Edited Transcript

BBC break | Breaking taboos | Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday

BBC break

Jeremy Isaacs: You came to work here at the BBC on Tonight and then on Monitor. What did you learn from the films you made then?
John Schlesinger: Oh to sum up things very quickly: first impressions were inevitably the last impressions, so it sharpened my powers of observation I think a lot. I loved my time on Monitor because I then first came in contact with a really good producer in the shape of Huw Weldon, who was a wonderful producer, and taught me a great deal. It was probably one of the happiest times of my career, that particular programme.

Jeremy Isaacs: Some of those films from Monitor I still remember - they were inventions as well as reports, weren't they. There was a film about the circus, where as well as showing us what happened in a circus, you were making a movie - you weren't just make a journalistic report.
John Schlesinger: No, I love circuses and I love backstage of circuses - I don't know why, but I do - and it was the first time, after the Cold War in a way, that the Russians had been included in the circus, and it was very exciting to go and use their language in the dressing room and that kind of thing. It was the opening film of Monitor, of the whole programme; it was a really exciting period for me.

Jeremy Isaacs: The first biggish film you made after that was Terminus - the film about a day in the life of Waterloo Station. Was that just an opportunity that arose, or was it consciously part of a sort of movement of social realism that was in cinema making at that time?
John Schlesinger: I think it was the culmination of a period when I'd been working at the BBC and had been doing twenty-four or so documentaries, short or longer ones, and Edgar Ansty, who ran British Transport Films, had asked me to come up with an idea for a film for them.

My first thought was a film about Brighton, which I researched very thoroughly and photographed stills of and had a treatment for. Finally they decided there wasn't enough about railways; so we had another go, and I said I think I'd like to do a Day in the Life of -, which is as good a way as any of looking at a whole microcosm of the world, so to speak. And we chose Waterloo Station. I hung around the station day and night for many weeks, and made a lot of notes, and then filmed it in a couple of weeks.

Jeremy Isaacs: How much of it were you simply observing, and how much did you have to reinvent?
John Schlesinger: About 50/50. We reinvented and got actors to do and that kind of thing.

Jeremy Isaacs: I never knew it was anything like as high a percentage as that, but the whole thing masqueraded as if it was real.
John Schlesinger: Yes, well I think that's what one's doing most of one's life with film, you know, you're trying. If you are telling a story that's a realistic one, it is in a way masquerading as real and that's one of the things you have to learn to do well.

Breaking taboos

Jeremy Isaacs: When I mentioned social realism just now, I was thinking partly of A Kind of Loving. Was that exploring territory that was newish to the British cinema - working class life?
John Schlesinger: Well yes, I suppose so. I suppose that once the Royal Court had started their famous period with Look Back in Anger, and films like that, and Tony Richardson and John Osborne had formed the Woodfall films, and insisted that they made the film of Look Back in Anger, and that kind of thing; they really paved the way for us that followed, into making a certain kind of gritty realistic film. And Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had preceded A Kind of Loving, but that was newish territory, and it was territory that became, and was, quite popular at the time.

Jeremy Isaacs: Were there social taboos to be broken? Was there any sense of that in taking that subject matter into the territory of film making?
John Schlesinger: Well I remember the censor being very hard on us, because there was a scene in which to get his girlfriend aroused, Alan Bates, who played the part of Vic, was looking at a sort of semi-pornographic magazine and the censor was rather against this. Also the idea that they would go into a shop, a chemist shop and buy condoms - now a common practice, alas - was absolutely taboo in a way. I mean it was, had never been seen.

Jeremy Isaacs: In the 60s could you be frank and open about your homosexuality?
John Schlesinger: I don't think it arose when we were doing Darling in 1965 and there was a character in it that was openly homosexual and very sympathetically played by Roland Curham. In my first film I remember going round Manchester and seeing sort of strange pubs which had drag shows and that kind of thing, and I thought maybe we should include one of these. Jo Yani, my wonderful producer of many films, said I don't think it's wise to have such a sequence in the film. But it wasn't 'til later when the original idea of Darling came up that we invented this gay character of the photographer who was very sympathetic. And from then on, quite often I've included characters that are gay in my films - notably of course in Sunday Bloody Sunday, which was all about the subject really.

Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday

Jeremy Isaacs: Midnight Cowboy contained that extraordinary relationship between John Voigt and Dustin Hoffman that was itself at least a latently homosexual relationship, wasn't it?
John Schlesinger: Yes.

Jeremy Isaacs: And they hadn't spotted that?
John Schlesinger: It wasn't an actual homosexual relationship. I mean I suppose the character, Ratso Rizo, who felt himself deeply unattractive, would have gone to bed with man, woman or dog and when he realised that emotionally he had this wonderful relationship with the cowboy who's fantasy had all been proved erroneous, that was the thing, I think the strength of the film. There was a real deep human friendship underneath everything, which is why it never really was considered a kind of gay film. In fact, quite a lot of people were rather horrified and thought it was anti-gay in a way, which it was never intended to be. In the beating up of the masochist towards the end of the film, when the telephone is jammed into his mouth by a desperate cowboy who wanted money.

Jeremy Isaacs: Are these two films - Sunday Bloody Sunday and Midnight Cowboy - in any sense your most personal films, or your favourite films?
John Schlesinger: Well they're not my favourite necessarily. I mean I'm very deeply attached to Sunday Bloody Sunday. I later made a film that was totally personal to me really, Madame Souzatzka. It was adapted from a novel by Bernice Rubens - but because I wanted to do a film that was really all about music, and that's a extraordinarily important part of my life. So if I was, that's personal to me.

Jeremy Isaacs: One of the wonderful things about Sunday Bloody Sunday is the use of music in that, and particularly one always remembers the bit of Cosi fan Tutte.
John Schlesinger: Yes. The trio from the first act, we sort of hit upon, very fortunately, when we were in the cutting room.

Jeremy Isaacs: What's its function in the film?
John Schlesinger: Well it's function in the film I think is as a deeply moving piece, and it is about waving goodbye, and you know, if one translates it - and I don't think I can - but it's about having a calm and safe trip. It has a sort of overtone which I thought was right for the film, as well as the music being so very beautiful and soulful - the kind of thing that one would play, I think, late at night.