Over the next seven days The Auteurs is showing a film a day for free, starting today with Lola (Jacques Demy 1961). I've never seen Lola but I really enjoyed Peau d'Âne and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort so I'm looking forward to seeing more of his films. Although, I'm going out for a friends leaving do, then a birthday dinner tonight so we'll see if I can fit it in when I get back!
The line-up for the next seven days is great:
Today - Lola (Jacques Demy 1961)
Wednesday - The 400 Blows (François Truffaut 1959)
Thursday - Jules and Jim (François Truffaut 1962)
Friday - Masculin Féminin (Jean-Luc Godard 1966)
Saturday - Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard 1962)
Sunday - La jetée (Chris Marker 1962)
Monday - Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Alain Resnais 1959)
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Monday, 30 November 2009
Archival detective work
One of the best aspects of my job (especially for a girl like me with a penchant for trashy American crime shows and detective novels!) is the detective work which is necessary when cataloguing archival material. Recently I've spent plenty of time doing archival detective work on the two large boxes of material we have in the Lindsay Anderson Archive which relate to About John Ford.
About John Ford is a very interesting mixture of critical analysis of the films of John Ford, mixed with Anderson's personal reminiscences of his meetings with John Ford, and interviews he conducted with various people who worked with Ford. Anderson's admiration of John Ford began in 1946 when he first saw My Darling Clementine. It continued through his reviews and articles about Ford in Sequence, his meetings with Ford over the years, and two television programmes: an Omnibus two-part programme on Ford narrated by Anderson (1992) ; and a Channel Four programme (1987) , where Anderson gave a 'masterclass' to a group of students about the art of film-making through the example of My Darling Clementine
The boxes relating to About John Ford contain: notes made by Anderson on Ford's films; press cuttings re: John Ford; early drafts of the book; correspondence with friends, colleague's and family of Ford; correspondence with publishers; correspondence with readers and critics; promotional material for the book; and reviews of the book.
The first big piece of detective work was with the early drafts of the book. There were some pages paper clipped together which obviously ran as a section (anything from 2 pages to 32 pages long), but there were no page numbers or chapter headings to work out where in the published version of the book they relate to. The first decision I had to make was, do I take the time to locate each of these draft sections in the published book? Well, I quickly decided that yes, it was worth the time to do this as it would be of value to future researchers, and it's always interesting to see what remains and what is changed from draft to published version. So then, how to work out where all these pages were located in the published book? Not that I'm claiming any great shakes as a detective, just common sense really, but I determined that the quickest way would be to use the index in About John Ford, and look for the least common, or least famous, actors names or place names. Where there were only a few occurrences of a name it was relatively quick to locate the draft pages and reference them in my cataloguing. Now, this may not be interesting to everyone, but somehow to me, this job was immensely satisfying - I guess that's why I'm an archivist!
Another problem I encountered was due to my less than all encompassing knowledge of John Ford's films. By this I must confess that prior to cataloguing this material I had only seen one Ford film, The Quiet Man. So I started attending screenings for John Izod's class 'Genre in Hollywood: The Western' (the benefits of working in a University!) . I have now seen, and enjoyed, My Darling Clementine, Stagecoach, and Iron Horse. Only a drop in the ocean as far as the number of John Ford films but it has helped with the cataloguing. It didn't help me much though when I came across a file with four black&white photographs of stills from John Ford films. With so many films to choose from, and having seen so few of them, I was having real trouble trying to identify them. So, rather than spend huge amounts of time going through images on IMDb from all his films, I decided to call in the cavalry (excuse the bad pun!). I e-mailed Charles Barr, a Professor of Film at University College Dublin and a John Ford expert (Charles Barr gave a very interesting paper About the John Ford Archive at our conference in September). Charles was able to identify the images for me, including the photograph of Charley Grapewin, from 'Tobacco Road' (1941) which I've included here.
N.B. John Ford's papers are held at the Lilly Library, Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
About John Ford is a very interesting mixture of critical analysis of the films of John Ford, mixed with Anderson's personal reminiscences of his meetings with John Ford, and interviews he conducted with various people who worked with Ford. Anderson's admiration of John Ford began in 1946 when he first saw My Darling Clementine. It continued through his reviews and articles about Ford in Sequence, his meetings with Ford over the years, and two television programmes: an Omnibus two-part programme on Ford narrated by Anderson (1992) ; and a Channel Four programme (1987) , where Anderson gave a 'masterclass' to a group of students about the art of film-making through the example of My Darling Clementine
The boxes relating to About John Ford contain: notes made by Anderson on Ford's films; press cuttings re: John Ford; early drafts of the book; correspondence with friends, colleague's and family of Ford; correspondence with publishers; correspondence with readers and critics; promotional material for the book; and reviews of the book.
The first big piece of detective work was with the early drafts of the book. There were some pages paper clipped together which obviously ran as a section (anything from 2 pages to 32 pages long), but there were no page numbers or chapter headings to work out where in the published version of the book they relate to. The first decision I had to make was, do I take the time to locate each of these draft sections in the published book? Well, I quickly decided that yes, it was worth the time to do this as it would be of value to future researchers, and it's always interesting to see what remains and what is changed from draft to published version. So then, how to work out where all these pages were located in the published book? Not that I'm claiming any great shakes as a detective, just common sense really, but I determined that the quickest way would be to use the index in About John Ford, and look for the least common, or least famous, actors names or place names. Where there were only a few occurrences of a name it was relatively quick to locate the draft pages and reference them in my cataloguing. Now, this may not be interesting to everyone, but somehow to me, this job was immensely satisfying - I guess that's why I'm an archivist!
Another problem I encountered was due to my less than all encompassing knowledge of John Ford's films. By this I must confess that prior to cataloguing this material I had only seen one Ford film, The Quiet Man. So I started attending screenings for John Izod's class 'Genre in Hollywood: The Western' (the benefits of working in a University!) . I have now seen, and enjoyed, My Darling Clementine, Stagecoach, and Iron Horse. Only a drop in the ocean as far as the number of John Ford films but it has helped with the cataloguing. It didn't help me much though when I came across a file with four black&white photographs of stills from John Ford films. With so many films to choose from, and having seen so few of them, I was having real trouble trying to identify them. So, rather than spend huge amounts of time going through images on IMDb from all his films, I decided to call in the cavalry (excuse the bad pun!). I e-mailed Charles Barr, a Professor of Film at University College Dublin and a John Ford expert (Charles Barr gave a very interesting paper About the John Ford Archive at our conference in September). Charles was able to identify the images for me, including the photograph of Charley Grapewin, from 'Tobacco Road' (1941) which I've included here.
LA/4/3/10/3, Still from Tobacco Road
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives
N.B. John Ford's papers are held at the Lilly Library, Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Paper published on audience reception to Lindsay Anderson's 'Britannia Hospital', examined through material in the Anderson Archive
Back in May I wrote about a conference I went to in Edinburgh in March, where I presented a paper examining the relationship between Lindsay Anderson and his audiences, based on archival evidence in the Lindsay Anderson Collection relating to Britannia Hospital (1982). The Edinburgh International Film Audiences Conference was organised by Ailsa Hollinshead, Lecturer in Sociology at Edinburgh Napier University. A selection of papers from the conference have now been published in the online film journal Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies.
Well, I'm pleased to say that the paper which I presented, which I co-authored with Karl Magee (with thanks to John Izod and Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard for their help) is part of the selection of papers published in Volume 6 of the journal. I really enjoyed the conference and thought all the papers were really interesting so it was great to get the chance to re-read some of them in the journal.
I've included the abstract from our article below and you can read the article here:
Britannia Hospital was the final part of a trilogy of films directed by Lindsay Anderson which started so successfully with If…. in 1968 and continued with O Lucky Man in 1973. However, Britannia Hospital, released in 1982, was condemned by the critics and largely ignored by the public, a disappointing end to the trilogy. This paper is going to look at aspects of the relationship between the director and his audience by examining the strains exerted on this relationship by the promotion and critical reception of Britannia Hospital. The Lindsay Anderson Archive at the University of Stirling provides the main source material for this through: Anderson’s correspondence with friends, fans and critics; ideas for the advertising campaign for the film; and correspondence with the distribution companies.
Well, I'm pleased to say that the paper which I presented, which I co-authored with Karl Magee (with thanks to John Izod and Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard for their help) is part of the selection of papers published in Volume 6 of the journal. I really enjoyed the conference and thought all the papers were really interesting so it was great to get the chance to re-read some of them in the journal.
I've included the abstract from our article below and you can read the article here:
Britannia Hospital was the final part of a trilogy of films directed by Lindsay Anderson which started so successfully with If…. in 1968 and continued with O Lucky Man in 1973. However, Britannia Hospital, released in 1982, was condemned by the critics and largely ignored by the public, a disappointing end to the trilogy. This paper is going to look at aspects of the relationship between the director and his audience by examining the strains exerted on this relationship by the promotion and critical reception of Britannia Hospital. The Lindsay Anderson Archive at the University of Stirling provides the main source material for this through: Anderson’s correspondence with friends, fans and critics; ideas for the advertising campaign for the film; and correspondence with the distribution companies.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Letter to Lillian Hellman in the Lindsay Anderson Archive
Sometimes you come across a letter so unexpected that it just lights up the whole day. This happened to me on Friday whilst cataloguing a series of material in the Lindsay Anderson Collection related to a book he wrote, About John Ford. It's been an incredibly interesting section of material to catalogue anyway, containing transcripts of interviews Anderson carried out with Henry Fonda, Dudley Nichols, and Harry Carey Jr; various handwritten drafts of Anderson's book; and lots of reviews of John Ford films.
The letter which made my day on Friday was Lindsay Anderson writing to Lillian Hellman. It came as a real surprise to me as I didn't know that they had met. Although I had heard of Hellman's plays it was actually through her autobiographical book Pentimento that I first got to know about her. I know she is a controversial figure who is said to have invented her biography to varying degrees, depending on which critic you believe, but she was such a wonderfully strong character that I can't help but admire her. There is also a letter in the same file which Lillian Hellman wrote to Anderson in which she says 'It would give me great pleasure if you were ever interested in directing it[The Little Foxes]' (Lillian Hellman writing to Lindsay Anderson, 29/04/1981) - I wish that this had happened!
The Lillian Hellman papers are at the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas.
The letter which made my day on Friday was Lindsay Anderson writing to Lillian Hellman. It came as a real surprise to me as I didn't know that they had met. Although I had heard of Hellman's plays it was actually through her autobiographical book Pentimento that I first got to know about her. I know she is a controversial figure who is said to have invented her biography to varying degrees, depending on which critic you believe, but she was such a wonderfully strong character that I can't help but admire her. There is also a letter in the same file which Lillian Hellman wrote to Anderson in which she says 'It would give me great pleasure if you were ever interested in directing it[The Little Foxes]' (Lillian Hellman writing to Lindsay Anderson, 29/04/1981) - I wish that this had happened!
Section of a letter from Lindsay Anderson to Lillian Hellman, LA/4/3/16/8
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives
The Lillian Hellman papers are at the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
