The Tales of Hoffmann
A Study of the Film
by Monk Gibbon
Saturn Press, 1951
An extract from Monk Gibbon's 1951 book "The Tales of Hoffmann"
which, I think, wonderfully describes how The Archers worked as
a team.
Steve
Chapter 7
Tackling the problem
I have dedicated this book not only to the two men who made the film but
to their unit which helped them to make it. Only those who have seen a film
unit at work can form an adequate idea of the complexity of the whole
organisation. It appears to run on oiled wheels, if it all looks as easy
as the proverbial "falling off a log", that is because everything and
everyone has been tuned up to concert pitch long ago.
No one, therefore, observing anyone in the vicinity of a film set should
jump to the hasty conclusion that he is doing nothing. There are no
supernumeraries. Everyone has his particular function. The dozens of
overalled and shirt-sleeved technicians scramble about in the chain-hung
gangways far aloft, awaiting Bill Wall's stentorian shout "Light 'em up!",
and if one of the huge arc lamps, which look like a battery of searchlights
ready for a Zeppelin raid, and from which one can see the heat rising all
the time, should suddenly splutter, go on fire and have to be hastily put
out, after a little sizzling carbon has descended upon our heads, they
are there to see that something is done immediately about the matter.
And if the electrical staff appears to carry out their functions upon one
single order, the scene-builders and stage-dressers seem to function upon
a system of no orders at all. Everyone seems so clear upon what exactly
is needed that no matter what the job is they always appear engaged
upon a routine piece of work.
Interruption, fuss, mere garrulity, is the unforgivable sin, and a healthy
tradition has killed the mere suggestion of them long ago.
All this, of course, comes back directly to the two men whose unit it is,
and whose partnership has been so successful despite the fact that they
seem - superficially - to be the almost complete antithesis of one
another.
Of the two partners Powell is the easier to define. One might say that
he is as much the director as Massine is the dancer. All his energy is
directed towards a single end. Son of a retired army officer,
educated at King's School, Canterbury, and later at Dulwich College,
Powell found his real metier when he went to join his father in the
south of France and - so he says - secured his entrée to a film
studio by undertaking the arduous responsibility of mopping the marks
of an actress's feet from the studio floor each time she crossed the set.
The post - again we only have his word for it - lasted one day, since
he broke a pile of priceless photographic plates in the course of it
and was promptly sacked. But he returned to the assault and was
re-engaged next day in a different capacity. Soon he had served his
apprenticeship as stills photographer, camera man, cutter, scenario
writer and even actor.
While he was going through these all-important metamorphoses on the way
to achieving directorship, his future partner, three years his senior,
was experiencing a rather similar sequence of vicissitudes on the far
side of Europe. Emeric Pressburger was born on December 5th, 1902, in Miskolz,
a little North Hungarian town. At Shepperton it used to amuse me sometimes to
think how widely apart the radii of the different individual careers ran out
from that one centre, the huge "silent stage" where we all met. Massines's
memories took him right back to Moscow and to the splendours of Imperial
Russia, and all the glories of the State Ballet at its zenith. Helpmann's
trail led back from Stratford-on-Avon and Covent Garden triumphs to Mount
Gambier in South Australia and to a momentary glimpse of Pavlova in Adelaide
on her last world tour by a young man who had already determined to become a
dancer. Moira's star hovered like a will-'o-the-wisp between Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe] and Scotland, Audran and Tcherina hailed
from France, Ashton from South America, Rounseville from Massachusetts, Ann
Ayars from California, Heckroth from Germany. The ends of the earth seemed to
have agreed to meet in this spot, and not the least interesting of these
memories would be the camera obscura of Pressburger's mind, going right back to
the days of the reign of Franz Josef.
Pressburger's early beginnings include Prague and Stuttgart universities,
extra pocket money earned playing the violin in cinemas, perhaps the original
source of his interest in films; then post-war Berlin as a youth of
twenty-one, with little knowledge of the German language and with even less
cash. Sometimes he slept in station waiting-rooms and on park benches;
sometimes a cousin entertained him by allowing him to sleep on the floor of
his room and hiding him in the wardrobe when the unpleasant landlady entered.
He turned to writing. He wrote short stories but his real ambition was to
write for the screen. Ten years later he was one of the most successful script
writers in Germany. In 1933 Hitler's accession to power sent him to France
where he wrote a number of scripts, and in 1935 he came to England, to restart
his career for the third time in a different language. Before long he was
under contract to Alexander Korda and then he met Michael Powell.
Together these two men have assembled their unit and have established the
tradition in which it so obviously flourishes. Both the members of the
partnership have the passion of the creative artist, the kind of passion which
made Balzac the despair of every printer whoever worked for him, since every
time a page was reset it might come back almost obliterated with further
corrections.
To see the unit at work is to watch a completely democratic spirit of
endeavour being put easily and naturally into practice. But though the mood of
the unit its discipline is as absolute as that of a public school. "If the
director of a theatre does not enjoy proper authority" wrote Stanislavsky, the
world-famous founder in 1898 of the Moscow Art Theatre, "the work of the
theatre will sooner or later come to a standstill." Powell is an autocrat in
his own fashion, an autocrat who can be utterly crushing in a single phrase;
but a happy autocrat who will next moment break into laughter and relax the
tension completely. Fundamentally the man is warm-hearted, genial and
extraordinarily vital, loving the work he is doing better than any possible
amusement, able to demand that hundred per cent loyalty from others which he
is willing to give to the job himself. He puts me in mind of Mathew Arnold's
line -
| "The young, light-hearted masters of the waves" |
for he might well be called -
| "The young, light-hearted masters of the sound waves - and light waves." |
If Powell can be what the French call 'formidable', Pressburger although
silent and reserved is just as awe-inspiring in his own way. There is a touch
of the 'Grey Eminence' about the air of tense concentration with which he
enters the studio, takes up his position at the side of the set, and stands
there, hands in his pockets. He is a romantic, he loves literature as much as
his partner loves it. Books are the breath of life to him and he probably
prefers them to his fellow creatures, about whom he may feel - as has been
said of the poet Hardy - a perpetual noli me tangre. [Touch Me Not] Nevertheless, behind this reserved
individual's defence barrier is a fund of genuine kindness and sympathy and an
ability to show tactful understanding. Both partners have a fundamental
respect for those to whom they have given their confidence. I have known
Pressburger to say, when I criticised some minor feature of the film which
affected Hein's department and begged him to ask Hein to change it, "You may
be right; it is foreign to my own taste; but if I employ a designer I must
give him my confidence. I would not feel justified in asking him to change in
this particular instance." In the same way Tcherina can testify "J'aime le
travail avec Micky. C'est sa foi dans l'artiste et son talent que
j'admire!" [I like to work with Micky. It is his faith in
the artist and his talent which I admire!]
Pressburger's kindness and generosity transpire instantly when an occasion
arises to call them forth. He likes to hear the work of members of the unit
praised. When the dynamic personality of Micky is removed the unit seems to
find it easy to discuss points of interest in the film with him in a way they
could not do if they were dealing with the more mercurial temperament of his
partner.
The latter is hardly cast for the role of father confessor. Rather he is a
galvanic battery, a tidal wave, a volcano in full eruption. Powell, though
abrupt, has the fundamental humility of the true artist, as well as his
elation, and what is so reassuring about him is that he is the artist always,
working from the creative imagination outwards. I have only to look at his
bookshelves to know that he feeds his mind on fare chosen because it appeals
to the poet or the romanticist or to the individualist in him.
He does everything under the motive power of an intense and almost boyish
enthusiasm. That enthusiasm upholds everyone who works with him. They are
borne forward on it. His genius for film making has discovered an outlet which
it approves and the man is happy. His very step as he walks quickly towards
the studio from his car, with Bill Paton beside him, is the light springy step
of a man who thinks that life holds a number of very good moments and that
this - 7.45 a.m. and the day's work beginning - is one of them. If he is in
the studio the whole atmosphere feels different. His vitality seems to radiate
to all. His mere presence brings everyone up to concert pitch. Rotha says of
Charlie Chaplin, "An artist such as Chaplin can live only and have interest
alone, in the work upon which he is engaged for the moment. This work demands
intense concentration, as does that of any real film director. When Chaplin is
conceiving and producing a film it is disastrous for him to have any thoughts
but those related to that film in his mind." This might have been written of
Powell.
A unit is patriarchal. Its destinies hang on the success of its leaders. But
it would be equally true to say that interwoven with that destiny is the work
of every single contributing individual. The skill of an artist in make-up
like Constance Reeve, or Wally Schneidermann, or the work of Ivy Baker or
Joseph Shear, people responsible for costumes and wigs and all kinds of
minutiae, is an essential and highly important contribution to the total
effect, as anyone who has seen a good colour close-up on the screen must
realise. It is the realisation that this is so which helps to give the unit
its friendly democratic atmosphere.
I am lost, too, in admiration of the sheer technical excellence of all the
work done in the studio workshops, the copper cock; the colossal stag's horn
candelabra with the huge coloured figureheads which would delight e if I came
across them in a Danish folk museum. Heckroth's angel head motif has resulted
in lovely angelic faces which reappear on the light threefold screen. Later in
the scene, when Olympia is broken we see these faces with changed expressions,
drooping mouths and tear-stained cheeks. The huge swan harp, the settee
supported by the four white swans - all of these are helping to create the
mood and atmosphere of the scene. The inspiration is Hein's, the execution of
it is via art director Arthur Lawson, and the actual executant may be Beddoes
or Morgan, Lindegaard or the studio modeller, Wilkinson, who has delighted all
by the work he has done for Hoffmann. He likes Hein, likes working
under him and says to him, "You know, it is a pleasure these days to come to
the studio every morning." And Hein likes the idea of artistic collaboration.
He is not an isolationist. Rather his spirit is one in which the Gothic
cathedrals were built.
Wilkinson has excelled himself in the great sculptured group of sleeping and
drunken revellers after the orgy. The group is carried out in plaster painted
a deep ochre colour and the steps are picked out with triple lines of gold. It
is a triumph of impressionistic modelling, carrying out exactly the intention
of Hein's design for the aftermath of a Bacchanalia. The figures in successive
groups, one below the other, are huddled together on the jetty stairs in every
attitude of relaxed abandon. Their hair is gilded and they lie, drowned in
deep slumber, with heads thrown back, with tortured open mouths, a tumbled
chaos of humanity, knees hunched up, heads propped against the nearest stone
or sunk forward upon the chest, an arm or hand flung out to rest lightly upon
a higher step or upon the limb of a companion.
The tragedy of 'Wilkie's' work is that it will be destroyed in spite of its
artistic merit. It is made for an occasion. This is its Raison d'etre
and, as soon as it has been used, it becomes in the same instant superfluous.
I lament this, one day, to Heckroth and he agrees, and then says thoughtfully,
"Yes. All the boys who really like bashing things up should be made
members of the demolition squads in studios. That will keep them happy!" It is
as though he had suggested a new solution for racial pugnacity.
Equally ephemeral but equally effective are Hein's guest puppets with their
fantastically coloured wigs, their eyes of small, petalled, artificial
flowers, their drooping dandy moustaches of twisted feathers, their tail coats
and stilted dignity, their crinolines and simpering sweetness. These life-size
puppets, the work of Terry Morgan, are simply full of a freakish personality
of their own. I cannot even see them hanging in Morgan's studio with their
dustsheets around them without feeling that these are real people, undergoing
ignominious humiliation, a humiliation as distasteful to myself as it must be
to Hein, Beddoes, Morgan and Ivy baker, who have created them and lived with
them for weeks. As for those same puppets, once let on them on the set, allow
them to take their places on the merry-go-round, and with the first bars of
the famous waltz coming from the play-back they take immediate possession of
the ballroom with an almost grotesque dignity and seem to await ardently the
moment when they will revolve with all the stately ceremony of mid-Victorian
devotees of La Valse. Incidentally, they are launched on their career
by burly technicians, elderly men who break into a trot and give a final spin
to the wound-up white cords and a final push to the crinolines and tail-coats
as the merry-go-round gets under weigh, one more striking example of how
making a film is a matter of collaboration.
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