Latest news with #documentarydrama
BBC News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Kent-based film The War Game won an Oscar despite a BBC ban
A 1965 film depicting the impact of a nuclear strike on Britain, banned because it was "too horrifying", was finally aired 40 years ago before going on to win an Peter Watkins recruited about 350 amateur actors from Kent to make the BBC documentary drama The War Game, but the broadcaster initially refused to air film won an Oscar in 1967 before the BBC eventually screened it on 31 July, 1985."I quickly realised I was in the presence of a genius," said Michael Banks, an extra in the film. "Peter Watkins was an innovator." The War Game presents a hypothetical future where war breaks out and a nuclear missile airbursts over Kent, overwhelming hospitals and creating food BBC's then head of documentaries, Huw Wheldon, said the "political hot potato" was approved and he was impressed with the result. However, Mr Wheldon had an issue with a statement in the film from a bishop who said "we must learn to love the bomb". He also did not like a scene where a policeman was seen "mercy killing" dying people."I simply did not believe that anybody would get policemen to do it," the former head of documentaries Wheldon labelled it an "anti-police statement" and said when he flagged his concerns to director Peter Watkins he went "through the roof". Much of the filming took place at Grand Shaft Barracks in Dover, an army base that was in the process of being demolished at the time. Phil Eyden, whose late mother Christine was in the film, said mattresses were set out for extras to "hurl themselves onto" after they were hit with a blast of Eyden, who maintains the Dover site as a volunteer, added that some extras acting as casualties "actually had Rice Krispies glued to their faces and then sprayed a dark colour to simulate burn injuries". Mr Banks, a retired theatre maker from Dover, said working on the film influenced his arts career."I approached it as any 17-year-old schoolboy would, as a chance to get your hands on weapons," he said."By day two, our attitude began to change, because we realised the visceral nature of what was being filmed."Glynis Greenland, who was in the film, said she was part of a group of women taken off set to "scream on cue in the background" to add to the sense of terror. She said she did "muck up" one shot as she opened her eyes while pretending to be dead."They carried me all the way on this stretcher with my eyes shut and I thought they'd finished so I opened my eyes and the camera was right over me," she BBC commissioned the film but later said it was "too horrifying for the medium of broadcast". Declassified Cabinet Office papers later revealed Harold Wilson's government pressured the corporation to suppress the Norman Brook, the BBC's chairman at the time and former secretary to the cabinet, wrote to the serving cabinet secretary, saying: "I have seen the film, and I can say it has been produced with considerable restraint."But, the subject is necessarily alarming and the showing of the film might well have a significant effect on public attitudes to the policy of the nuclear deterrent."It seems to me the government should have an opportunity of expressing a view about this."Speaking 17 years after the film was made, the BBC Director General in 1965 Hugh Carleton Greene said: "The decision not to show it was shared between Lord Norman Brook and myself."The decision was not made against my wish - I was more shocked by the programme than he was."The basis of the decision was not a political one. I could not face the responsibility of putting a programme on air that was so shocking." 'Awkward issues' for government Prof John Cook, from Glasgow Caledonian University, said: "It wasn't so much that it was horrific compared to other scenes of violence on television."It was more the fact that it raised all sorts of awkward issues around the adequacy of Britain's civil defence."Prof Cook said The War Game still had a powerful effect on audiences, as its themes of war and destruction were still relevant."I show it to schoolchildren today and they still are wowed by it," he said.
New York Times
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Il Dono' Review: Slow Living
In the opening scene of Michelangelo Frammartino's documentary-drama 'Il Dono,' the electric chime of a cellphone ring feels like a freak intrusion from another realm. At first, we watch from a fixed distance as an old farmer does yard work with a couple of young men, their actions unfolding in what feels like real time. Then there's the ring, which would seem innocuous enough were we not already so immersed in the man's rural existence: the birdsong, the trill of insects. When he picks up the device left behind by one of his young helpers, he treats it like an alien object. It's the first time he's ever seen such a gadget. 'Il Dono' premiered in Europe in 2003, but its recent restoration has occasioned its long-delayed arrival to New York. Serendipitously so, as the film's slow, meditative rhythms offer a reprieve from citygoers daily grinds — should they be willing to stash away that screen and lock into a much more languorous, almost mystical wavelength. Like Frammartino's other films, 'Le Quattro Volte' and 'Il Buco,' 'Il Dono' is set around his family's hometown in the mountainous Italian region of Calabria. The almost wordless film follows the quotidian lives of two people: the old man, played by the director's grandfather, Angelo Frammartino; and an unstable young woman who reluctantly exchanges sex for car rides around town. Despite the region's visual magnificence — its winding cobblestone roads and rolling hills — there's a melancholic emptiness to each of Frammartino's striking compositions, accented by the deliberate, solitary movements of its few (mostly aging) inhabitants. The young woman's story tells us that survival means escape, but otherwise 'Il Dono' manages to strike a balance between damnation and idolatry of its medieval setting. We're sucked in, enraptured, even as we feel its lives fading away. Il DonoNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters.
