David Rudkin – Page 5 – { feuilleton }

The Horror Fields

Cover art: In the Palm of the Absinthe Woods by Aria/ShePaintsWithBlood.

Last year I was asked to contribute a piece of fiction to a rural horror special of Morpheus Tales. In time for the Spring Equinox, The Horror Fields, edited by Matt Leyshon, is now unleashed. Inside there’s my short story, Figures in a Landscape, plus contributions from Rosalie Parker, Don Webb, Edward Pearce, Murphy Edwards & Brian Rosenberger, James Everington, Richard Farren Barber, Ian Hunter, Justin Aryiku, and Rhys Hughes.

Two editions are available at Lulu: digest-sized, and A4 size; both editions are discounted until the end of the month. There should also be a Kindle edition soon so when I have details I’ll mention them here. I’d recommend reading this in a field at night but here in the northern hemisphere it’s still a little too cold for that.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Robin Redbreast by John Bowen
• Red Shift by Alan Garner
• Children of the Stones
• Penda’s Fen by David Rudkin

Robin Redbreast by John Bowen

This TV play from 1970 was one of the films I watched last year at Halloween, a very poor bootleg copy from the BBC archives with a timecode running away in one corner. So it’s been a surprise to find the BFI releasing it so soon after on DVD. I never saw Robin Redbreast originally, and hadn’t even heard about it until a friend with a similar taste for the outré and neglected told me to look out for it. The main reason for the BFI picking out a rather obscure Play for Today for reissue has been its rising cult status in the sub-genre of British rural or folk horror. Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973) are the more notable examples, although in tone and presentation Robin Redbreast is closer to Nigel Kneale’s Murrain (1975), another TV play that’s currently available as a bonus on the Beasts DVD collection.

The usual plot of this kind of drama concerns the arrival of an outsider in a rural community whose presence arouses suspicion and conflict. Robin Redbreast reverses this by having its metropolitan outsider, Norah, move to the country only to find her neighbours are welcoming to the point of being interfering. In time the interference starts to become oppressive, and unfortunately this is one of those dramas where to reveal much more would be to spoil the unwinding of the story. There’s nothing supernatural here, like The Wicker Man a mystery grades in its final moments to horror. With little in the way of cinematic atmosphere it’s left to a detailed script and the performances to do the work. All the leads are excellent, especially Anna Cropper as the beleaguered Norah, and Bernard Hepton as the quietly sinister Fisher.

Bernard Hepton.

Robin Redbreast was originally filmed and broadcast in colour but the BBC had a habit of wiping many of their tapes after broadcast so what we’re left with is a telerecording on 16mm black-and-white film. This isn’t ideal but it does have the effect of giving all the scenes more consistency. Like most dramas of the period, interior shots were done in the electronic studio while exteriors were shot on film, a technique which was taken for granted at the time but which looks uneven today. The DVD is still superior to the bootleg copy that was doing the rounds. In one of the extras writer John Bowen discusses the origin of the play, explaining how a BBC editor was horrified by a plot detail concerning female contraception. This led to the script being dropped by the suspense series for which it was written, and subsequently taken up by director James MacTaggart for the new Play for Today strand. Play for Today ran for 14 years, producing many impressive dramas but mostly offering a solid diet of social realism. Robin Redbreast is one of a handful of stranger works that crept onto the screen, along with the peerless Penda’s Fen (1974), and Alan Garner’s adaptation of his novel, Red Shift (1978). Now that the BFI has exhausted the BBC’s more obvious ghost and horror fare I’m hoping that some of the less generic films may find a new audience on DVD.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Red Shift by Alan Garner
• Children of the Stones
• Penda’s Fen by David Rudkin

Red Shift by Alan Garner

“I know things, and feel things, but the wrong way round. That’s me: all the right answers at none of the right times. I see and can’t understand. I need to adjust my spectrum, pull myself away from the blue end. I could do with a red shift. Galaxies and Rectors have them. Why not me?”

Red Shift by Alan Garner

More fields in England. It’s good to find this TV film on YouTube since I’ve been telling people about it for years. Red Shift (1973) is classed as the last in Alan Garner’s initial run of fantasy novels, although it’s arguable whether it’s a work of fantasy at all. The themes are typical Garner: the Cheshire landscape, and the long hand of the historic past reaching into the present. Instead of a single story there are three interwoven narratives taking place in different eras: Roman Britain, with an invading legion (based on the lost Ninth Legion) being hunted down by the natives; the English Civil War, and the true story of a massacre that took place at a village church; the present (1973) with teenager Tom struggling to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend, Jan, who’s leaving to study as a nurse. Tom’s narrative is the principal one but each thread contains echoes of the others. Connecting them all is a stone axe head buried by one of the Roman soldiers which is found by a villager hundreds of years later then rediscovered in turn by Tom. It’s a fascinating novel which prefigures Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire (1996) for the way a single location is examined at different periods of history.

The 75-minute film of Red Shift (1978) was made for the BBC’s Play For Today strand, as was that cult item of mine, Penda’s Fen (1974), and the two have much in common. Writer David Rudkin talked about the “layer upon layer of inheritance” in the Malvern Hills where Penda’s Fen is set, a description that could equally apply to Red Shift. Both plays have intelligent teenage boys as their central characters, and both are demanding rites-of-passage dramas. The great Alan Clarke directed Penda’s Fen while Red Shift was directed by John Mackenzie, better known for (among other things) The Long Good Friday (1980). Garner and Mackenzie collaborated on the screenplay for Red Shift which necessarily condenses the novel. I’d say it does this successfully but then I’ve read the book so may be too familiar with the story as a whole. Success or not, this is another remarkable piece of television drama which you can’t imagine being made today. But it is on YouTube, and for that we may be grateful. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Children of the Stones
• Penda’s Fen by David Rudkin

Brecht and Bowie

While David Bowie is still making the news it’s worth revisiting Baal, an hour-long BBC TV adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play broadcast in 1981. Bowie stars as the title character, a thoroughly disagreeable poet and café singer who ruins the lives of those around him. This caused a stir at the time more for Bowie’s presence than for the content although Brecht wasn’t exactly a popular choice for evening entertainment. Prior to this most of Bowie’s acting had been in films, with his television appearances being limited to song performances or chat show discussions. The Man Who Fell to Earth aside, I’ve been somewhat dismissive of Bowie’s acting at times, his accent and the sheer weight of his musical persona overwhelm whatever role he’s given, but he’s good in this. He throws himself into the role, and is more convincing than I remember him being a couple of years later in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

For many people Bowie will be the sole attraction in Baal but for me there’s also the presence of the great Alan Clarke as director and co-adaptor (with John Willett). Clarke directed the cult TV play Penda’s Fen in 1974, and was later responsible for a handful of other notable TV films including Scum, Made in Britain, Road, Elephant (1989), and The Firm, all of which are distinguished by a singular intensity and dramatic power the likes of which is usually only found in the best feature films. Compared to those plays Baal is a minor piece, filmed entirely in the studio, and made deliberately stagey to honour Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt. The cameras keep their distance from the performers, and Brechtian distance is also achieved by the use of split-screen, title cards, and Bowie’s direct addresses to the viewer. If this seems like challenging material for a general audience (never mind the singer’s fans) consider that Baal was broadcast in primetime on BBC 1 when there were only three television channels in the UK. This would not happen today.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penda’s Fen by David Rudkin

“Who is this who is coming?”

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968).

He blew tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles round. It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the power (which many scents possess) of forming pictures in the brain. He saw quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh wind blowing, and in the midst a lonely figure—how employed, he could not tell. Perhaps he would have seen more had not the picture been broken by the sudden surge of a gust of wind against his casement, so sudden that it made him look up, just in time to see the white glint of a sea-bird’s wing somewhere outside the dark panes.

MR James, Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.

One of the alleged highlights of this year’s Christmas television from the BBC was a new adaptation of an MR James ghost story, Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad. The film starred John Hurt and came with the same truncated title, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, as was used for Jonathan Miller’s 1968 version, also a BBC production. The story title comes originally from a poem by Robert Burns. The new work was adapted by Neil Cross and directed by Andy de Emmony, and I describe it as an alleged highlight since I wasn’t impressed at all by the drama, the most recent attempt by the BBC to continue a generally creditable tradition of screening ghost stories at Christmas. Before I deal with my disgruntlement I’ll take the opportunity to point the way to some earlier derivations. (And if you don’t want the story spoiled, away and read it first.)

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