Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) for Penguin in the 1960s.  Lancaster, writer, illustrator, cartoonist, and designer for the stage, was a friend of Powell and the 2nd novel in the sequence, 'A Buyer's Market', is dedicated to Lancaster and his first wife Karen.  His austere pen and ink drawings give a good sense of 'British Mid-century Frugal'. A feeling of anomie pervades.
     Later editions such as this - the Fontana Books edition of 1977 - are the work of Mark Boxer (1931-1988) the magazine editor, illustrator, and cartoonist.  Whereas Lancaster provides the locations, Boxer provides the characters in the form of cartoons.  Vigorous, characterful and enviably confident.  As you can see above.

The Prelude

 

The Prelude by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

I felt most deeply in what world I was,

What ground I trod on, and what air I breathed.

High was my room and lonely, near the roof
Of a large mansion or hotel, a lodge
That would have pleased me in more quiet times;
Nor was it wholly without pleasure then.
With unextinguished taper I kept watch,
Reading at intervals; the fear gone by
Pressed on me almost like a fear to come.
I thought of those September massacres,
Divided from me by one little month,
Saw them and touched: the rest was conjured up
From tragic fictions or true history,
Remembrances and dim admonishments.
The horse is taught his manage, and no star
Of wildest course but treads back his own steps;
For the spent hurricane the air provides
As fierce a successor; the tide retreats
But to return out of its hiding-place
In the great deep; all things have second birth;
The earthquake is not satisfied at once;
And in this way I wrought upon myself,
Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried,
To the whole city, "Sleep no more." 

Shellarama

     I think we must be getting jaded, but in the last few weeks we've started films only to give up on them half way through: there was the Belgium horror film 'Daughters of Darkness', then 'Senso', 'Iphigenia' and 'Conclave' (which I feel we must finish before we return it to my family.  The alternative would be to lie, which no doubt we will in any case.), and then finally the other night there was Alain Resnais' 1974 film 'Stavisky'. Not even the presence of Jean Paul Belmondo, and a score by Stephen Sondheim, could save it from near terminal accidie.  It is, in all, a list of shame.  Perhaps, like everybody else, we are loosing our ability to concentrate.  That and the interminable hot weather.

     And so I turn to 'Shellarama' of 1965.  Again this something I have a vague recollection of watching as a child, when in the early days of colour television here in the UK the BBC showed these short documentaries, designed for the cinema, as Trade Test Colour Films. Judging by what I've read in researching this post Shell seemed to have a reputation for producing well made if rather dry films, usually of a scientific or technical bent.  Another Shell film I saw as a child, and a good example of this Shell style of documentary, is the ultra high-minded and visually impressive 'Crown of Glass' of 1967, directed by Michael Heckford, with technical innovation is coupled with the artistic, creative world.
     'Shellarama', I suppose, marks a high point in the work of the Shell Film Unit, and indeed of the whole post war documentary movement.  There was nothing before and nothing afterwards quite like this in its expansiveness, or its supreme confidence, or glamour.  One feels a lot of money was devoted to this project.  Richard Cawston, the writer and director, created in 'Shellarama' something bright, stylish, and modern.  A paean of praise to Modernity and the post War boom.  It is certainly not dry.  Nor high-minded.  Rather it has a deep sensuousness.  Colours are saturated.  Without dialogue, it comes close to pure cinema. 

     Filmed in Super Technirama 70, using 35 mm film stock pulled horizontally rather than vertically, using a camera fitted with an anamorphic lens, it is said 'Shellarama' was two years in the filming, and all for a mere 14mins of screen time - no chance of creeping ennui!  Those two years however were not wasted: the cinematography is marvellous.  The score, by Johnny Scott, is lavish, swinging, and cool.  The first half of the film is concerned with the exploration, extraction and refining of oil. The second half explores the joy of driving and is given over to a montage of locations around the globe, (this film is rather cosmopolitan, a bit 'jet-set') and this montage (the editor was Fred Burnley) seems to be constructed rather like a visual rondo that is an alternating of two themes in this case one fast and one slow, active and contemplative, until we reach apotheosis.  I think the score does the same.  Either way the result is masterly.

     The foundation of the Shell Film Unit by Edgar Anstey in 1934 was under the auspices of the Shell publicity manager, the remarkable Jack Beddington.  Inspired by the Frank Pick, the head of London Transport, Beddington made use of contemporary artists and writers such as John Betjeman and Geoffrey Grigson. It was Shell that sponsored the Shell County Guides, edited by Betjeman and and Piper.  Betjeman also appeared the 'Discovering Britain with John Betjeman' series for Shell on the nascent ITV in the 1950s.  In addition, Shell published 'shilling guides' to the UK counties, and also a whole range of really well produced books such as the 'The Shell Guide to English Villages', and the 'Shell Book of Rural Britain'.  Books that were erudite and stylish.  
     Things, however, I guess, began to slowly decline from the early 70s onwards.  In 1975 the Film unit was restructured, the budget reduced, and the lending library of films closed.  I think the publishing arm remained relatively untouched by these events.  Films made after 1975, such as the 'Regions of Britain' series, show a noticeable decline in quality even though they were still employing writers of the quality of Henry Thorold and David Verey.  In 1984 the last of the old Shell Guides was published - Henry Thorold's 'Nottinghamshire'.  The culture, sadly, had moved on.

Shellarama

1965

Producer:               Dimitri de Grunwald, Roger Good

Director:                 Richard Cawston

Cinematographer: Stanley W Sayer

Crown of Glass

1967

Producer:               Douglas Gordon

Director:                 Michael Heckford

Cinematographer: Allan Fabian

Further viewing and reading:

'Shellarama' is one of the films available on the excellent DVD box set 'Shadows of Progress; Documentary Film in Post war Britain 1951 - 1977', BFI, 2013.  Excellent liner notes.  It is a gold mine and well worth exploring.  Also:

Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain. London: BFI, 2010, Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor (eds)

Own work: Sketches towards 'In Memoriam D S C H'

 

Aberglasney in Black and White

 

     I love black and white photography.  They have such a different sensibility.  More poetic, I feel.  My favourite photographers - Fay Godwin, John Piper, James Ravillious, Bill Brandt, Cecil Beaton, and especially Edwin Smith - were masters of the monochrome.  So, while working on my last post I began to experiment with the photographs I took in the course of that day, turning them into Black and White images.  With the exception of the final image, the original of which was taken back in 2017, these are the results.

Studio Cenen at Aberglasney

     A return visit to the evocative Aberglasney Gardens in Carmarthenshire village of Llangathen to see the latest exhibition 'The Gardening Artists' by the local gallery Studio Cenen.  The gallery is based in the village of Ffairfach, just over the river from Llandeilo Fawr, and specialize in representing local artists and makers.  As with all their exhibitions, their current show is handsomely and imaginatively staged. There were certainly some very beautiful things on display; the bf and I were very much taken with ceramics.

    This year's drought has certainly affected the gardens, as you can see, but the beauty, even under the remorseless gaze of this summer's sun, is thankfully undimmed.

     As usual with a visit to Aberglaney, a walk up the hill to visit the parish church St Cathan.  Blunt, low slung rural gothic; dim, cool and cave-like within.  Just the place to shelter from the heat of the day.  A place, church and village, of deep serenity.

The Children of the Stones

     I think this may be the first time I have written a post about a children's television programme.  It certainly is the first time I have done so about a programme made by ITV. 

      The 'Children of the Stones' is a seven part drama for children - part sci-fi, part occult - made by the now defunct ITV company HTV, which broadcast to the West Country and Wales during the Golden Age of British broadcasting.  (The 'H', by the way, stands for Harlech, after Lord Harlech the Conservative politician and diplomat.) The series was made in 1976, the year of the drought.  Interiors were shot in the HTV studios in Bristol and location filming in the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, which, for those who don't know, sits within the remains of the largest henge monument in the world.  The script was conceived and written by Jeremy Burnham & Trevor Ray, and the producer & director was Peter Graham Scott, the executive producer Patrick Dromgoole.  The composer Sidney Sager wrote the atmospheric, unsettling avantgarde score, which was performed by the Ambrosian Singers.  Apparently, the music alone was enough to scare some of the young audience.  The series was first broadcast in the January and February of the following year, the year of the Silver Jubilee, 1977, with a repeat in 1978.  And it was then, I suppose, I watched for the first time.  It was, if I remember correctly, a chance discovery, but one that fired my imagination.  I have always been fascinated such topics - how could one not been growing up during the Occult Revival of the late 1960s and early 70s?  The Children of the Stones came towards the end of this revival, which, like the whole Hippy schtick, was essentially a cack-handed attempt at re-enchantment.  It is an example of how 'Folk Horror' - an anachronistic term here - was adapted for a wider audience.  Indeed some of the elements found in that seminal film of the genre 'The Wicker Man' of 1973 reappear in The Children of the Stones: the remote and isolated rural community; the charismatic and dominating leader; the invention of folk customs,   It has to remembered though, that the Children of the Stones was made and broadcast at a moment of cultural change in the UK, for 1977 was also the year of Punk, and Derek Jarman's film 'Jubilee'.  'The Children of the Stones' belongs to a totally different era, or so it seems.

       And so to the plot.  The series relates the events that occur in the small fictional village of Milbury somewhere in southern England over one summer, sometime in the mid 1970s.  Into the midst of this isolate rural community arrive the widower Adam Brake and his young son Matthew.  Brake is a middle-class professional, an astrophysicist and is there with his son for thee months to undertake research into the vast megalithic stone circle in which the village rests.  Father and son, however, very soon find themselves amidst some strange and unsettling occurrences that challenge their scientific worldview.  They both, for instance, receive disturbing visions of the future from touching the stones.  In some ways what follows is rather like a classic detective novel - they share the same spatial and numerical finitudes after all - in which the main characters, along with two other outsiders, Margaret Smythe and her daughter Sandra, attempt to solve the mystery.  It gradually becomes apparent that the village is under the malign control of the arriviste Lord of the Manor Rafael Hendrik, like Adam Brake a scientist, a former astronomer at Cambridge no less.

     The cast is exceptionally strong for a programme that was scheduled to be broadcast at 4.30 on a weekday afternoon.  Gareth Thomas & Peter Demin star as Adam and Matthew Brake; Veronica Strong & Katherine Levy as Margaret and Sandra.  The Welsh actress Ruth Dunning plays Mrs Crabtree, the Brake's housekeeper.  And then there are the mysterious Dai (a sort of Holy Fool), played by Freddie Jones, and Rafael Hendrick by Iain Cuthbertson, two charismatic British character actors of great talent.  Cuthbertson in particular dominates virtually every scene he's in; not simply because of the heft of the man but his charisma; managing to project both great charm and a sense of existential threat.

     The strength of this series not only in such a quality cast, but in the script - one that refuses to patronize the viewers, whether they are children or adults. It makes no intellectual concessions, the audience must sink or swim.  The writers seem fully aware of potential adult viewers - parents and the like - by giving the adult characters a 'hinterland', and an emotional and social life of their own (like down to the local pub); Adam and Margaret are even allowed to become fond of each other, to hold out thereby the possibility of a happy ending.

 

Happy day!

     Just after posting this post, it struck me that both the 'Children of the Stones' & Nigel Kneale's 'The Stone Tape', of 1972, imply that the Church's historical role is that of protector of the people from a very real and recurrent evil.  I believe it can be argued that in the case of the 'Children of the Stones' evil has only recured at Milbury because of the de-consecration of the village church.  It's almost as if the old social order of village was its protection.