Lindsay Anderson - a Biography
Created | Updated May 3, 2005
The Early Years
Lindsay Anderson was born in India on 17 April 1923 in Bangalore, India, and came from what he has described as "an impeccable upper middle class background". The son of a Scottish major-general in the British army, Lindsay went to England and was educated at Cheltenham College, and then went onto Oxford University to read classics, which was interrupted by war service during WW2. After the war, he went back to his studies, returning to Wadham College, Oxford, to complete a degree in English. At this time in life, although he had done a little acting at school and some at Oxford, where he described the atmosphere as "unpleasantly competitive" and "pseudo-professional", there was little to suggest that this student would go on to become one of the best creative forces in British cinema. However, whilst at Oxford his passion for cinema was realised, and in 1947, along with Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz he co-founded and became one of the editors for Sequence magazine, which began life as a magazine for the Oxford University Film Society. He continued with Sequence throughout the years; Sequence eventually became a larger, very influential publication and so the staff moved it to London. Until publication ceased in 1952, Lindsay went on to become co-editor with Karel Reisz. After Sequence, Lindsay also worked for Sight and Sound (the BFI's own highly acclaimed film magazine) and the London Times.
When Lindsay was in his last year at Oxford, he was asked to make a film by Lois Sutcliffe. The wife of a Yorkshire conveyorbelt manufacturer, she had met Anderson at a meeting of the Federation of Film Societies held by the Oxford Society. They established an instant rapport based on a common interest in American films, notably those of John Ford. Lois's husband, Desmond Sutcliffe wanted a documentary made about his company, but one that reflected the particular character of his company as well as the manufacturing processes. Lois immediately suggested Lindsay to do it. But on being presented with the assignment, he told her that she must be mad, as he knew nothing whatsoever about filmmaking. Nevertheless, he agreed to do it. Before going up to Sutcliffes in Wakefield, Yorkshire, he bought a second hand camera, which had been adapted for use by the RAF; to make matters worse,the mechanism regulary jammed during shooting. But Lindsay wasn't alone in his first film project. His assistant, Edward Brenton, had previous film experience. As for the cameraman, he was a local school master. That the film was completed at all says much for Anderson's tenacity, which has continued throughout his career, as the whole process of editing and recording (one method used for the music was to use gramaphone records) had to be learnt by him on the spot. The finished film was called Meet The Pioneers. The Sutcliffes were very impressed with the finished short and commissioned him to do three further films.
The First Films
His project with the Sutcliffes in having started him off in the right direction, Lindsay made a total of 15 documentary films between 1948 and 1957 (these included a series of four shorts, each of about 5 minutes, for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and three of similar length for the National Fuel Efficiency Service). Anderson won an Oscar in 1953 for Thursday's Children, a touching documentary about deaf children. His first feature film, This Sporting Life (1963), told the story of a disturbed rugby champion with low-key dramatics. In 1967 he also made Raz Dwa Trzy (The Singing Lesson) for the Warsaw Documentary Studios in Poland. Many of these documentaries were commissions, including one he was commissioned to make for the 100th anniversary of the local newspaper - the Wakefield Express.
In 1952 one of Lindsay's friends from Oxford, Guy Brenton, approached Lindsay to co-direct a 20 minute film about the Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, SE England. The film was to be a documentary on how the children at this school were taught. At first, they had trouble finding funding and were resigned to financeing the production costs themselves, but they eventually managed to get funding from World Wide Pictures. The result was remarkable, a truly touching and moving film. By using some excellent camera close-ups, we are able to witness the intimate relationship between teacher and child, and are also able to watch as the children begin to be aware of what sound is before they are even able to articulate words themselves. As a third party, we are enveloped into their joy of discovery. Richard Burton was asked to narrate, which he did without payment. Lindsay asked Burton because he wanted someone "who wouldn't sound like an actor"; someone who sounded that they cared, they were human, and weren't just narrating a story about any old school. The film went on to win an Oscar, but unfortunately it got only a very limited cinema release.
Whilst in Margate, Anderson saw the opportunity to do another short. He had found a large amusement park called Dreamland, that gave him the idea for a 10 minute film. The film was O Dreamland. Following his collaboration with Guy Brenton on Thursday's Children this became the second film that was entirely Lindsay's own, but there could hardly be a greater contrast between the two films. However, what emerges is the strong and sometimes conflicting strands of Lindsay Anderson's psyche. In Lindsay's films there is a close and compassionate observation of people, a theme that constantly re-occurs from his earliest films like Meet the Pioneers and Thursday's Children, right through to his first feature film, This Sporting Life, through to The Whales of August. There is also a re-occuring sense of his belief in the traditional ways of life, provided that those traditions are purposeful and maintain a strong sense of community but allow the individual their own identity, something that can also be seen in the work of Ken Loach. Now, the other side of Lindsay's nature, the anarchic and satirical side, is also a very dominating theme throughout his work. His satire found expression in O Dreamland, but it is more apparent in his future feature films - best seen in Britannia Hospital. What we see in O Dreamland though is a bleak expression of the poverty of people's lives, especially as these people are supposedly engaged in the fun of the fair - amusement and pleasure. There is also a great deal more anger than compassion in this film, which can be highlighted by his characters or even the music used (one example is the song Justice in O Lucky Man!).
Free Cinema
In 1956 Lindsay Anderson's friends from Sequence, namely Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, had just completed a short film called Momma Don't Allow, and like Anderson, who had never had a public screening for O Dreamland, they were anxious and eager to find an audience. Reisz, who at the time was working as a programmer at the National Film Theatre in London, agreed to do a programme of short films. Anderson invented a title for the series - Free Cinema. The title was arresting memorable and Free Cinema became a movement in its own right. To this day Free Cinema is still remembered. However, today it is remembered more for its right-on title, and not for the films it advertised. In his written work for the Sight and Sound and the Times (as well as Sequence), Lindsay regularly advocated a greater emphasis on social consciousness in filmmaking. His writings along these lines contributed greatly to the Free Cinema movement. The Free Cinema movement believed in universalist subject matter and showed a general disdain for Hollywood-type commercial products (although one of his heroes was the director John Ford, about whom he wrote a book in 1981).
The Mick Travis Trilogy
If... (1968), the first of the Mick Travis trilogy, marked a fierce revisionist departure from the values of This Sporting Life. In this icy ode to rites of passage, Lindsay paints a scathing portrait of the English private school system, using it as a thinly disguised metaphor for society in Britain as a whole. O Lucky Man! (1972), the second in the trilogy, starts with Travis taking on a new job as a coffee salesman. This job eventually leads Travis into a series of encounters with the military and medical establishments, the industrial hierarchy and, finally, the media - in the shape of a director played by Lindsay himself - looking for a star for the film we have just been watching. The final part of Mick's journey, Britannia Hospital, is a nightmarishly comic indictment of the British medical system of the 80s, whose decay is again representative of society as a whole. One theme which runs throughout these films is the vision of Mick as he cavorts and lurches through a modern England, characterised by absurdity and decay.
'Other' Projects
Lindsay Anderson is best known for the above trilogy, but whilst in-between film-making, Lindsay would peruse other projects, such as directing TV commercials and directing theatre productions, many starring his close friend and earlier protégé Malcolm McDowell. The most notable of the stage productions is John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1980), in which McDowell plays Jimmy, a frustrated and self-loathing sweetshop owner/musician. This wonderfully constructed play carried by an excellent cast, and did well to make Lindsay's name well-known on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Whales of August, one of Lindsay's finest films to many, arrived in 1987. The film is an elegy to old age that pairs legendary actresses Lillian Gish and Bette Davis as housebound sisters on the Maine coast. This film is different from other works because of the fact that it displays neither the lyrical realism of Lindsay's early career, nor the abrasive satire of his later films. His made-for-cable-TV film, Glory! Glory! (1989), sent up the televangelist phenomenon in a more typical, unreserved Anderson style. He was back on form. But to his critics, the director's iconoclasm had in recent years seemed to yield to an awareness of the intractability of the problems he himself once railed against.
Lindsay was also an accomplised actor, most notably starring in Chariots of fire as Master of Caius, and enjoying success in his own film Is That All There Is? as himself, amongst others.
Lindsay on Film and Everyone Else
Used as publicity for his films, Lindsay expressed many of the his attitudes used from his Sequence days. He once commented, "No film can be too personal. The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments. Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim. An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude. Implicit in our attitude is a belief in freedom, in the importance of people and in the significance of the every day". But Lindsay had to put up with a lot of ignorance and stupidity from most of the British cinema 'elite'. Here was a man with strong opinions on social issues, and who made films with these issues very prominent, but because he was so achingly close and honest to the truth, not just with Britain at the time, but even with British cinema, he might as well have been blacklisted; such was the mentality of his critics, and sadly things haven't changed much. It's sad that such an advocate for Britain was best loved abroad, and his native country shunned his work. Take his most famous films, for example; If... (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1972). These two films, well respected in their own right by his fellow film-makers, failed to make as big a mark on British cinema as it was expected to at the time of their release, despite critical acclaim from all over the world and a Cannes Golden Palm for If... and 2 BAFTAs for O Lucky Man!. However, these films also brought together the writer David Sherwin, whose screenplay 'Crusaders' was adapted for If... and introduced the excellent Malcolm McDowell into the film world. Malcolm's initial friendship with Lindsay would develop into a deep bond between the two until Lindsay's death.
Goodbye to the Genius
Lindsay Anderson died of a heart attack on 30 August 1994, in Angouléme, France.
Everyone who knew Lindsay had a story about him. In England such stories would often be related to confirm how "difficult" he was. To this, if was aware of it, Anderson would certainly have said "How typically English". He always felt, with some truth, that he was better understood and regarded overseas.
In the memorial celebration at the Royal Court Theatre in November 1994, David Storey recalled Anderson's best characteristics vividly in a moving adress from the stage. "He was a man of vivid contradictions. Authoritarian, some would say; autocrat - and yet a liberal. A stoic - and yet, undeniably sentimental. An atheist; a vigorously self-confessed atheist - and yet imbued with what could only be described as a religious spirit. A teacher; and yet, in my experience, always solicitous of instruction. A classisist - and yet a romantic. An intellectual, and yet an artist. He was cantankerous, vituperative, obdurate and acerbic, yet incorrigibly loyal and unfailingly generous. He was in many respects, human nature turned inside out; what normally might have been contained, if not constrained on the inside, he wore vividly - and explicitly - on the outside. He loved what he hated and hated what he loved in a seamless circle of retributory affections. He was a large, expansive, celebratory - liberating spirit".
It seemed that everyone who had ever worked with Lindsay Anderson was at the Celebration. There were speeches from actors, such as Albert Finney, Malcolm McDowell and Richard Harris, from writers like Arnold Wesker and Alan Bennett and many more. But David Storey's words perhaps expressed best the common feeling of all those present.
