British Film Design

A History

Laurie N. Ede

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781848851085
• eBook ISBN: 9780857732156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

"British Film Design" is about the things that you see when you close your eyes and think of British cinema: "Dr. No's Hideaway", the buffet of "Brief Encounter", Vera Drake's parlour, "Hogwarts School"...and a thousand other visions of British films. This book is also about the people who have created those visions. The physical environments of films are made by Production Designers/Art Directors. Their efforts have tended to go unnoticed by cinema audiences. "British Film Design" offers the first comprehensive historical survey of British art direction. It takes a chronological journey through British film design, starting with the efforts of the film 'primitives' of the silent era and ending with the modern day purveyors of part built/part computer generated 'blended design'. Certain themes recur en route. These include British cinema's obsession with realism; the Production Designer's continual struggle for recognition; influence from European artists and the benefits - and perils - of American finance. The book succeeds in expressing the joy of looking at films from inside out; seeing beyond the stars to recognise sets as silent players in the action.

chapter 1

Setting the Scene

This book is about some of the things that we take for granted, in films and elsewhere. It is about built worlds, real worlds, fake worlds and other kinds of worlds that have been created by the British film industry over its 100 and more years of existence. Specifically, this book is concerned with the work of the British film production designer, the person who has assumed most responsibility for contriving the dramatic environments of British films throughout the decades. This work presents a kind of ‘inside out’ approach to British cinema, which invites people to look beyond the actors to contemplate the narrative power of filmed places and décor.

Ostensibly, this is a simple matter. One might think that writing a history of British film design is an easy business of establishing that so-and-so did such-a-thing at such-a-time. Of course, we will encounter ‘so and so’ (in all his/her guises) and this book will progress in broadly chronological manner, but the story of British film design has some surprising complexities and twists that require some handling. To begin with, we need to think about what the designer actually does (this point is often misunderstood). Time can be a complex matter too, as it relates to British films; some important moments (Rank’s prestige experiment of the 1940s, ‘Swinging Sixties’ cinema) are absolutely of the moment, but the most important strands – the Hammers, Carry Ons and James Bonds – run through the decades and consequently defy sure fixing in time. Then there are all the sub-themes of British production design that turn out to exert crucial significance over the job. These include changes to the role over time; producer and directorial influence; the possibility of authorial design; links between film, television and stage design; studio sets in relation to real locations; developments in studio technologies; the British designer’s response to national aesthetic movements; designing for genres; British film design and the generation of culture and (most importantly) the use of British design to service American films and themes. So, a simple matter very swiftly becomes a maddening affair. A meaningful history of British film design can be constructed only if we place moments of design creativity within their contemporary context; i.e. to think why someone did a certain thing at a given moment in time. In practice, this means that one has to attend to all of the determinants outlined in the previous paragraph. But first we need to consider some basic propositions about the work of the British film production designer.

First Thoughts on Production Design

The great British film designer Ken Adam (Dr No 1962, Dr Strangelove 1964, Madness of King George 1994) has provided a pithy summation of his job: ‘I’m a production designer, which is really what it says; it’s designing a film production.’ In similar spirit, Martin Childs (Shakespeare in Love 1998) describes the production designer as ‘the head of the department that designs everything that isn’t hanging off or touching an actor’. Cinema is often characterised as the play of light on photosensitive film; but it’s also, crucially, about the play of light onto structures of various kinds. Those structures, whether built in the studio or found (and frequently built) on location, are the province of the production designer.¹

It is important to note that the modern production designer heads a large department. Historically, the head of the art department was referred to as the ‘art director’ (see Chapter Two), but the term ‘production designer’ gained currency from the late 1930s: The title was actually devised in Hollywood by David O. Selznick to recognise the all-encompassing design efforts, on Gone with the Wind (1939), of William Cameron Menzies; it was subsequently adopted in Britain by the star designers working for the Rank group of companies, such as Alfred Junge and John Bryan. (In this book I use the abbreviations ‘p.d’ or ‘a.d’ to define the design chief of a given film.) The modern production designer heads a complex creative process. Typically, he or she produces initial sketches for the settings, which are then worked up, by them, into finished designs; some designers also use storyboards and models from an early stage. The designs are then translated into floor plans by draughtsmen, for the guidance of construction crews. On the studio floor or on location, the physical building of the set is supervised by the art director, working with assistants and set dressers. Ultimately, the work of the production designer is part creative, part technical and part organisational. Everyone in the art department answers to the production designer and he or she assumes final responsibility for the basic look of the narrative world. To quote Norman Garwood (Brazil 1985, The Life and Death of Peter Sellars 2005): ‘If you’re going to get the title of production designer, you really should be looking after everything that’s going to be up on that screen.’²

Sometimes, the whole process of film design is still referred to as ‘art direction’. On these terms, it’s worth recalling the thoughts of the designer Paul Sheriff (Henry V 1944), who observed that his job was ‘not all art and not all direction’. Fundamentally, production design is applied art and the designer has many demands to fulfil. This theme will resound throughout the pages of this book. In essence, I want to provide an ‘industrial history’ of British art direction, which acknowledges the designer’s (ever-changing) place in the filmmaking process. In part, I want to pursue the critical path outlined many years ago by the famous American designer Hans Dreier:

The purely artistic side of this profession has been treated exhaustively in numerous essays. Nothing conclusive could be said that would not seem like a repetition ... The businessman’s side, however, is touched very lightly upon ... This subject is vital and requires the same judgement of values that everyone has to exercise in his own life and everyday business.

At the same time, I want to remember Lindsay Anderson’s warning that ‘critics judge too much and interpret too little’. Films are not just manifestations of capitalism. They inform our understandings of the material world (and confirm our existing understandings). They also embody the creative efforts of a wide range of artists and technicians and films should be appreciated on these terms. In short, the objective of British Film Design: A History is to place the work of the art director in its proper economic context and – by such a means – encourage a greater appreciation of his/her artistry through the ages of British films.³

A Brief Note on Representation

From the foregoing, it may be discerned that film production design is intimately connected with processes of film representation. The designer is required to represent the wishes of the financiers and other senior technical personnel, but he/she also re-presents the narrative world; the places depicted by the script and inhabited by the characters. The latter consideration has particular implications for the British designer, given this country’s chronic ‘Lumières fixation’: The notion, familiar throughout Europe, that a purposeful and authentic national cinema should be based on realist aesthetic values (as seen first, at the birth of cinema, in the work of Auguste and Louis Lumière). This persistent trait of British cinema can be traced back over 80 years (see Chapter Six) and it has exerted significant influence over the work of a range of British designers including the Morahan brothers, Tom and Jim, at the Ealing studios of the 1940s and 1950s; Ralph Brinton, the leading designer to the British New Wave; and, latterly, Fergus Clegg, Martin Johnson, Alison Chitty and Eve Stewart – the last four being the main designers used by directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.

British cinema’s Lumières fixation has led to the afore-mentioned designers being called upon to work outside of the studio, to exploit the supposedly more authentic virtues of real buildings. Actually, realism is never that easy. Inevitably, film representation involves making creative choices which are appropriate to the story, character and, perhaps, the point being made. On one level, this means that realistic sets are not always what they appear to be; neither are they necessarily pedestrian. For example, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) was widely taken at the time of its release to be another instalment in Channel Four’s on-going social realist project, but this underestimated the creative input from the film’s designer Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski. The film was shot in real South London locations, but these were substantially altered – an old shoe shop became the laundrette and an entire back wall of a Battersea house was removed to afford a better view of a railway line. Intriguingly, Wyhowski also adopted a symbolic approach to his designs; hints of Islamic art were incorporated into the laundrette, as well as some ‘surreal’ touches, including a video of fighting crocodiles. More recently, Eve Stewart incorporated some poetic elements in her 1950s interiors for Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake (2004). Vera (Imelda Staunton)’s flat was created from a home on the Peabody Estate in Wandsworth. This was substantially altered to fit the period (electrics, heating and plumbing changed); in addition, Stewart tuned the environment to fit the characters – the little birds that hopped between the branches on the living room wall paper were intended to suggest Vera’s busy, helpful nature.⁴

These reflections on British social realism have important wider implications to do with film verisimilitude and the designer’s relationship with it. The prolific British film designer and theorist Edward Carrick concluded that ‘the most important function of the background to dramatic action ... it should be convincingly real’. The italics were Carrick’s and they were important. Carrick had a profound sense of classical narrative’s claims to realism and the designer’s role in substantiating these. The normal function of the designer is to flow with the mood of the story, to support the aims of the production and to ensure that the sets don’t disrupt the illusion. To the French designer and critic Leon Barsacq, such imperatives were part of ‘screen perspective’, a ‘certain form of realism’ which was quite distinct from theatre’s relatively elusive design language. Similarly, the British designer Anton Furst (Company of Wolves 1984, Batman 1989) affirmed that ‘You’re not dealing with reality with film; you’re dealing with the film’s own reality.’ This means that the designer, in conjunction with the photographer, will attempt to convey the essential, selective information. Occasionally, the settings may be conspicuous and intended to push the film (as in the case of the Bonds or most sci-fi subjects); mainly, they will reside quietly in the background. In any event, good film décor will always have something to tell us; it colours our understanding of characters and their verisimilitudinous screen worlds.⁵

The End of the Line: Designing Harry Potter

The tenets of screen versimilitude apply to most films, of whatever size. But the work of the designer will tend to be more overt on the big productions. In recent years, the most elaborate British design work has been seen in the Harry Potter series (six to date, 2001–2009). The Potter films have all been production designed by Stuart Craig and shot largely at the Leavesden studios (as developed originally for the Bond movies). They are a leading example of the ‘event film’, a modern, interractive form of the blockbuster where the film heads up a web of consumption, which also includes toys, books, clothes and computer games – everything serves to sell everything else. (In June 2007, it was announced that Craig would design a $200m Harry Potter theme park in Florida.) As with most blockbusters, the strategy depends upon the film possessing startling visuals. There is a kind of fin-de-siècle sensibility to the blockbuster; like the Hogwarts School of the Harry Potter stories, the latest event film is presented as a kind of end-of-the-line – every technological development in cinema has brought us to this point, the show to end them all.

The Harry Potter films are undoubtedly huge productions; the best of them, Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) used up to 12 camera crews, 500-plus crew and took 180 days to film. The Potter movies also foreground the latest filming technologies; the presence of Computer Generated Imagery is noted most obviously in the films’ parade of fantastic creatures, ghosts, animated paintings and grand classroom illusions. (The effects are created by a wide range of outside providers including Mill Film, The Motion Picture Company and Framestore CFC.) But the Potter films also exhibit strong continuities with long-standing traditions of British film design. There is a persistent vein of what might be termed ‘British expressionism’. Throughout the ages, the most creative British designers have displayed a strong affinity with the psychological language of German expressionist set design; the British expressionist tendency can be followed from the work of Andre Andrejew and John Bryan in the 1930s and 1940s (see Chapters Three and Four), through to Adam’s work on the Bonds in the 1960s and 1970s (see Chapters Seven and Nine). Throughout the Potter series, Craig has forced dynamic contrasts between realistic and expressionist design elements. Hogwarts itself is an extraordinary vision, an inspired meeting of medieval ecclesiastical architecture and German gothicism; it exemplies Craig’s instinctual belief that ‘fantasy and magic is more powerful when it grows out of something real and credible’. Hogwarts was designed for the first film and, like the other key sets, it has been reused throughout the series (in actuality it is a 1/24 scale model which is enhanced by CGI effects). Over time, it has been joined by other expressionist set pieces. Memorably, Azkaban had the superb sets for the Leaky Cauldron pub; the skewed lines of which dimly recalled Bryan’s peculiar Dickensian/expressionist flourishes of Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).⁶

More broadly, and despite their funding by Warner Brothers, the Potter films demonstrate strong continuities with British studio design traditions. Over 90 per cent of Chamber of Secrets (2002) was shot at Leavesden and everywhere Craig has attempted to combine ‘old traditional studio movie crafts with new technology’. Furthermore, he has suggested that the Potters show that ‘there is a very high level of skill in Europe [which] doesn’t exist in America any longer’. At times, Craig has made effective use of the old technique, well known to British studio art directors of the 1930s, of forced perspective; building sets to suggest a feeling of great depth (by such means, 12 feet of corridor set in the Leaky Cauldron gave the impression of being 50 feet in length). The Potter design ethos has incorporated other traditional techniques. The hedge maze of Chamber was created mainly from 25′ moveable pieces, rather than digital effects, and the films make extensive use of conventional built miniatures (models used to represent large sets).⁷

If the Harry Potter films are the end-of-the-line, they do not represent a point of rupture; rather, they culminate – and then only temporarily – a long record of achievement on the part of the British designer. The story to follow will be told from a variety of perspectives (economic, cultural, aesthetic, personal) and it will inevitably be selective. The history of British design relates to the wider history of British films, but it is not the same; so some famous titles may be excluded. I also want to tell the story on its own terms; for this reason, I will not dwell on the awards collected by British designers, unless these have wider implications. (A list of Oscar winning British designers is given at the end of this book.) At every turn – and following Lindsay Anderson’s lead – I hope to create a work that is simultaneously critical, evaluative and, even, celebratory.

chapter 2

Early Stages: British Design in the Silent Era

Charles Barr has noted that ‘Our [Britain’s] film culture has no roots in, and no memory of, the silent film period.’ The problems really lie with one’s definitions. Obviously, silent cinema is characterised by its wordlessness, but the silent period in Britain went through several distinct phases and film culture exhibited massive change in the times leading up to the introduction of sound. In terms of product, the early actuality and elementary comedies gave way to ‘topical’ films and to a more expansive range of fictional productions: these productions grew to feature length as a specialised audience emerged. In terms of technique, British films moved from small outdoor stages to large ‘glasshouse’ studios to equally voluminous dark stages. At the same time, British producers and directors absorbed the emerging grammar of popular film form.¹

British art direction developed alongside these changes, although its growth was uncertain and generally inconspicuous. In the earliest phases of British films, there was no designer at all and it is not until around 1907 that we find any evidence of specialist personnel being employed to create settings. Thereafter, the British film designer languished under a variety of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• General Editor’s Introduction
• 1. Setting the Scene
• 2. Early Stages: British Design in the Silent Era
• 3. The Foreign Touch: Émigré Design of the 1930s
• 4. Prestige Design: Working for Rank in the 1940s
• 5. Cheap Laughs and Cheap Thrills
• 6. No Sets Please ... We’re British. Polemical Realism via the New Wave
• 7. Do They Mean Us? American-Financed Design of the 1960s
• 8. Pictorial Design
• 9. Do We Mean Us? British Visions ... and Visions of Britain
• 10. Surveying the Scene
• Academy Awards for Design: British Winners
• Notes
• Bibliography