Exposition Man

Drama was busting out all over last night, what with The Invisibles (Last of the Summer Wine with cheeky cat burglars), Heroes (saw the first three episodes of series one, then forgot all about it), and Midnight Man. Since ITV are down in the dumps after a record £5.68M fine for letting Robbie Williams appear on the British Comedy Awards*, I went with Midnight Man – ITV need all the viewers they can get, bless ‘em. Not that I think I made the right choice, mind you.

Given the stellar bunch of talent involved (David Drury, David Kane, Gareth Neame), the whole thing was about as subtle as a brick – and that was only once you’d gotten past the vast swathes of clunky exposition that stomped about the place like a hormonal teenager. Exposition is not a bad thing – after all, any writer has to impart a certain amount of information so that the audience know what the hell is going on at any point: but doing it well (i.e., not drawing attention to the technique itself) is difficult. For example, it’s all very well for a character to suffer from phengophobia (fear of daylight), but having somebody else tell him this because he ‘might have forgotten’ just seems silly. I suppose broad brush tactics such as this may work if you want to get to the crux of the story quickly, but I can’t help thinking that there’s a more dramatic way to impart information than just ‘casually’ dropping it into a conversation with all the subtlety of a shovel round the back of the head.

Lack of subtlety aside, Midnight Man cracked along at a decent enough pace, even if the whole thing did seem overly familiar. A troubled protagonist with marriage problems? Tick! A conspiracy that goes right to the heart of government? Tick! This is a template that’s been used before by TV drama to much greater effect than this, which is a shame as you know exactly how everything is going to turn out. I think next week I’ll have to try The Invisibles, but somehow I'm dreading it already.

Another interesting story is here in today’s Guardian, which details the abysmal first week’s box office for Three and Out. The marketing push behind this film has been phenomenal, to the extent that you couldn’t move without seeing some mention of it somewhere. Unfortunately, this huge push has not translated into box office moolah, probably because of two things: the subject matter (or more specifically, how the producers have gone about publicising it), and the absolutely horrible poster used to promote it. One look at Mackenzie Crook’s depressed boat would be enough to put anyone off, I think: couple that with the fact that Three and Out has been sold using an apparently lethal cocktail of suicide and the London Underground (not hugely cinematic concepts, I'd say), and there you have it – a first week take of £189,454: a sizeable lottery win, but not a figure to get massively excited about if you’re a film producer.

* Not strictly true, but hey - if you're going to fine ITV for something, it may as well involve Robbie Williams.

Time Sick

I’m always fascinated by how screenwriters choose to show the passing of time (either forwards or back), as I think this is probably one of the hardest things to do in a novel and interesting way. On the most basic of levels, you can always go down the tried and tested title card or ‘superimposition’ route, i.e., “BATTERSEA DOG’S HOME, SEVEN YEARS LATER”. Even though one of the best films ever made – The Shining – does this, it always seems like cheating to me (I think The Shining gets away with it purely because it’s related to the concertina effect of the film’s structure – and besides, Kubrick didn’t like spending money on fripperies such as title cards, and who could blame him?). I remember reading an article by David Mamet (was it in here?) where students on a screenwriting course struggled with the same problem – the answer? Another old standby – a series of dissolving clock faces that show the passing of time. Hmmm – it does the job, but it’s a bit workmanlike.

However, as far as sheer invention goes, I don’t think you can beat the technique that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger used in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The majority of the film is told in one long flashback, and the transition from present day to past (a jump backwards of some 40 years) is handled with what can only be described as a flourish of genius. The elderly Blimp (the fantastic Roger Livesey) has just wrestled a younger officer into a pool in a Turkish bath, where he proceeds to give him a well deserved slap. As the camera tracks up the length of the pool, the water momentarily calms as Blimp walks out the other end, some forty years younger and straight into the flashback. No title card, no explanatory text – nothing; and yet you are wholly aware of what has just taken place.

The periods between the various conflicts that the film centres on are also brilliantly handled: during one such transition, between the Boer and First World War, Blimp does not appear at all. However, the various animals that he shoots on his overseas treks do, all complete with an identifying plaque giving the place and date.

I could go on and on about this film all night (Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death are probably two of the greatest ‘British’[1] films ever made), as there’s so much here that demands further examination: Deborah Kerr’s multiple roles, the narrative treatment of the duel between Blimp and Kretschmar-Schuldorff – and so it goes.

For the meantime, check out some further information and archive reviews of the film here.
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[1] Michael Powell on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: “a 100% British film but it's photographed by a Frenchman, it's written by a Hungarian, the musical score is by a German Jew, the director was English, the man who did the costumes was a Czech; in other words, it was the kind of film that I've always worked on with a mixed crew of every nationality, no frontiers of any kind”.