TOPSY-TURVY
The great MIKE LEIGH on Topsy-turvy, the period drama that heralded a new phase for his career
Leigh-sy does it every time.
RELEASED IN 1999, Topsy-turvy was completely unlike anything Mike Leigh had made before. Leigh’s first six films were set resolutely in the modern, real world — unvarnished, frankly lit and entirely without frippery. His first period drama, Topsy-turvy was about a whole world of frippery. Set in 1884, in London’s Savoy Theatre, it tells the colourful story of musical legends Gilbert and Sullivan as they weather a potential split to create one of their biggest hits, The Mikado. More than that, it’s a salute to the eccentrics of the theatre world. Their vanities, their passions, their secret insecurities.
Its huge success set Leigh on a path to becoming one of the greats of period film. In Vera Drake, Mr. Turner and last year’s magnificent Peterloo, he depicted the past not as a perfectly preserved theme park of pristine costumes and gilded manors, but somewhere as real and mucky as the world outside your window. None of those films would exist without Topsy-turvy. To mark the film’s addition to the Criterion Collection, Leigh looks back on the drama, and ahead to an uncertain world.
You say on the commentary for Topsy-turvy that you quite like watching your own films. Leigh: I don’t watch them like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, but I like watching them… 99 per cent of the time I just accept them for what they are. I don’t think, ‘Oh Jesus, I wish we could do that again.’ I’m lucky, because a lot of directors I know can’t watch their own films because the film they made was compromised by interference — it wasn’t the cast they wanted; [they] had to change the end; [the] producer fucked it up in one way or another. I’m lucky because nobody has ever interfered with mine. In the end, what’s on the screen is what I wanted to make.
What do you make of Topsy-turvy now?
I’m very fond of it. It was a bit of a departure, in a sense. Up until then I’d always done contemporary stuff. As well as being fascinated by Victorian theatre and really liking Gilbert and Sullivan… the main point was I wanted to subvert the chocolate-box costume drama. With most costume stuff you don’t believe they’re real people. It was also a way to turn the camera around on us, the entertainers. I’m never going to make a film about filmmakers, so that seemed a good way to explore that area.
You could have picked any entertainers in history, so why Gilbert and Sullivan?
I’d always thought their story was interesting. It just seemed a good wheeze to bring their story to life. There was actually another early version of the story, which quickly became unfeasible for financial reasons. This Dutchman [Tannaker Buhicrosan] brought 100 Japanese men and women, who did not have exit visas, over to London by sea and installed them in a building for an exhibition. I originally wanted to show what was going on in the Savoy Theatre, but also show in parallel what was happening in Japan and then on that whole journey. I think the cultural tensions there are really interesting. And no less interesting now, all these years later.
Was this the first time you’d had to change things significantly for financial reasons? Your other films before this didn’t require expensive sets or costumes.
Yes. There was more money [than usual], but you’re right. I’ve made four period films — Topsy-turvy, Vera Drake, Mr. Turner and Peterloo. What I’m used to doing in contemporary films is getting them out there in the streets and into the real world. You can’t do that in period films [because of the cost].
This was the first of your films to feature people who actually existed. You famously use a process of developing the character with the actor through lots of rehearsal and discussion. How was your process changed by the fact you were recreating real people?
Well, it always changes on every film, but yes, this did change it. What normally happens is we start with a fairly blank canvas with the actor. We talk about people the actor knows and we gradually move towards a character. What we did here was create portraits of people who really existed. Take Jim Broadbent, for example — we simply read everything there was to read about W.S. Gilbert until he was coming out of our ears. Then we thought of people we both know to use as a jumping-off point. Gradually, by our sophisticated process of alchemy, it helped us to bring to life the man we’d been reading about.
Topsy-turvy was your first period movie. Since then you’ve split 50/50 between contemporary and period. Did you view this as a pivotal film in your career at the time?
I don’t know about it being pivotal. What was pivotal was that Secrets & Lies [in 1996] was very successful. It was successful in terms of the Palme d’or and Oscar nominations and all that, and it was successful commercially. That success meant we were able to raise the money we needed for Topsy-turvy. That was pivotal.
As a first experience with period drama, were there any parts you enjoyed more than you expected to?
It’s a hard question to answer, because every film has things you’ve never dealt with before. This was very, very tough, not just because of the budget. [The initial budget was] £11.75 million. We embarked on rehearsals and there was so much Southeast Asia financial collapse that the Korean backers pulled out. During rehearsals, the budget shrank to ten million. So at all times we were really up against it. The pressures were enormous. We had the theatre at Richmond for five weeks… and expected to do all the backstage stuff there too, but because of time and money… we only managed to film the stuff on stage. It’s the only film I’ve made that you could say has a lot of ‘studio work’, although there’s only one sequence that’s filmed in an actual studio. We filmed the Japanese village at 3 Mills Studios. But then we recycled an old school and an old house adjacent to it and created all kinds of stuff. It was a struggle to make the film with limited resources and time.
Did you have to cut anything significantly when the budget was slashed?
There’s a scene where they bring the three Japanese women and a guy onto the stage to show the actors how to be Japanese — which really happened. That scene was cobbled together very quickly on the last afternoon in the theatre. We had to get out because something was coming in. It was so urgent that at the time I thought it was going to be a fucking disaster. In fact, it’s one of the best scenes in the film because it has a pace to it, and a simplicity in the way it’s shot. It’s a good example of how pressure can be a good thing in filmmaking.
You’ve been making films now for…
Five hundred years.
Not quite. We make it around 50 years. Is the filmmaker you are now vastly different from the one you were 50 years ago?
My first film was in 1971, Bleak Moments. That came out when I was 28. In some ways, yes, of course, because you move on and in some ways the worldview and the life-view change. There was a point in time when I suddenly looked at what I was doing — this is very personal — and I noticed a definite preoccupation in the films. It changed when I became a parent. But in one sense, it’s still the same voice. In another sense, I hope each film is different and moves you in a different direction.
You said that you’ve only ever made films you want to make and refused to allow interference. Does that get easier as you get older, because you’re well-respected, or harder, because the industry changes and money is tighter?
Harder. After doing Mr. Turner and then Peterloo, there was something I wanted to do. For all the contemporary films and for all the plays, the thing I’ve always said to the backers is, “I can’t tell you anything about it. Can’t tell you anything about casting. Give us some money and we’ll make you a film.” Obviously there’s been a lot of rejection, but all the films have been made on that basis, on trust. After Peterloo, I wanted to do a large-scale, contemporary film that would work in the usual way, discovering what the film was in the process of making it. Quite simply, nobody would make it. Nobody would touch it. I spent far more time than I would have expected after Peterloo failing to raise the money to do that or even make a film… I’m finding it quite tough, but times have got tough. It’s partly because of the success of commercial productions and the expectation of what movies should be. The [lack of ] freedom to explore things that aren’t genre is a problem.
How are you feeling about the theatre world being virtually shut down at the moment?
It’s a disaster. It’s bad news. For all of us. Today, by coincidence, was the day when I was supposed to be shooting my next film. We were going into rehearsal for 15 weeks when the shit hit the fan. Today, I would not be talking to you. I would be on location on the set of my next movie. It’s anyone’s guess when we’ll be able to start again. Productions are going on, but in terms of the way I work, I don’t know how we can operate until we can operate normally. As for theatre, people are finding solutions, but they’re solutions with socially distanced audiences, which isn’t economically viable, or monologues. It’s hard to have an answer. It’s very depressing.
Nothing. Nothing that’s funny. Nothing that’s reportable. I’m reading a lot. I’m not going to write a script. It’s a problem.
There will come a time when you can work again. Let’s hope it’s very soon.
I’m not expecting to be able to do anything this year, but I do hope it changes next year. I’d really love to get back to it.
TOPSY-TURVY IS OUT ON 19 OCTOBER ON CRITERION COLLECTION BLU-RAY