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Working on Film and Television Graley Herren Xavier University Xavier University Exhibit Faculty Scholarship English 2013 Working on Film and Television Graley Herren Xavier University Follow this and additional works at: http://www.exhibit.xavier.edu/english_faculty Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Herren, Graley, "Working on Film and Television" (2013). Faculty Scholarship. Paper 8. http://www.exhibit.xavier.edu/english_faculty/8 This Book Chapter/Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Exhibit. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Exhibit. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Working on Film and Television 193 [in German (1981)] and Nacht und Triiume [in German (1983)]; a film CHAPTER 17 adaptation of his srage play Play [Comidie] [in French (1966)]; and a television adaptation of his stage play What Where [Was Wo] [in German Working on Film and Television (1986)]. Impottant critical studies have placed Beckett's screen work firmly within the contexts of their media productions [primarily with the British Graley Herren Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in England and Siiddeurscher Rundfi.mk (SDR) in West Germany]. Clas Zilliacus initiated this effort with his sem­ inal book Beckett and Broadcasting (1976), and Jonathan Bignell offers the most extensive evaluation of the institutional media contexrs in which the screen work was originally conceived, produced and broadcast in his book As a fledgling writer, Samuel Beckett was himself a critic.' He later Beckett on Screen (2009). Viral as the BBC mntext is to a full appreciation downplayed his criticism to Ruby Cohn as 'mere producrs of friendly obli­ of the teleplays, however, Bignell concedes that these enigmatic experi­ gations or economic necessity', dismissing the lot as 'disjecta' (D, 7 ). In ments for the medium constitute aberrations to some degree: 'Beckett's the present context, however, it bears considering what 'residua lingered television work and adaptations of his theatre plays became increas­ on from his 'disjecta'. The critical frame of mind and interpretive strategies ingly exceptional rather than typical, increasingly marginal rather than Beckett tested out dnting these formative years - rereading as occasion high-profile'.' He adds, 'The plays, and Film too, look strikingly anachro­ for reinvention - would develop into his signatnte methodology in the nistic in relation to the contexts in which I place them'.• matUte creative work. S. E. Gontarski identifies 'a central tenet of Samuel Bignell's admirable study places Beckett's screen works within the impor­ Beckett's creative spirit, a creative life marked by a series of reinventions, tant contexts of their institutional production at the BBC and their criti­ or better by a pattern of serial reinvention'! Gontarski refers primarily cal reception (or conspicuous lack thereof) in television studies. For my to Beckett's reinventions of personal and professional personae. I wish to part, in what follows I concentrate on two other useful contexrs which help expand the notion of 'serial reinvention' to characterise the work irself, as account for the comparatively alien and anachronistic qualities of Beckett's Beckett extended his oeuvre diachronically by excavating the synchronic film and television work. These pieces seem out of place because they are sttata of past works on which it was built. Beckett establishes a signature oriented steadfustly towards the past, engaged in dialectical reconsidera­ working method in his film and television plays whereby he retntns to the tions - and reinventions - of a number of formative influences. Elsewhere past, not as homage or oath of allegiance but rather as creative leaping-off I have elaborated at length upon impottant influences from and dialectical point, as occasion for reinvention. exchanges with literatUte (e.g. Dante, Shakespeare and Years), music (e.g. Nowhere is this methodology of serial reinvention displayed more Beethoven and Schubert) and painting (e.g. the '.Agony in the Garden' tta­ graphically than in his corpus for film and television. Between 1963 and dition).' In this chapter, I limit my focus to philosophical and psychological 1989, Beckett committed an enormous amount of creative energy to (re) contexts for understanding the film and television plays. There is nothing conceiving and (re)producing work for the big and small screens. He new in looking at Beckett through these lenses, which are two of the more composed original screenplays for one film - Film (1963) - and five tele­ familiar disciplinary approaches in Beckett studies. But these perspectives vision pieces - Eh Joe (1965), Ghost Trio (1975), ·~.but the clouds ... (r976), are rarely applied to Beckett on screen (with the exception of Film), despite Q;;ad (1981) and Nacht und Triiume (1982). He was also heavily involved the fuct that these works contain some of the most philosophically and in mounting screen productions, serving either as director, co-director or psychologically suggestive works in his entire dramatic canon. consultant to the director on Film (1964); font productions of Eh Joe [He foe] [two in German (1966, 1979) and two in English (1966, 1989)]; two productions each of Ghost Trio [ Geistertrio] [in English (1977) and German PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXTS (1977)] and .. but the clouds ... [.. nur noch Gewolk ...] [in English (1977) Beckett's earliest cinematic interest dates back to his youth. He was an and German (1977)]; one production each of Quad [Quadrat I + II] early devotee of silent films, especially the comedies of Charlie Chaplin 194 GRALEY HERREN W!irking on Film and Television 195 and Buster Keaton. His early enthusiasm deepened, so much so that by What chiefly endured for Beckett from Geulincx was his acceptance of early 1936 he had embarked upon an intensive self-directed study of film ignorance as the basic human condition, his ethic of humility and his theory, culminating in an unsuccessful appeal to study under pioneer­ advocacy for ascetic withdrawal and rigorous self-examination. Consider ing Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein at the Moscow State School of for instance Geulincx's promotion of diligence as 'an intense and contin­ Cinematogtaphy.6 Beckett's first opportunity to work in cinema would uous withdrawal of the mind (no matter what its current business) from have to wait almost three decades. In April 1963 he began composing his external things into itself, into its own innermost sanctum, in order to con­ only piece written specifically for the big screen, the reflexively titled Film, sult the sacred Oracle of Reason' .9 1his philosophical itnage most directly solicited and produced by his American publisher, Barney Rasset, for his anticipates M's 'little sanctum' in .. but the clouds ... , where he retreats fledgling Evergreen Theatre film project. During the summer of 1964, from the world in order to summon his private oracle of his imagina­ he made his first (and last) trip to the United States to collaborate with tion, W (CDW, 419-22). In a broader sense, an 'innermost sanctum', into director Alan Schneider during the shooting of this (almost) silent film, which one escapes from the world for the purposes of intense, imagina­ starring screen legend Buster Keaton. Film must be regarded as only a tive, compulsive contemplation, serves ubiquitously as the serial precondi­ qualified success - Beckett hitnself called it an 'interesting failure'? - but it tion of Eh foe, Ghost Trio, .. .but the clouds .. and Nacht und Triiume. nevertheless demonstrates his commitment from the start to interrogating the philosophical nature of the medium. BERGSON: MEMORY AND HABIT Once ensconced in their respective little sanctums, M and his televisual BERKELEY: BEING AND PERCEPTION brethren habitually dwell upon their memories. Memory is the primary Film examines the relationship of being and perception, taking its impe­ preoccupation of Beckett's late work, and that theme is developed with tus from eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley, the acute intensity on screen. The media of film and television lend them­ Bishop of Cloyne. In The Principles ofHuman Knowledge, Bishop Berkeley selves intrinsically to this theme because both function like memory itsel£ divides all existence into two categories, sensible objects and spirits (or Actions registered as itnages are recorded and are thus made readily acces­ minds, or souls). For all objects, he asserts, 'esse est percip! ['to be is to sible and infinitely repeatable, reanimating the past and absent as if live be perceived']; for all spirits, 'esse est percipere' ['to be is to perceive']. The and present. Yet these purpottedly true images are subjecr to all manner published screenplay consists chiefly of Beckett's notes, diagrams, con­ of editorial manipulation, selection, condensation and distortion, result­ cerns and a summary of the action (there is no dialogue save for one whis­ ing in sights and sounds that are less archival records from the past than pered 'shh!'). There Beckett transcribes Berkeley's dictum, 'Esse est percip!, expedient fantasies for the present - remembering as reinvention. The as well as his own disclaimer below: 'No truth value attaches to above, conceptual antecedents for Beckett's treatment of film and television as regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience' (CDW, 323). 'memory machines' can be traced back to theories of memory and habit The dramatic conflict of Film derives from
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