JOHN BRIDCUT
The prolific, award-winning film maker behind documentaries such as “Prince, Son and Heir: Charles at 70” talks to This England about career and country.
England wouldn’t be England without buttered tea-cakes, bitter beer and the Lake District.
The life of a film maker is a mixture of agony and ecstasy. But every day is different, and if luck is flowing with you, it’s exhilarating.
I made my first film at the age of twenty-three when I was training at the BBC. It was a short film about the weather (what is more English than that?). But even with that, I didn’t develop an urge to be a film maker until I joined the Money Programme on BBC2 about six years later – and it’s been a slow build-up from then. Now I don’t know what else I would do. I know the answer expected from me is that I knew I wanted to be a film-maker from the age of nine or ten, but I can honestly say that it never occurred to me at that age.
I’ve just finished working on Baker In Her Own Words, an emotional profile of the greatest British classical singer of the 20th century. She is now eighty-five, and this is the first film made about her since her retirement from singing thirty years ago.
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While making The Passions of Vaughan Williams, the most surprising thing I learned about the composer was his red-blooded, passionate nature. It’s a mistake to think of him as a country bumpkin watching larks ascending into a blue sky. He was a townie who loved London, and loved life. When his opera The Pilgrim’s Progress was first performed at Covent Garden, he wanted strippers on the stage – a request that the opera house refused.
Working with the royal family is great privilege, of course. And
a fascinating. But in a way it’s like working with any other family: it requires plenty of tact, diplomacy, sensitivity and sometimes courage – qualities that every film maker requires, whatever the circumstances.
Not many people know that Prince Charles fuels his Aston Martin with white wine and whey, and adores the music of Wagner.
The film I most enjoyed making is always the last one I made, because I’m lucky enough to work on a succession of wonderful projects, sometimes musical, sometimes historical, sometimes contemporary. It’s a continual learning process, and in a way gets harder as you get older, because you keep setting the bar higher.
Music can cheer, console, energise, relax, thrill, calm. There’s no limit to its ability to involve you.
If I listened to a piece of music endlessly repeated, I would be bound to get tired of it. So I listen to music relatively seldom, preferring to encounter new things, and getting great pleasure from re-encountering old favourites. I have music in my head most of the time.
The person I’d most like to make a documentary about (and haven’t already) is Michael Tippett. That looks like coming to fruition next year. In my view, Tippett is England’s most unsung composer. Thirty years ago there would have been a dozen names I could have listed. Thankfully English music has had quite a revival in recent years, which has been a welcome change.
In all my years as a film maker, the most important thing I’ve learned is to make sure you work with talented people, and be grateful for your own mistakes, because they help to reduce the infinite choices you have to make.
If I could invite anyone to dinner from the past, it would be
Edward Elgar, because it would either be completely fascinating or an evening from hell, depending on his mood.
If I could play one musical instrument professionally, I’d choose the cello. I learnt the violin at school, but let it lapse. When my children began learning instruments, they inspired me to take up the cello, which I only wish I was good enough to play properly.
If I were to sum up England in three words, I’d say it’s changeable, European and home.
My favourite programme on TV is Question Time.
In my view, everybody should watch the recently released film The Aftermath, a sensitive love story in the ruins of Hamburg at the end of the war, with strong erotic charge. It’s directed by James Kent, and I can’t understand the negative comments by reviewers. It is beautifully made, and very moving.
If I could make a place an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, I’d choose Holmbury St Mary in Surrey; in fact, I think it already is!
If I lived on a desert island, the thing I’d miss most about England is the rain.
I’ve never been so happy as when get up each morning.
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