Saturday 12 March 2016

Tilda Swinton portraits - A Bigger Splash


Little White Lies magazine set a brief to create an original portrait of Tilda Swinton as her character in the movie A Bigger Splash, vacationing rock star Marianne Lane, who’s famed for her glamorous persona onstage and casual elegance off it. The film is screening at The  Courtyard as part of Borderlines 2016. These 20 portraits are the work of Illustration students at Hereford College of Arts. The competition was judged by A Bigger Splash director Luca Guadagnino and three of the HCA portraits are featured in the magazine's online gallery for the brief.

Amy Vale

Andrew Graham

Brendon Smith

Catherine Jakobs-Eke

Christy Johnson

Harry Purches

Kaylee Morlan

Kendall Webb

Lauren Taylor

Leah Korb

Lucie Evans

Max Low

Miranda Smith

Nuala Hussey

Sophie Andow

Sophie Davies

Joe Downes

Tina Pierce

Dad's Army



Arthur Lowe described the year he spent in Hereford as the happiest of his life. This was the first year County Theatre, Berrington Street, Hereford hosted a full-time repertory company. Starting with Scandalmongers, on 8 October 1946, Lowe performed in a different play every week. A further 42 productions are listed on Dave Homewood’s fan-site. One of these plays was already a rep stalwart, The Ghost Train, written by Arnold Ridley. The Ghost Train was very good for Ridley: it first appeared as a Finnish movie in 1927 and was re-made – in USA, Romania, Hungary, Holland, for Arthur Askey, Germany, Denmark - at least a dozen times during the next 50 years. Lowe worked with his future wife, Joan Cooper, and Dad’s Army creator, David Croft, that season. The County is now a Gala Bingo hall.

Lowe made his movie debut in 1948. You may recall Lowe’s News of the World reporter asking Dennis Price’s Louis for his story during the penultimate scene of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Lowe’s second film, Flood Tide (1948), featured John Laurie. Laurie was already an established movie actor. He’d made his debut in 1929. He’s in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935), opposite Laurence Olivier in As You Like It (1936), in Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955), in Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), where Laurie also choreographed the cèilidh sequences. The execution scene in The Brothers (1947) is more memorable and macabre than any coked-up-Cockney-caper could imagine. Laurie made radio programmes with Ken Dodd during the 1960s.

By the 1960s Lowe was very busy, in the cast of Coronation Street and one of Lindsay Anderson’s regular company: This Sporting Life (1963), The White Bus (1967, edited by Kevin Brownlow, a guest of Borderlines a few years ago), winning a BAFTA for his three roles in O Lucky Man! (1973), bowing out in Britannia Hospital (1982). O Lucky Man!, Anderson’s Marxist parable, was one of the few Western films allowed on Soviet cinema screens. The comments on YouTube usually read [Something Russian] Helen Mirren. In 1968, the year Dad’s Army began on the BBC, Lowe also appeared in If…., Anderson’s call for public schoolboys to revolt against their predestinations. Other absurdist outings included the very pleasing The Bed Sitting Room (1969), the prescient satire The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), written by Peter Cook and John Cleese, and the deliciously deranged The Ruling Class (1972), as Peter O’Toole’s foul-mouthed butler. Lowe was first choice for Gielgud’s role in Arthur (1981) but Lowe’s wife vetoed his career in Hollywood. These movies represent a record of a Modern nation looking for the language to explain a period of polite social upheaval to itself. Lowe made his share of simple entertainments too: Theatre of Blood (1973), opposite Vincent Price, being the pick of them.

Graham Lord’s thorough biography of Arthur Lowe makes it clear that his theatre work was very highly regarded. Lowe received better notices than the Knights of the Realm – Gielgud, Richardson, Olivier – he shared the stage with. Of course, to Generation X, Lowe read out the Mr. Men stories and John Le Mesurier, another character actor with scores of movie appearances, narrated Bod, all that Buddhism and a frog choosing his milkshake.

‘Le Mez’ appeared in his first B-movie in 1938 and was on the telly from 1951. He turns up in plenty of British movies perfect for a wet Tuesday afternoon. I doubt he played against type in any of them. The point being that by Dad’s Army Lowe, Laurie and Le Mesurier had more than one hundred years’ worth of comic acting chops.

After its B&W beginnings, which didn’t impress Galton and Simpson, the Dad’s Army series developed into a masterclass of comic construction. David Croft pointed out that its spine was derived from the work of Will Hay. Hay is the unsung genius of British comedy. Variety star, astronomer, engineer and pilot Will Hay worked out the mechanics of a perpetual motion machine that has powered numerous comedies since the 1930s. You take three stupid men: a young (or small) idiot, a middle-aged idiot (with delusions of superiority) and an older idiot (who thinks he knows better). The three devise a plan, it fails, and two pick on the other. These ever-shifting alliances, an unstable centre of gravity, keep the comedy coming. Hay perfected the relationship in Oh, Mister Porter! (1937), its plot inspired by Ridley’s The Ghost Train. The scene where Hay, Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott argue over the ETA of the next train is hysterical. Hay’s crowning piece of business is magnificent. The other Hay/Moffatt/Marriott movies aren’t far behind. They all feature moments of magic. In real life, Moffatt was elevated from studio call boy to Albert, the nation’s favourite working class lad; he went on to run a pub. Marriott, the archetypal old fool, is the comic equal of Hay: see him play his own father in Ask a Policeman (1939). Their exchanges – just bluster and nonsense – were timed to the split-second.

This triumvirate is at the heart of The Goodies, Last of the Summer Wine, Only Fools and Horses, Father Ted and Top Gear. Many countries have bought the Top Gear format but failed in the casting. It makes an appearance wherever three men bicker: Yes, Minister, Nightingales, Seinfeld, Peep Show.

Croft explained that Private Pike, Private Walker (a role Croft wrote for himself) and Captain Mainwaring: a naive young man, a streetwise middle-aged man and an older authority figure provided the spine. Except that Dad’s Army had a selection of daft old duffers: Capt. George Mainwaring, Sgt. Arthur Wilson, Pte. James Frazer, Pte. Charles Godfrey, LCpl. Jack Jones (though Clive Dunn was 48 years old when the show started). Most episodes concluded that they weren’t so daft and not so bad for a duffer.

It’s difficult to play slow-witted: most people don’t like to laugh at that. In the early seasons of Only Fools and Horses Rodney – and the dialling code for Peckham was RODney – looked up to his brother but suspected he had feet of clay. In later series he’s just thick, ground down. Richard ‘Stinker’ Murdoch’s portrayal of Ron Glum, in The Glums section of Frank Muir and Dennis Norden’s radio show Take It From Here, is masterful. One joke being that Murdoch was a decade older than the actor, 'Professor' Jimmy Edwards, playing his Pa. Moray Hunter’s Callum Gilhooley in Absolutely and Ruth Jones’ Linda in Nighty Night also get it right. It’s not that the lights are on but nobody’s home – it’s just that these characters are wired differently. Pete Townsend, looking back, observed that as long as Keith Moon was alive The Who had someone to blame for their misfortunes. Fortunately, in Pike’s case, his father, Sergeant Wilson, is on hand to protect him. Cleverly, Pike is the only one who doesn’t know that.

Croft stated that, in real life, Wilson would lead the troop because of his class status. Mainwaring, who wanted and was devoted to the job, would have been frustrated. That would have been a tragedy. That these roles are reversed makes it a comedy. Mainwaring’s leadership is fascinating: it teeters on the brink and yet, somehow, they always come good. There are many fictions that leave you wondering why these men continue to follow this man.

Take Gian Maria Volontè’s marvellous performance as El Chuncho Munoz, the Mexican bandit in the superb spaghetti Western A Bullet for the General (1966); a rare case of the comic relief leading the movie whilst its sociopath, Klaus Kinski’s El Santo, provides the comic relief. In The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) Moritz Bleibtreu plays Andreas Baader in much the same way. Why do the crew of the Black Pig stick with Captain Pugwash? Well, it’s never boring. Who else would do it? In Dad’s Army Frazer knows he could but, in this corner of England, understands where he stands in the pecking order – well behind Sergeant Wilson.

Private Joe Walker does all the heavy lifting. When the plot requires it, he can lay his hands on it. It was a far trickier role in the 1970s than it appears now. There were so many affable male comic actors during this period. The Good Life used two: Richard Briers and Paul Eddington. Richard Beckinsale, in Porridge and Rising Damp, was the most likeable of them all. Rising Damp is constructed like a crane with an extremely heavy counterweight at one end – Beckinsale, Don Warrington and Frances de la Tour – which enables Leonard Rossiter’s Rigsby to go out further than anyone would have dared before. Its imitators are unwatchable because they lack the structure and the talent.

James Beck was in his early 40s; he’d built a career in theatre after National Service. The audience shouldn’t like Walker because someone his age should be serving his country, not having 'A Good War.' Beck gets away with it, in Walmington-on-Sea and in our eyes, because he provides a service. The locals appreciate him and he makes sure he keeps them on his side. Crime always increases during war-time, even and especially in Fascist countries, because the forces of law and order have been called up. In the radio version, made soon after with the original cast, the late James Beck was replaced by Graham Stark. Stark played Walker as a Cockney spiv but mislaid all of Beck’s charm. It shows the difference. Walker is doing nicely – but he knows how precarious his position is. In one episode he does join the Army – and is excited by the opportunities it offers him to steal stock – but the platoon need him more than the Armed Forces do. It turns out that Walker has a legitimate excuse to avoid armed service. I doubt this distinction would need to be established today.

War time throws together men who, under normal circumstances, would rarely cross paths. Dad’s Army yokes together nationalities and regions, social classes, age groups, cornerstones of community – school, money, food, Church and death – and forces them to work together. Godfrey represents what they are fighting for. He’s unproductive, frail and weak, cultured but rumoured to have been a Conscientious Objector during the previous war. An issue covered in another episode. In real life Ridley served and was injured during both world wars. The Nazis would have discarded him as a dead weight - and that makes him part of the Britain the platoon wish to preserve.

Of course, a bunch of old men with kitchen knives strapped to broom handles would not have lasted very long against an invasion. Their Army exercises are a series of adventures in suspended disbelief. The men, by playing soldiers, have created hope where there wasn’t much. A network has been established, small jobs taken care of. Meanwhile, the women were busy growing food, making preserves and knitting balaclavas. Hamish MacColl’s new version of Dad’s Army (Dir. Oliver Parker, 2015) has found more roles for women. I’m not convinced. The joy of Dad’s Army, much like The Last Detail (1973), is watching just how stupid a crowd of men can get when handed a project and left to their own devices.      


Robin Clarke

Friday 11 March 2016

EXCLUSIVE: Subtitling and Soundtracking 'Victoria'

Writer Wyndham Wallace explains how he ended up working as the English subtitler and music consultant on award-winning German one camera, one take movie Victoria.



Back in 2007,  three years after I moved from London to Berlin, Fabian Schmidt, a friend who is involved in sound design, asked if I could help out with the English subtitles for German director Sebastian Schipper’s third full-length film, Mitte Ende August. At the time, I was looking at leaving the music industry, where I’d worked for many years, and wanted to write more instead, something I’d been doing on a small scale for a while. The opportunity seemed like an interesting, related challenge.
From L-R: Fabian Schmidt, Nils Frahm and me.

Schipper – as he’s known, never Sebastian – had commissioned a translation, it turned out, but wasn't happy with it, so my job was to scour the English dialogue and improve it. Since my German isn’t perfect, I referred back to the original script only when the English felt wrong, and then met up with Schipper to check a few things I wasn’t sure I’d understood. But what I’d expected would be a short meeting instead turned into hours spent going through the dialogue line by line, refining it until finally we were both entirely satisfied with every syllable.

It was a fascinating experience. Schipper is as obsessed with the details of language and communication as I am, and equally frustrated by the lazy manner in which films are sometimes subtitled, so we spent ages arguing over single words, debating their implications and weighing up exactly how a character would express themselves. Sadly Mitte Ende August wasn’t a box office success, but it led to me working on another German film, Oh Boy, which went on to win a number of prizes in 2012. Its director, Jan Ole Gerster, has been kind enough to credit my subtitles as one of the (many) reasons for its international achievements. I think he just liked the nickname I came up with for a key character, Roly Poly Julie, but I realised I’d perhaps found a niche.

People who knew me, especially the ones who had actually heard me speaking German, were sometimes shocked to hear that I was subtitling films. Still, I realised, I wasn’t being employed for my German, but instead for my English. Soon I was invited to work on further films, and, in order to improve the ‘service’ I was offering, I began working with my sound designer friend, Fabian, who’s a native German speaker. We also learned how to ‘spot', which involves the placing of subtitles at the right times and with the right line breaks. It turned out there are all sorts of rules. We don't always stick with them.


Fabian and I became obsessed with the process: how breaks can alter the tension of the delivery of a line; how, if possible, a word that sounds similar in both languages needs to be read by the viewer at the same time as it’s spoken by the actor; how to condense dialogue if it’s too fast for a literal interpretation; how the choice of one translation from several can make a huge difference since this can say so much about a character. I’d never realised just how compacted good film scripts are, how every phrase carries multiple layers of information.

Fabian was hired to work on Victoria, Schipper’s next film, and once they’d finished shooting, Schipper approached me again to discuss subtitling it. At that stage, I think the dialogue was largely untouched. In all honesty, sound was pretty much the only thing that could be edited to ensure that there’s a recognisable shape to the movie, so what you see in the final film isn’t 100% what was said. In fact, I’m told there was one moment during the shoot when two passing tourists came up and started drunkenly asking what was going on, so the noise of them being urgently told to move on had to be carefully removed. Anyway, what I saw the first time was quite messy. Furthermore, since much of it is delivered with a Berlin accent, and there was no script, I couldn’t understand everything that was said, even in English.

 
Luckily, I already understood more than enough to know it was absolutely, gut-wrenchingly riveting. I found myself so drawn in that by the time they reached the apartment block I was literally yelling at the screen - I was alone, I should add – and, by the end, I was bawling like a teething child. I knew that subtitling Victoria would be hard, but there was no way I was passing the chance up.

As I was watching the film, my history working with music made me wonder how Schipper was going to soundtrack it. Afterwards, when I excitedly called him up to tell him that it was a masterpiece that I naturally wanted to subtitle, I also took the liberty of saying I had a few ideas for its music. I had no intention of putting myself forward as a music supervisor, and in all honesty I also said that I wasn’t even sure if it really needed music. But I told him that if he wanted me to send him some tunes I’d do so.


What followed was one of the most satisfying creative experiences I’ve ever had. After Fabian and the team edited the onscreen dialogue, he and I debated how to present it so it was easy to follow. Since the actors were improvising, this was especially complicated, and there was even more debate about how precisely to capture their linguistic tone. I recall that whether to use ‘mate’ or ‘dude’ as a salutation provided fodder for one particularly long discussion with Schipper, who inevitably joined us towards the end of the process.

While this had been going on, I’d presented a number of songs to Schipper that I felt might suit various scenes, and he soon invited me to take on the role of ‘music consultant’. Right from the beginning I pushed for Nils Frahm, about whom I’d written a few times for various publications, including a big piece for The Sunday Times on so-called 'neo-classical’ acts. Admittedly I also put forward a few other ideas: I knew that using quieter music was vital, and in attempting to find an effective methodology I tried taking it down the ‘vintage’ path too. For instance, for the closing credits I suggested ‘My Autumn’s Done Come’ by Lee Hazlewood, about whom I published a book last year, and a German language track by Françoise Hardy for the taxi scene even survived until the penultimate version. What was always important, however, was to let the drama breathe, and not to let the music either obscure or over-emphasise what was happening on screen.

Schipper was particularly keen on a track recorded by Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds that I had sent him. As he wasn’t terribly familiar with Nils’ work, however, he was initially more excited by the idea of working with Olafur, who I already knew was very busy with Broadchurch. Johann Johannsson, was also mentioned, whose early solo work I’d admired but whose more recent soundtrack work - I’d just heard The Theory Of Everything – was, I argued, a little too saccharine for Victoria. So I kept hammering away at the idea of Nils, initially because I love his music, later precisely because he’d never written a soundtrack and is a great improviser, and ultimately because he’s also Berlin based. I knew he’d understand the atmosphere I envisaged better than someone who lived outside the city.

Over a number of lengthy, passionate chats, Schipper came round to the idea. I finally called Nils, with whom I’d exchanged phone numbers at a dinner party, and told him about the film. He was immediately excited, so Schipper arranged a screening. Nils was blown away. At that stage, I simply left them to figure things out, visiting Nils in the studio just one time to pass on some thoughts about various scenes that Schipper and I had discussed separately.

I therefore wasn’t so closely involved in how the music was used. Schipper is a man with a steadfast vision, and I didn’t need to intrude. But I attended a number of screenings where I shared my thoughts about what I thought worked and what didn’t. In particular, the scene where they return to the club proved problematic, and I offered a number of possible solutions, purely based on instinct as opposed to trial and error in the studio. What emerged was pretty much how I had hoped it would, I’m proud to say. Sadly I have to admit that the early scene where the dialogue is replaced by music wasn't my idea, but I felt it was a brilliant one since it provided an opportunity for the audience to absorb the relationships that were slowly being revealed. It was also a brave directorial decision since there were some lovely exchanges during that scene which had to be sacrificed.

When I attended Victoria’s premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, it was the first time I’d seen the finished product. I was terrified, since I’d been lauding it to anyone who would listen for months, but about 15 minutes in, I could tell from the audience’s reaction that Schipper had nailed it. The acting, the story, the camera work, the sound, the direction: all of these aspects are astonishing. I spoke afterwards briefly to Frederick Lau, who hadn’t seen the film since they’d shot it, and he was quite literally in shock.


But I’m proud, too, that the subtitles truly capture the language spoken, and its tone. There’s a line about pistols, for instance, that makes me chuckle every time, though it was questioned repeatedly up to the end. Nils’ music, meanwhile, is simply breathtaking. I get goose bumps during that club scene when his music comes in: it encapsulates everything I felt he could do for the film. Furthermore, I’ve now seen Victoria in one shape or another about 20 times, and I still want to yell at the screen as Sonne walks out onto that apartment balcony, and I still bawl at that unspeakably traumatic climax. I can’t speak perfect German yet, either.

 

Wyndham Wallace is the author of Lee, Myself & I: Inside The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood (Jawbone Press), an acclaimed memoir about his friendship with the man who wrote ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’’.