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Abstract
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, representations of rural landscapes in British cinema were most notably found in what became termed the heritage film genre (as exemplified by A Room with a View). These films have often been critiqued for their alleged conservatism (political but also aesthetic) and their ideological perniciousness. But Bill Douglas’s epic film about the Tolpuddle martyrs, Comrades (1986) – uniquely for 1980s British cinema – incorporates a range of leftist aesthetic devices in order to mark the English rural landscape as a politicized space of socio-cultural conflict. The film foregrounds the fact that the English rural landscape has been the subject of a long and complex tradition of representation. But as it does this it also critiques the ideological nature of much of this representation. Therefore, this article argues that Comrades is evidently Brechtian in its desire to involve spectators in this important story of political struggle, and, as such, unlike many British cinematic representations of English rural landscape in the 1980s and 1990s, the film encourages intellectual curiosity in (and objective judgement on) the socio-cultural events taking place in the rural landscape.
Notes
1 Ruskin, Lectures on Art, 28.
2 Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, 1.
3 Sarah Cardwell argues that later film adaptations of Hardy such as Jude (Michael Winterbottom, 1996) and The Woodlanders (Phil Agland, 1997) follow Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd in the following respects: ‘They depict the rural as something with which the people work the land, appreciating its fertile, expansive beauty while simultaneously recognizing the potentially threatening power it holds over their livelihoods and subsistence.’ These films ‘thus present an alternative past and also a potential future – their representations are simultaneously “old” and “new.”’ See Cardwell, ‘Working the Land’, 31.
4 Cardwell, ‘Working the Land’, 23–24.
5 Uhde, ‘The Influence of Bertolt Brecht’s Theory of Distanciation On The Contemporary Cinema, Particularly on Jean-Luc Godard’, 28.
6 Uhde, ‘The Influence of Bertolt Brecht’s Theory of Distanciation’, 28.
7 Peter Jewell interviewed by Paul Newland, 23 February 2015.
8 See Quart, ‘In the Religion of the Market’, 22–29.
9 Forbes, ‘The Dark Side of the Landscape’, 35.
10 Derek Malcolm, The Guardian, 27 August 1987, 11.
11 David Robinson, The Times, 4 March 1987, 19.
12 Johnston, ‘The Magic Lanternist Show’, 14.
13 Quentin Falk, Mail on Sunday, 30 August 1987, 38.
14 Victoria Mather, Daily Telegraph, 27 August 1987, 8.
15 Sue Heal, Today, 28 August 1987, 27.
16 Philip French, The Observer, 30 August 1987, 16.
17 Marriott. ‘A Picture of the Future’, 18.
18 Marriott, ‘A Picture of the Future’, 19.
19 Marriott, ‘A Picture of the Future’, 19.
20 Wrathall, ‘Window on the World’, 20.
21 Andrew, ‘Bill of Rights’, 16.
22 Judith Williamson, New Statesman, 28 August 1987, 16.
23 Judith Williamson, New Statesman, 28 August 1987, 17.
24 Andrew, ‘Bill of Rights’, 15
25 Shaun Usher, Daily Mail, 28 August 1987, 26.
26 Alexander Walker, London Standard, 27 August 1987, 30.
27 Phillip Bergson, What’s On, 27 August 1987, 23.
28 Mantel, ‘Muddied Tolpuddle’, 34.
29 Bill Douglas in Johnston, ‘The Magic Lanternist Show’, 14.
30 Andrew, ‘Bill of Rights’, 16.
31 Peter Jewell interviewed by Paul Newland, 13 February 2015.
32 Peter Jewell interviewed by Paul Newland, 23 February 2015.
33 Peter Jewell interviewed by Paul Newland, 23 February 2015.
34 Charity, ‘Light Show: Bill Douglas’ Comrades’, 75.
35 Higson, ‘Re-Presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film’, 99. See also Vidal, Heritage Film, 8, and Cardwell, ‘Working the Land: Representations of Rural England in Adaptations of Thomas Hardy’s Novels’, 25.
36 Wollen, ‘Over Our Shoulders’, 179.
37 See Higson (Citation2006). Phil Powrie has located another strain of British heritage cinema, which he calls ‘alternative heritage’. These are exemplified by ‘the rite of passage film set in the past, focusing on child or adolescent protagonists, most of which appeared in the 1980s.’ They are set outside the ‘centre’ (London), and often feature a slowing of ‘freezing’ of the narrative. Alternative heritage ‘deflects us away from linear time to cyclical time […]’. Powrie, ‘On the Threshold Between Past and Present: “Alternative heritage”’, 325.
38 Vidal, Heritage Film, 9.
39 See Vidal, Heritage Film, 10. For a critique of the academic dismissal of heritage cinema, see Monk, ‘The British heritage-film debate revisited’, 176–98.
40 Hewison, The Heritage Industry, 10.
41 Wrathall, ‘Window on the World’, 20.
42 Forbes, ‘The Dark Side of the Landscape’, 35.
43 Lawrence, Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, 25.
44 Cardwell, ‘Working the Land: Representations of Rural England in Adaptations of Thomas Hardy’s Novels’, 21.
45 Eagleton, The English Novel: An Introduction, 192.
46 Caughie, ‘The way home’, 27.
47 Webb, ‘Bill Douglas Among the Philistines’, 32.
48 Dioramas (mobile theatre devices) were invented by Daguerre and Charles Marie Bouton. Their first exhibition was in London in 1823.
49 Wilson, ‘Comrades’, 260.
50 See Hallam with Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema, xiii.
51 MacCabe, ‘Realism and the Cinema’, 12.
52 Heath, ‘Lessons from Brecht’, 104.
53 Winship, ‘Comrades and Pre-Cinema at the Bill Douglas Centre’, sparksinelectricjelly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/comrades-and-pre-cinema-at-bill-douglas.html. (Accessed 5 November 2013).
54 Andrew, ‘Bill of Rights’, 16.
55 Winston, Technologies of Seeing.
56 See Petric, Constructionism in Film.
57 Forbes, ‘A Lanternist’s Tale’, 66.
58 Forbes, ‘The Dark Side of the Landscape’, 34; Petrie, ‘A Lanternist Revisited: The Making of ‘Comrades’’, 177. For more on Tyneham village see Bond, Tyneham: A Lost Heritage.
59 Brett, Dorset in Film, 47.
60 Wilson, ‘Comrades’, 260.
61 Peter Jewell interviewed by Paul Newland, 23 February 2015.
62 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 108.
63 Herrmann, British Landscape Painting of the 18th Century, 118–19.
64 Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology, 1.
65 Webb, ‘Bill Douglas Among the Philistines’, 30.
66 Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (BDC), University of Exeter.
67 Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (BDC).
68 Douglas’s film also has much in common with portrait painting. For example, Winship notices the focus on expressive faces in many shots reminiscent of the work of Dreyer, Bresson, and Bergman. Sequences such as the sharing of bread in the Stanfield house – through its enactment of suffering, sharing and sacrifice, and in its mise-en-scène and lighting – are also reminiscent of the work of Caravaggio. Moreover, Douglas notices the semantic and poetic power of objects – his storyboard (BDC) clearly states ‘Make a feature of the chairs to emphasise George’s sentiments.’
69 Christie, ‘History from beneath’, 84.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Paul Newland
Paul Newland is Reader in Film Studies at Aberystwyth University. He is author of British Films of the 1970s (Manchester University Press, 2013) and The Cultural Construction of London’s East End (Rodopi, 2008), and editor of British Rural Landscapes on Film (Manchester University Press, forthcoming) and Don’t Look Now: British Cinema in the 1970s (Intellect, 2010). He has published widely on constructions of space and place in film.