Erik Hedling

Lindsay Anderson Revisited : Unknown Aspects of a Film Director

Anthology on new aspects of British filmmaker Lindsay Anderson, based on research in the Lindsay Anderson Archive at the University of Stirling, UK.

Strange Bedfellows : Lindsay Anderson and Chariots of Fire

In 1986, Thames Television broadcast a series of programmes on British cinema. In one of them, dedicated to the Free Cinema documentary movement of the 1950s, and the new wave of films it triggered in Britain in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s (particularly Anderson’s own), Lindsay Anderson took the opportunity to ridicule the prominent box office and Academy Award success of Chariots of Fire, which premiered in Britain at the Royal Film Performance of May 1981. His ironic remarks pertained particularly to the film’s producer, David Puttnam, who clearly represented for Anderson what was bad about the current state of British cinema: its blatant commercialism, its aim for success in the American market, and its greedy yearning for Oscars. The claims that Anderson made in the programme even prompted legal action on Puttnam’s part. I have studied this TV programme in some detail elsewhere. Here, however, I would like to trace the personal background for Anderson lurking behind it by studying whatever contemporary references to Chariots of Fire itself—not the TV programme, which is also lavishly represented in the collection—can be found in the Lindsay Anderson Archive at the University of Stirling.

Lindsay Anderson’s Legacy: An Introduction

Lindsay Anderson (1923–1994) was a major British filmmaker, theatre director, and film critic. Although his cinematic output was rather limited in quantitative terms (half a dozen feature films, added to a few documentaries and some occasional TV work), some of his feature films were highly influential. He is probably best known for his ‘trilogy’—the Cannes-winning If…. (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973), and Britannia Hospital (1982). Here, Anderson follows his anti-hero Mick Travis, played by Malcolm McDowell in all three films, through the hidden corners of modern society. With razor sharp social satire as the preferred artistic method, Anderson, and his scriptwriter David Sherwin, dissect what they perceive as various dysfunctions in contemporary Britain: the public school system in If…., neo-colonialism in O Lucky Man!, and the emerging—and catastrophic—effects of New Public Management in Britannia Hospital. Anderson’s sometimes-idiosyncratic direction called for Brechtian Verfremdungseffekts, theatrical stylization, and a large portion of ingenious humour.

Review Article of Self-Projection : The Director's Image in Art Cinema

Novel, verso, 1998, p. 196) that “ibsen . . . originated in the history of european drama,” regardless of their potentially nonliterary interest in his plays (d’amico, p. 320). this rejection might not save the Poleses from the moralizing (and legitimate?) accusations of individuals such as Zacconi, who “labelled [icilio Polese] a scoundrel who speculated at the expense of ‘naïve’ italian actors” (p. 322). However, without resistance to moralistic hierarchizing in criticism, we would not have d’amico’s significant work of scholarship. Olivia Gunn Pacific Lutheran University

Whose Repressed Memories? Max Manus: Man of War and Flame & Citron (from a Swede's Point of View)

Study of Swedish reception of Norwegian film Max Manus: Man of War and Danish film Flame & Citron, both of them occupation dramas set during the Second World War.

Joseph Goebbels, Kristina Söderbaum and Jud Süss: Seventy Years Later

In 1938, the notorious head of the German film industry, the minister of propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, commissioned an antisemitic film from Terra Filmkunst, one of the major German film companies. Goebbels eventually named Veit Harlan as director, at that time the upcoming directorial star in the Nazi-infested film industry.1

Shame : Ingmar Bergman's Vietnam War

Abstract Ingmar Bergman’s film Skammen [Shame] (1968), about a married couple trapped between the warring parties in a bloody civil war, triggered fierce ideological debate in Sweden. According to the harsh critics of the film, among whom the leading critic was well-known author Sara Lidman, Bergman had managed to create propaganda for the American government and its controversial war in Vietnam. In the present paper, the debate is studied historically in relation to ongoing research about the culture of the late 1960s in Sweden. The studied material consists of press clippings, Bergman scholarship, and Bergman’s own recently released papers at the Ingmar Bergman Foundation Archive in Stockholm. Furthermore, questions about meaning and interpretation regarding film viewing are dealt with, taking into consideration developments in contemporary film theory.