October
28A Forgotten Film Giant
Savannah – Film festivals are always in pursuit of the hot new film and the hot new celebrity, but they also offer the opportunity to re-examine the work of talents of the past. This is especially important to the sharply run Savannah Film Festival, which is a rarity in that it is essentially run by a college -- the Savannah College of Art and Design.The focus of an evening’s retrospective here was near-forgotten filmmaker-provocateur, Lindsay Anderson, who was an icon in the English film community in the’60s and ‘70s but never achieved the panache in Hollywood of a John Schlesinger or Tony Richardson. Yet Anderson’s seminal films included “If,” about a revolution in a prep school, “O Lucky Man!” about a coffee salesman and “This Sporting Life.”
Here in Savannah to explore Anderson’s work and show his documentary about him was Malcolm McDowell, the British actor who starred in Anderson’s early work, then went on to give memorable performances in “A Clockwork Orange” and other works.
In his early 20s, McDowell was perfect casting for the films of that epoch – a good looking kid who embodied “attitude” and whose angular face was at once surly and cerebral.Working with Anderson, the two created “If,” a vivid metaphor for the overthrow of Britain’s ruling class as told through its school children. The Anderson-McDowell partnership was perfect for its time – McDowell was sharp-tongued but convivial, Anderson was irritable and pedantic. They won the big prize at Cannes and a deal at Warner Bros. to go with it, which Anderson scorned.
Though Anderson resisted Hollywood and its emissaries, he venerated John Ford and doted on westerns and other Hollywood fare. When Schlesinger hit it big with “Midnight Cowboy,” Anderson scolded him as a “sell-out.” Anderson continued to make films that were very British (“Britannia Hospital”) and insisted he was dealing with society as it really was, not Hollywood’s perception of it.
McDowell himself ended up moving to Ojai, in the mid ‘80s and became a brilliant working actor – he kills Capt. Kirk in “Star Trek Generations,” played a talent agency chief on “Entourage,” the Murdoch-like conglomerator in “In Good Company” and starred on TV opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in Harold Pinter’s “The Collection.”
But for him and others of that period, the explosion of British cinema in the mid-‘60s remains a golden moment of optimism, defiance and remarkable achievement.
Program note: Both McDowell and I received Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Savannah Film Festival, which continues through this week.
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