This week Neil Calloway looks at the career of an overlooked director…
Imagine a director who gave early roles to Ray Winstone, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, who had a film remade by Gus Van Sant, who gave Danny Boyle one of his first producing credits, and who inspired Paul Greengrass.
Alan Clarke was that director, and though he has gone sadly underappreciated, a new season of his films at the British Film Institute, as well as a re-release of his work on blu-ray and DVD, should go some way to restoring his reputation.
Clarke worked largely in television, making the sort of standalone films that gave Mike Leigh and Ken Loach their breaks but are sadly absent from TV nowadays. His films dealt with glue sniffing Neo Nazis, yuppies, football hooligans and the futile cycle of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland; in short, these weren’t the big screen escapist fantaises of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer or Steven Spielberg that dominated cinemas of the 1980s.
Clarke is probably most famous for Scum, his borstal set drama that featured Ray Winstone in only his second role. Originally shot as a TV film, it was banned by the BBC in 1977 and remade as a feature in 1979, where there was an attempt to ban it again. It remains one of the most iconic British films of the era, and set the standard for Winstone’s screen persona to this day.
Made in Britain, from 1982, follows a similar path. Tim Roth, in a debut performance he has never bettered, plays Trevor, an articulate, angry young man caught in the judicial system. The steadicam that follows Trevor – swastika tattoo on his forehead, years before Edward Norton had one on his chest in American History X – is obviously an influence on Paul Greengrass’s film-making style, and Trevor comes across as a more violent version of David Thewlis’s character in Naked, but ten years earlier, as he rages against the system.
The sex comedy Rita, Sue and Bob Too, a surprising hit in the US, was described as “Thatcher’s Britain with its knickers down”, and that’s what all Clarke films were; Britain, exposed. This wasn’t the Britain of Richard Curtis, Julian Fellowes and Merchant Ivory; it was the parts of Britain that everyone knows exist but nobody likes to talk about. Clarke deserves the same respect and position as a recorder of social realism as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.
The Firm – in which Gary Oldman plays a successful estate agent by day turned football hooligan at the weekend was remade by Nick Love, starring Danny Dyer in 2009. Football plays a surprisingly small part in the original, though it was surely an influence on I.D., another football hooligan filmed directed by Phil Davis, who stars in The Firm. Clarke’s work also obviously influenced Oldman’s only directorial effort, the searing Nil By Mouth, which stars Ray Winstone.
Elephant – where Danny Boyle gets an early credit as producer – is Clarke’s most ambitious and abstract work. Handheld cameras follow men as they walk down streets and alleyways, culminating in them shooting someone. This is repeated again and again, with no dialogue. When he was making his own film about needless killings – this time set in an American High School, Gus Van Sant borrowed the title. There is a scene in Steve McQueen’s directorial debut Hunger that is reminiscent of Clarke’s shocking film. It remains one of the best films about The Troubles.
Clarke was in the US – a previous foray to Hollywood to develop a project with 20th Century Fox was unsuccessful – working on a film called Assassination on Ambassador’s Row, which dealt with the true story of the murder of a Chilean dissident in the US in 1976 when he was diagnosed with cancer. He returned to the UK and died in 1990. What films he would have made if he hadn’t died remains a tantalising prospect.
Greengrass called Clarke’s films “unquestionably the finest body of work created by a British director”. When you consider that Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Charlie Chaplin were all British, that’s quite a statement. It’s not far wrong, though.
The BFI season of his films begins on 30th March and continues throughout April. His films will be re-released on blu-ray and DVD in May.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
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Originally published March 27, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
