This new book by elder statesman of independent cinema Kevin Brownlow tells the story of the making of the 1975 film Winstanley, which he co-directed with Andrew Mollo. It contains a large number of stills from the film and photographs of the amazing location at Churt in Surrey, and of the (largely amateur) cast and crew and their families at work and at play during the filming.
Before describing the book I have to declare an interest: I was the editor at UKA Press for the second edition of How It Happened Here, Kevin's book about the making of what was probably his best-known film It Happened Here, and he asked me to work with him again on this one. I have also heard that my IMDb.com newsgroup review of Winstanley is to be used as the description of the film in the accompanying brochure when the British Film Institute issue it on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 27th, so I can not claim neutrality where either the book or the film is concerned.
Kevin started to make It Happened Here with a borrowed 16mm camera in 1956 when he was 18 years old and working in the cutting room of a London production company. He paired-up with Andrew Mollo (then 16) and for six years they struggled to complete the film, virtually without a budget, finding actors, actresses, locations, props and backing as they went along. It is generally recognised as the best amateur film ever made. The film was about the German invasion and occupation of England in the Second World War, which of course never happened. The English are portrayed as collaborating with the Nazis in much the same way as the French did, and cooperating in the Nazi's programme of genocide and racial 'purification'. The youthful and perhaps naïve Brownlow and Mollo used genuine British fascists as actors in the film and gave then carte blanche to state their views. The film industry (particularly in America, and most of all in New York) as well as various Jewish organisations and others were deeply shocked by the brief sequence in which the fascists appeared, and tried to get the film taken off and banned. Eight years after they started, in 1964, the film was given international distribution by United Artists, but with the controversial six minute sequence removed. Brownlow and Mollo tried to explain that the film was profoundly anti-fascist and anti-war, and that they had allowed Frank Bennet (British fascist) and his friends to condemn themselves out of their own mouths, but the damage had been done and they had to live with the stigma of being branded fascist filmmakers for decades afterwards – it is doubtful if their careers ever really recovered.
Kevin became a film historian and documentary director, and wrote The Parade's Gone By..., the definitive history of early Hollywood, which he also made into an award-winning TV series, Hollywood, and highly revered books on people like Charlie Chaplin, David Lean and Mary Pickford.
In 1973, the passing years and the eminence of their talent having won them at least partial redemption from the industry's black list, Brownlow and Mollo teamed up again with direct backing from the BFI to make a film of the life of the 17th century leader of the Digger movement and arguably the world's first communist theorist, Gerrard Winstanley. The resulting film Winstanley made little impact commercially but quickly became a be3acon for far left political thinkers and an inspiration for anarchist and hippy communes worldwide.
Most people know very little of the Diggers, except perhaps from the Leon Rosselson song The World Turned Upside Down, popularised in a rock version by Billy Bragg. The facts are that in April 1649, amid the chaos churned-up by the English Civil War, with Cromwell in charge and the country alight with all manner of social visions for the future, a band of about 40 Diggers inspired by Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard began to dig uncultivated common land on St. George's Hill near Cobham in Surrey. They built simple houses in which to live, sharing all their goods and produce in common. As word spread, and the privileged woke up to the implications of this tiny token action, the authorities turned hostile. The commune was dispersed by government troops, Winstanley and Everard arrested, tried, and heavily fined. Each new attempt to get the community started was crushed by violence, harassment and intimidation. Nevertheless, despite all the government opposition to the experiment and the hostility that was stirred-up against it, the Cobham colony lasted until 1651. The Surrey Diggers inspired other colonies in other parts of England, but ultimately none of them could withstand the forces mobilized against them. Winstanley's dream of a gentler, more just and happy world was not to be, or at least not yet. Three hundred-and-sixty years later we are still waiting, the vision perhaps more distant than ever.
The film, loosely based on David Caute's novel about the life of Winstanley Comrade Jacob, was made in black-and-white for a budget of £72,000, using one professional actor (Jerome Willis who plays General Fairfax) and the unpaid services of hundreds of enthusiastic amateurs and off-duty professional crew, working for nothing at weekends and between other engagements. This is the kind of loyalty that the Brownlow/Mollo partnership commands: people know that they will not be paid and the project will lose money and also that it will be among the proudest entries on their CVs.
Winstanley, Warts and All is written in the same engaging and self-deprecating style and inhabited by the same dry humour as Kevin's previous How It Happened Here, and takes the reader through all the triumphs and despair of low-budget filmmaking with just enough technical detail to bring the experience to life but without becoming 'technical'. A lot of the book is concerned with creative partnerships and how they operate, Brownlow and Mollo being as different in personality as they are in appearance but with strengths that fill-in for one another's weaknesses and a shared fanaticism for historical accuracy, both in terms of the details and the spirit of the times they portray. This is not just a practical account of the making ofa film, it is a personal 'confession' ofan artist's commitment to a project and the emotions that drive him in his attempt to 'conduct' the inevitably huge collection of people involved in the creation of a feature film so as to realise his artistic vision. Filmmaking perhaps more than any of the other arts is an irreducibly cooperative activity, and this book illustrates it on many levels, from the partnership between the two directorsto the business of organising a shoot and maintaining the support of backers and the sympathy of the reviewers, all mirrored in the radically cooperative spirit of the film's subject matter. For anybody contemplating amateur or professional filmmaking, or with an interest in either cinema or radical politics, this book is a 'must read'.
