A thing:

The British Library’s Theatre Archive Project, a partially-oral history of mid-twentieth-century British theatre, is a thing I never knew about. I forget what internet rabbit hole brought me to its portals, but the first thing I saw there was the interview with the late Dudley Sutton, who was good enough to appear in the first film I ever directed. He was lovely, if a touch intimidating. He didn’t mean to be, it’s just that one was aware of his being in a different league.

I didn’t know ANYTHING in those pre-internet days (1989/90?) so I didn’t know he’d worked for Joan Littlewood. We got snatches of anecdote out of him during the four days he was with us, on one of which we failed to shoot a single foot of usable material. “The BEST films for drugs were the DISNEY films, because you got all these cool California guys coming over…” Now I can see that this refers to his henchman role in TV movie Diamonds on Wheels and/or movie-movie THE LONDON CONNECTION. That one’s worth seeing because of the way Roy Kinnear’s reaction shots have been cut in, seemingly at random. “Pull some faces, Roy,” and then some stoned editor has laid them in by the yard.

All I knew about Dud was THE DEVILS, which meant nothing to my young collaborators, who did finally recognise him, when he rocked up, from the TV show Lovejoy, which I’d never watched. I was kind of an alien in the film department at Edinburgh College of Art because my cultural references were films. But I hadn’t seen Fellini’s CASANOVA. “He cut out all my lines, but I’m still in there,” said Dud. I didn’t know he was the original Mr. Sloane in Entertaining Mr. Sloane.

Anyway, it was a joy to commune with the Dudster again. He talks about writing poetry but not publishing it, which reminded me of a recital he once had posted on YouTube. I can’t find it now. But here’s a his funeral (funeral = anagram of REAL FUN) a joyous valediction by the looks of it:

Here is the man himself, full of fire and passion and cancer. “People of Loudon, look to your walls! I’ve posted this before but it’s acquired even more urgency and relevance now. Dud died in 2018 so he missed the pandemic, which may have been a mercy. But do take a look, he’ll lend you his courage:

There are lots of other nice things in the archive including an astounding talk with Victor Spinetti — Welsh, Italian, Jewish, gay, a man you might expect to cancel himself out, and who was very nearly eradicated by some Welsh yobs who planted a brick behind his ear, but went on to survive and flourish and entertain hugely in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and HELP! but had a whole distinguished stage career also and sounds like a very considerable person.

Church and State

OK, I’m on a Damiano Damiani kick now, so impressed was I by BULLET FOR THE GENERAL. And having liked IL STREGHE in the past. Encountering him via his unsuccessful collaboration with Leone was a false start, and misleading — he’s not a sub-Leone figure like Tonino Valerii, he’s his own artist, which is why they couldn’t work together. I’ll postpone his mafiosi and politziotteschi films a bit as I hoover up some outliers.

THE TEMPTER aka THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN aka IL SORRISO DEL GRANDE TENTATORE (1974) seemed like it was going to be a consolation prize for Glenda Jackson walking away from THE DEVILS after finding out the scene where Sister Jeanne’s severed head is worshipped after her death had been cut from the script, or an EXORCIST knock-off (the first?). It was a sensational, nutzoid Ennio Morricone score which does give it a groovy exploitation feel, but as often with this filmmaker, there’s something else going on.

What it really resembles most is ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. But Jackson’s Sister Geraldine is, though quietly malevolent, also a more complex and sympathetic character than dead-eyed psycho Nurse Ratched, and Damiani’s film eschews misogyny. Sister G is running a hideway for problematic persons — a Polish priest who collaborated with the Nazis, a Prince in love with his own sister, a Bolivian woman who arranged her torturer husband’s assassination, a Cuban priest too sympathetic to communism. Forbidden by the church from conducting confessions, she exerts her power through vicious group therapy sessions…

Claudio Cassinelli is an interloper, a young writer hired to help the Pole (Arnoldo Foà) with his exculpatory memoir. Sister Geraldine comes to regard him as the tempter… we may have similar suspicions of her. In fact, the only quasi-supernatural element is a shadow glimpsed in the chapel at a fraught moment.

Designed by Umberto Turco, the film looks amazing (but badly needs a restoration/transfer) mostly confined to this weird marble living tomb — a good self-isolation movie if you need one. Damiani had been a designer himself, and one way the film does resemble THE DEVILS is in its look — specifically it reminds me of the papal library, ironically one of the few location scenes in that film — Derek Jarman repurposed what was actually a prison.

THE TEMPTER stars Gudrun Brangwen; Jesus; Lizzie Kavanaugh; Emilio Largo; Johnny Spanish; Inspector A; Federico Arturo Von Homburg; and Goya.

THE INQUIRY aka L’INCHIESTA (1987) has a plot that sounds like a good airport novel: in the early years of persecuted Christianity, a Roman consul is tasked with locating the missing body of Christ. Soon put a stop to this resurrection nonsense. And the story is by two greats, Ennio Flaiano (EIGHT AND A HALF) and Suso Cecchi D’Amico (THE LEOPARD).

Keith Carradine is Tito Valerio Tauro and Harvey Keitel is Pilate. A year later he would be Judas for Scorsese. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride… Phyllis Logan is Mrs. Pilate and Sal Borgese turns up to add an echo of spaghetti western days.

It’s a riveting detective drama with a classical history setting. “Ay, Jesus, whaddaya doin’ makin’ crosses for da Romans?” is how a friend caricatured Keitel’s performance in LAST TEMPTATION. It never bothered me, the American accents. Carradine seems to sense that his Californian drawl could be a problem, and tries to smuggle in some Anglo vowels, which is mostly distracting. He still pronounces “stupidly” as “stoopidly.”

A good rule might have been to cast Americans as Romans and Italians as everyone else, but things get a bit mixed up. It doesn’t really do to get religious about these things: cast good actors in roles that suit them and all will be well.

As the investigation goes on, things get intriguing — could Christ have faked his own death? — the Laughing Jesus Heresy (my favourite!) is hinted at, and a miraculous catalepsy-inducing drug is tested — then things get crazy and mystical. Damiani, a Marxist apparently, is perhaps mainly interested in how old power structures can be destabilised by new ideas — Tiberius is right to be worried! — but the Bible stories still exert a hold. Travelling into the wilderness at risk of his life — deep undercover — Keithus Carradinus is at first mistaken for the Messiah — shades of LIFE OF BRIAN — and then momentarily becomes convinced he IS him. Offers to cure a leper or two. “What am I saying? get away from me!”

THE INQUIRY stars Will Rogers; Judas; Lady Jane Felsham; Lucky Luciano; Anna Magnani; Messala; and Henchman.

Dudley

I was very sad to learn to learn of Dudley Sutton’s recent passing — not only was he a great character actor, but a generous man who appeared in my first proper short film in 1990 for almost no money, traveling to Edinburgh without even being sure how we were going to put him up. (It was OK, we had a self-catering flat for him.)

I met him — I remember this being on the street, not in the station, so I don’t know how we arranged that. “I’m so glad to be back in the People’s Republic of Scotland,” he began, “Because here, you not only SAY you don’t vote for her, you DON’T vote for her.” (At the time, Mrs. Thatcher’s Conservative party had hardly any seats in Scotland.)

He was pleased to hear I was both writer and director: “Good, you’ll know what you want.” (But I was a first-timer, so that wasn’t quite true.)

The film was based on an authentic medieval comic tale — the only funny one, ever — THE THREE HUNCHBACKS. Dud played the fourth hunchback, the main one. We had worked out how to assemble medieval garb for our ridiculously large cast of characters, borrowing the best bits from Biggar Theatre Workshop and Edinburgh College of Art’s much-missed costume nook. The impossible bit was medieval shoes, but I had a plan. As I wasn’t shooting closeups of feet, we would only ever see them in wide, full-figure shots, and on 16mm there wouldn’t be much detail. So the actors would wear normal shoes, with socks pulled over them to add bright colour. Cardboard “buckles” painted silver would be taped to the socks, and the toes would be filled with cardboard cones to make them pointy in that Robin Hood style. Dud didn’t blink an eye at all this.

The first morning was chaos. I lost my binder with all my storyboards and was wandering around the various vehicles (we had a minibus and a car, at least, and about a ninety minute drive to the location) asking for it. “That’s the director?” Dud asked, apparently. “Welcome to the house of pain, Dud,” said the AD.

(Later, the cinematographer would observe me standing in a field in long hair, long coat, long scarf and wellingtons, and remark, “Oh my God, Christopher Robin’s directing the film.”)

Dud gave ME a valuable bit of direction on his very first shot of the film. “Never ask for effects. If you ask for effects, that’s all you’ll get.” I knew nothing about directing actors and thought if I just spoke clearly and said what I wanted, that’d be fine. It took me years (and some reading and some trial and error) to work out why that’s wrong.

Dud rewrote and vastly improved his first speech, getting the first biggest of the film: “What if I just told them to fuck off?” “Might be a bit harsh,” I dithered. “Well, I could say, ‘Fuck off out of it’? That’s a bit gentler.” We went with option #1.

“What’s on at the local art cinema?” he asked one night. “Fellini’s EIGHT AND A HALF.” “Oh, I was in one of his. He cut out all my lines, but I’m still in there.” I hadn’t been able to see CASANOVA at this point, and there was no IMDb to list his credits. I knew him from THE DEVILS, everyone else from Lovejoy. When he showed up, they were all, “Why didn’t you SAY he was Tink in Lovejoy?” THE LEATHER BOYS didn’t enter into anyone’s thinking back then, alas.

I didn’t get to hang out with Dud too much because we were always filming. After losing one of his four days of shooting to a camera malfunction (sixty foot of film concertina’d all over the floor) we had to pick up the pace to complete his stuff in time. “I’ll say this for you, when you do get going you don’t hang about,” he remarked with gruff approval.

So just occasionally I’d catch the tail end or the middle of a story while fetching Dud for a shot. “Of course the best films for drugs were the Disney films,” was one memorable sentence. And, “The crookedest film I was ever in was A TOWN CALLED BASTARD.” Apparently he also spoke about being expelled from RADA for smoking dope.

Dud competed his work, went home, and then we found two shots were out of focus. We replaced them using a hastily contrived “double,” who was thirty years younger and Japanese, but it didn’t matter because his fake hump concealed his head completely from the back. This was all a great introduction to filmmaking.

“I keep seeing Dud out the corner of my eye,” I remarked to Stuart, the producer.

“So do I!” he replied.

The film won third prize in a contest and we sent Dud a share of the money and he wrote back saying he’d have a nice dinner on that. “It seems just yesterday that we were all running about in the mud in our cone-filled socks.”

Yes it does.