Monitor classics 1

Working for the BBC´s Monitor arts programme Ken was allowed to develop from 15 minute shorts to longer films, and he produced some of his best work in this period. He had a professional organisation backing him up, but also had to cope with limited acting resources. His inventiveness is remarkable and he combined highly artistic films with wide commercial success: he became the most sought after documentary director. Says Russell we made films on living artists and when there were no more of them left we turned to making films about dead artists.

1961 Portrait of a Soviet composer

Russell's first full length television film about the composer Prokofief.  The producer Huw Wheldon initially did not want actors in the documentaries. Russell gradually worked around this, initially for the Prokofief film showing only the hands and back of the actor, and once the actor reflected in water.  Interestingly this only applies to the actor playing Prokofief.  The actor playing the critic is shown in full and even talks in one scene.

The famous mirror scene converts two actors into a crowd.  At one point an actor is arguing with his own image in the mirror.   Russell uses the same trick in other films.

The film includes Prokofief´s music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, which Russell parodied in Billion Dollar Brain. Similarly the historical footage of the Russian revolution, is also Eisenstein's film Oktober. Eisenstein used actors to recreate history- Russell was not yet allowed to do so.  The Music Lovers shows heavy influence of Portrait.

1962 Pop goes the Easel

A biography of four pop artists (art not music). The title is a pun on the expression pop goes the weasel.  This was the first documentary to treat pop-art as a serious movement rather than as a joke. Unfortunately the four artists Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake and Peter Phillips and  have not stood the test of time with only Blake retaining minor acclaim.  The four artists, who seem to live in a sort of commune, play with cowboy guns (edited with a cowboy firing back) or try and fail to look natural in front of the camera as they discuss their work.

The programme is introduced by Huw Wheldon and after this formal beginning it moves into mixtures of art and music (Buddy Holly etc), the film itself very much in pop art style.

The only really good scene is a dream sequence where Pauline Boty is chased round corridors by a woman in a wheelchair. The dark glasses and hands pulling the wheels forward (compare Tommy) are genuinely menacing.

Restricted by black-and-white Russell handles the colour artworks well, but compared with for example Savage Messiah the subjects are just too boring to carry the film and end up looking very pretentious. Tony Hancock's The Rebel from 1961 covers the same material satirically (with Oliver Reed as one of the artists).  The party sequence is copied later in Song of Summer and there is a scene playing pinballs (Tommy).

Glimpses of the future: Pauline Boty looks out the window like Glenda Jackson at the end of The Music Lovers, and sings I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles as if she was in The Boyfriend.  All four go to a wrestling match which presages Women in Love.  The photography throughout is beautiful, black and white atmospheric imagery reflecting Russell's background as a photographer.

 
Camera is by Ken Higgins (Elgar, French Dressing), editor is Alan Tyrer (Elgar).  Derek Boshier would later appear in Dante's Inferno playing Millais, and Pauline Boty would appear in Bartok, more painters turned Russell actors.  In a revival of the film twenty years on, the three male artists discuss the film- Pauline died a few years after the making of Pop Goes the Easel.

Site visitor Adam Smith adds (thanks Adam):

You mention the 1991 revival which was orchestrated to coincide with a big Pop retrospective exhibition. One result of all this was a modest Pauline Boty revival, granting her long-overdue recognition. Not a star yet perhaps, but certainly recognised in the Pop world. Peter Blake has always enjoyed a wider currency, and is certainly no has-been. Peter Phillip's work is better-known than you might think (the cover of The Cars' Heartbeat City album is typical of his highly distinctive and collectable work). Derek Boshier was refreshed thanks to a big 60s exhibition at the Barbican in 1993, but appears in all the textbooks. So I think you can afford to rate them all a little higher in your episode summary now.