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appeared, encompassing five out of his hisfirst audience into action - not goals which Peter Watkins has been making defi- six feature films - The War Game and Cullo- tend to sit easy with producers or distributors, The Peter antly radicalantly challenging challenging films Watkins for more filmmaker than has films been par for making excellence, more defi- than den (paired together), The Gladiators , Pun- no matter their stripe. Watkins's career has forty years now. If the early part of his career ishment Park , and his masterpiece, Edvard been marked by a constant struggle to get attests to a period when radical and com- Munch , all in lavish editions with substantial his films made, and even more, by a constant mercial were not necessarily mutually exclu- booklets, extras, and critical commen- struggle to get them seen, in the face of insti- sive propositions - his first films were made taries - and reportedly The Freethinker will tutional suppression, censorship, and critical for the BBC, and his first theatrical feature, soon join that list as well. With First Run hostility. On the strength of a handful of Privilege , was produced and low-budget, independently distributed by Universal - produced short films (two of the uncompromising nature The defiant one- Peter Watkins's singular which, Diary of an Unknown of his aggressively provoca- body of work, a radical achievement without Soldier and The Forgotten tive work made him a cine- Faces , are included as extras matic pariah even then, lead- peer, snaps back into focus on newly on the first two New Yorker ing almost immediately to a released DVD editions of his major works. releases), Watkins was hired cinematic exile which has by the BBC's documentary lasted to the present day. division in 1963, where he Unbowed and seemingly incorruptible, Features having just released a three-disc set was able to make his astounding feature Watkins has built a body of work which, devoted to his most recent film, the magiste- debut, Culloden , a reenactment of the brutal whatever reservations one might harbor rial La Commune (Paris, 1871 ), and his four- and tragic eighteenth- century Scottish battle about particular films, is a truly astonishing teen-hour, eighteen-part documentary on and its aftermath. The nearly unqualified and admirable* achievement, a testament the tonuclear arms race, The Journey , available praise for Culloden (a response which would his iron-willed determination to make from Facets on VHS, Watkins's work may be short-lived and never repeated) led to the movies on his own terms and in defiance of still be less accessible than it should be (the production of his next and possibly most the obstacles placed in his path. four remaining films from his filmography famous film, The War Game, a dramatization of A measure of tribute has arrived at last, are virtually impossible to see), but more the physical and social effects of a nuclear in the form of a long-overdue but (even at than you might have thought likely. attack on England. The War Game proved this late date) still gutsy initiative by New Watkins is, after all, a provocateur, deter- too hot to handle for the BBC, which, partly in Yorker Films to release a number of the mined to smash complacency, to reveal response to pressure from representatives of films on DVD. Thus far four discs have injustice, hypocrisy, and ignorance, and to spur the government and the military, refused to

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This content downloaded from 144.82.114.178 on Tue, 04 May 2021 08:50:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms televise it, even going to some lengths to DVD's Reviewed in This Article date which directly engages the present suppress it.1 The whole affair was reported without using a fictional framework, taking all on widely in the British press and led to The War Game and Culloden of fourteen hours to do so ) . Watkins's resignation from the BBC in 1965, The War Game: Written and directed by Peter It's the speculative films that show thus inaugurating a never-ending search for Watkins; cinematography by Peter Bartlett; Watkins, for better or for worse, at his most DVD, B&W, 49 mins., 1965. Culloden: Written a hospitable artistic climate which has taken and directed by Peter Watkins; cinematography aggressively provocative - these are films him to the U.S., Scandinavia, and most by Dick Bush. DVD, B&W, 72 mins., 1964. designed to shatter the audience's false sense recently France (as well as Lithuania, where of security, to shock them with visions of the The Gladiators Watkins has lived for many years). sickness at the heart of society and of the Written and directed by Peter Watkins; Many filmmakers, even admirable ones, possible consequences of this corruption. cinematography by Peter Suschitzky; DVD, have proven vulnerable to pressures less intense color, 91 mins., in English, Swedish and French Watkins stands apart from cinematic provo- and relentless than these. One of Watkins's with optional English subtitles, 1968. cateurs like Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noé in that greatest achievements is simply the perse- The disc also includes The Diary of an he almost never indulges in empty cynicism verance he has demonstrated - from his first Unknown Soldier , B&W, 17 mins., 1959. (with the conspicuous exception of Privilege) short films to La Commune , Watkins has, or a sense of superiority towards the audience, Punishment Park seemingly without hesitation, sacrificed financial traits which can, after all, represent another Directed by Peter Watkins; cinematography by Joan and career security in order to continue making Churchill; DVD, color, 88 mins., 1971. The disc kind of complacency. At their best, Watkins's films exactly as he wants to make them. also includes The Forgotten Faces , B&W, 18 mins., provocations are designed to shake his audience's Indeed, taken all together, the paradox of 1961. convictions in order to spur them to constructive Watkins's body of work is that it is remarkably, action or thought - not simply to shock but to even obsessively, unified in style and subject Edvard Munch challenge the viewer to engage the film, and matter, even as he alternates between dis- Directed and edited by Peter Watkins; written by extension the world at large. But in the by Peter Watkins in collaboration with the cast; tinct modes that seem almost incompatible. best known of his speculative films (The War cinematography by Odd Geir Saether; DVD, color, With Culloden , his first feature-length film 174 mins., In English, Norwegian and German Game, Privilege , The Gladiators , and Punish- and his first BBC-commissioned project, with optional English subtitles, 1976. All five ment Park) , Watkins's zeal often leads him to use Watkins adopted an approach which he has features distributed by New Yorker Video, methods that are overbearing and crude, to been developing and refining, with very little www.newyorkerfims.com. wield the newsreel aesthetic as a cudgel. It's variation, ever since. Watkins films are all shot in The Journey not a question of bad-faith, of trying to pass off mimicry of a newsreel documentary esthetic Written and directed by Peter Watkins; reconstruction as truth - Watkins trusts his (an apparent nonesthetic), complete with hand- cinematography by Odd Geir Saether among audience to be more sophisticated than that held camera-work, action seemingly caught many others; VHS, color, 870 mins., 1987. (in The War Game, for instance, the narrator is at Distributed by Facets Video, 1517 W. Fullerton on the sly, and participants who invariably pains to identify the footage we see as some- Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614, www.facets.org. look directly into the lens, usually accompa- thing that might happen). But, to take The nied by the off-screen voice of the director La Commune (Paris, 1871) War Game as an example again, the film is (or interviewer). Directed by Peter Watkins; cinematography extremely powerful when it lets the vérité- This tactic is ubiquitous now, but by Odd Geir Saether; DVD, B&W, 345 mins., style images of the attack and its aftermath Watkins can justifiably be called the pioneer French dialog with English subtitles, 2000. speak for themselves, less so during the Three-disc Collector's Edition also includes of the style, and one of the few who has not interviews in which certain characters (a sol- The Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter only borrowed the bok of newsreel filmmaking Watkins , color, 76 mins. A First Run/Icarus Films dier, a nurse, a doctor) express their shock, hor- but has consistently adopted the conceit that release distributed in homevideo by First Run ror, and suffering. Here the newsreel esthet- the film is in fact a newscast, with the break- Features, www.firstrunfeatures.com. ic becomes a distraction, the emotions ing of the fourth wall that that implies. In obviously fabricated - in these moments, other words, Watkins is not simply after the Parky The Trap , and Evening Land (which Watkins's desire to move and shock us impression of spontaneity or a sense of leaves only The Seventies People , which becomes too transparent. unvarnished realism. He achieves that; but by applies the faux-newsreel approach to the The newsreel approach is relatively breaking the fourth wall, he also, paradoxi- issue of suicide in contemporary Denmark, muted in Privilege and The Gladiators , the cally, calls attention to the film's artificiality, and The Journey , the only Watkins film toonly films Watkins has made in the bulkier since, after all, he has no intention of and less mobile 35mm format, and per- passing his films off as nonfiction. Tak- haps partly as a result, these are easily ing the newsreel style to its logical con- his worst films. But Watkins returned to clusion allows him to distinguish 16mm, and to his radically collaborative between reality and the way in which approach to filmmaking, with Punish- reality is presented in 'the media, and to ment Park, the most important of his investigate the relationship between those speculative films. Punishment Park who film and those who are filmed. posits a near-future U.S. in which Viet- As unwavering as he has been in his nam War-related unrest has led to a loyalty to this approach, there is an crackdown on subversive elements obvious distinction (a distinction whose across the country. Those convicted can repercussions, however, may not be so choose either to serve jail time or to try obvious) between the Watkins films their luck in Punishment Park, attempt- that apply the faux-newsreel form to ing to cross many miles of desert in an past historical epochs and those that attempt to reach a designated point apply it to situations and events taking before being apprehended by the place in the near future (or an alternate National Guard forces in pursuit, an present) - the speculative films. The exercise intended to double as punish- former category includes Culloden , ment for the prisoners and as military Edvard Munch , The Freethinker , and La training for the soldiers. The film alter- Commune , the latter The War Game, nates between one of the emergency tri- Privilege , The Gladiators , Punishment Peter Watkins on the set of The War Game (1965). bunals set up to try a group of young radi-

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This content downloaded from 144.82.114.178 on Tue, 04 May 2021 08:50:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms uneasy one. As in The War Game , Watkins's determination to shock and upset over- whelms the material - Punishment Park cul- minates in an assault on the part of the national guardsmen so excessive that any rational, reflective instincts the viewer might have are drowned in a wave of indignation and righteous anger (and this would be true even without the presence of Watkins's voice, representing the unseen interviewer, crying out in shock and horror). It's impos- sible to watch Punishment Park without reflecting on the danger of preaching to the converted. Certainly righteous anger is an important and necessary response to injus- tice and corruption - but Watkins hits this note so hard throughout Punishment Park that it's difficult not to feel that, for anyone sympathetic to his position, the film func- tions as a self-fulfilling prophecy that flatters one's convictions; and that anyone uncon- vinced will be deeply alienated by it. An indication of this problem lies in the dis- crepancy between the casting of the roles of the radicals and of the authority figures. The social order breaks down after a nuclear attack on England in Peter Watkins's The War Game. According to Joseph Gomez2, the actors playing the radicals were themselves radi- cals, who largely shared their characters' cals and the previous group's experiences in heated debates between the young radicals convictions, whereas the actors playing the Punishment Park, and it's this structure that and the mostly older authority figures sit- authority figures, though conservative in makes the film so striking, especially since ting in judgment over them, there's a palpable their politics, were instructed to exaggerate the footage in the tribunal represents a tension and hostility at these moments that their own beliefs. This imbalance speaks to a charged mixture of fiction and fact. is clearly more than make-believe. Just as a crucial limitation at the heart of the film, an From the very beginning of his career, great deal of The War Games power stems from inclination to identify the divisions existing Watkins has made his actors active participants the fact that the atrocities it portrays occurring in in American society without endeavoring to in shaping the films, giving them a great deal an England-of-tomorrow all mirror events that investigate or understand their causes, or to of freedom in building their own characters. had already taken place in Hiroshima, engage the very real issues underlying them Punishment Park was, up until this point, his Nagasaki, Dresden, and elsewhere, Punishment (such as the resentment of the working classes most radical experiment in this direction - Park is as much a snapshot of the divisions and towards the mostly young and affluent radicals) . the actors were almost all nonprofessionals, conflict in American society as it is speculation This is a problem that recurs constantly and each held views that at least approximated about the near future. throughout the speculative films, and speaks those of their characters. Since the scenes tak- And yet, Punishment Park is fatally to a curious paradox in Watkins's work - ing place at the tribunal essentially involve flawed, the mixture of fact and fiction an the constant tension in his films between his

The communards form a short-lived socialist Three of the hundreds of participants in Peter Watkins's collaboratively-made government in Paris in La Commune. recreation of the socialist uprising of 1871, La Commune.

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This content downloaded from 144.82.114.178 on Tue, 04 May 2021 08:50:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms desire to give the audience a profound anachronism by positing the presence of degree of interpretive freedom and his ten- camera- crews and television interviewers in dency to over-determine its responses. centuries past. The conceit of an eighteenth- Watkins's collaborative approach to making century film crew allows Watkins to avoid the films and his goal of inspiring his audi- the trappings of the conventional period ence to ask questions suggest a nuanced, film - its preoccupation with a narrative arc, generous, self-challenging sensibility. But personal drama, and the spectacle of period Privilege , The Gladiators , Punishment Park , dress and props. These are all things which, and The Trap all present conflicts and in most period films, create a comfortable debates in which the deck is unmistakably distance - and this is why the immediacy of stacked, making them bold and provocative the newsreel approach is invaluable here, a but dramatically inert and often only super- way of making history come alive again. When ficially challenging. Privilege and The Gladi- Watkins (or his fictional counterpart) interviews ators are Watkins's crudest films, simplisti- the various participants in the battle, whether cally cartoonish and heavy-handed in their they are the rank and file of either army or characterizations; but Punishment Park and the leadership on either side, any anachro- The Trap , a teleplay shot for Swedish TV in nism is easily trumped by the opportunity to 1975, are more complicated. Both films fea- engage directly with these characters. ture, at their center, debates between those Culloden is as angry a film as The War defending the status quo and those arguing Game or Punishment Park, focusing as it does on a radical or at least oppositional viewpoint. what would today be identified as war But who except a died-in-the-wool right-wing crimes. Watkins utilizes the newsreel format viewer would identify even for a moment to convey through his narration and through with the tribunal judges or the police in on-screen texts a constant stream of statis- Punishment Park , or with John in The Trap , tics and facts (from details about the partici- set on the last night of the year 1999, whose pants' socioeconomic backgrounds and the unthinking acceptance of his society's pre- hierarchical structure of the Highland clan occupation with security has led him to live system, to the ratio of dead on each side). But he in a bunker thirty meters underground? And also editorializes freely, identifying Prince how many right wingers would ever be Charles's lack of military experience, damn- caught dead watching a Peter Watkins film? ing the injustice of the clan system, com- For those sympathetic to Watkins's perspec- menting soberly but angrily on the atrocities tive, these movies primarily offer an oppor- committed by the British army, and finally, tunity to flame one's indignation. in the film's final moments, lamenting the And yet, these problems virtually disap- destruction of the Highlanders' culture. pear in the period films, where Watkins's In contrast to The Gladiators , Punish- newsreel approach bears fruit brilliantly. It ment Park or The Trap , however, Watkins is is here that Watkins allows himself a greater not afraid to complicate the situation, to measure of reflection and even lyricism, and apply his critical instincts to both sides of that he most deeply indulges his experimen- the divide. While his sympathies are clearly tation regarding structure, sound design, with the Highlanders, who are after all the and achronological storytelling. The miracle victims of the British atrocities, he takes care of these films is that, despite taking place in to identify the exploitative nature of the clan the past, they are as relevant, impassioned, system, and to reveal that many of the and political as any of the speculative films. British soldiers have been pressed into ser- Culloden is a masterpiece of historical Scottish and English forces clash in vice. True to its people's-history aspirations, filmmaking, a model of class-conscious, Culloden (1964), Peter Watkins's recreation the opposition is not simply between the people's-history that, sadly, very few film- of the brutal eighteenth-century battle. British and the Highlanders, but between makers have seen fit to adopt. The battle of the ruling and working classes, with the Culloden, the culmination of the Jacobite wealth of detail and a class-conscious per-Highland peasants doubly victimized: Rising, saw the tired, hungry, and ineptly led spective that would reveal dimensions of forciblythe compelled to fight on behalf of their Highland Scots forces fighting for the cause event ignored or deemphasized in conven- clan leaders, and then massacred by the of Prince Charles Edward British ror doing so. This Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") instinct towards complication decimated by the British army, "Watkins's career has been marked by a and moral shading is evident who followed their victory as early as Watkins's short with brutal and bloody re- constant struggle to get his films made, film, The Forgotten Faces , a criminations against not only and, even more, by a constant struggle to reconstruction of the doomed the surviving soldiers but Hungarian Revolution of also the civilian population ofget them seen, in the face of institutional 1956, in which Watkins, com- the Highlands. Made in 1964,suppression, censorship, and critical hostility." menting on a scene in which Watkins no doubt intended representatives of the state this campaign of 'pacification' are captured by the revolu- to suggest the pacification of South Vietnam tional accounts, while trusting that the contem- tionaries, allows himself the question, "If the then underway. But Watkins understood thatporary relevance would be self-evident to freedomany fighters had actually won the revolution, approaching the battle of Culloden as a thinly perceptive viewer. would any of them have donned similar uni- veiled reference to contemporary events The most striking thing about Culloden forms , to hold these men in check?" This re- would fail to do justice to either of them of -course, is the newsreel format - in all flective of distance is largely missing in many of the instead, he chose to portray the battle with his a period films, Watkins happily embraces speculative films, and they are the weaker for it.

CINEASTE, Spring 2007 23

This content downloaded from 144.82.114.178 on Tue, 04 May 2021 08:50:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Chinese soldiers compete as part of the internationally-televised " Peace Games" in Peter Watkins's vision of the near-future, The Gladiators (1968).

TH dvard Munch , Watkins's supreme tive threads with great assurance, using overlap- the earlier films' critical intelligence and lack 1-1 achievement, takes this reflectiveness ping sound editing to create a dynamic rela- of sentimentality. * J even further, achieving a depth of tionship between the two halves. But Munch As in Culloden , the newsreel esthetic both feeling and a tonal range barely hinted at in takes a giant leap forward, abandoning creates distance and collapses it. The film's any of its predecessors. While Culloden radi- chronology, and weaving a number of dif- immediacy cuts through the remove we gen- cally reconceived the historical film, Munch ferent periods in Munch's life into a tight erally feel from the world portrayed in a not only extends those innovations but also web of associations and repeated motifs. period film, but the concept of documentary represents an even more profound rethink- Munch is unquestionably Watkins's most film crew in the nineteenth century encour- ing of the genre of the biographical film. In beautiful film, even as it retains every bit of ages us to remain aware that Munch is a fic- a genre which would seem almost by defini- tional reconstruction and to reflect on the tion to focus on an individual and his inner process of the film's creation. The culmina- life, Watkins emphasizes the artist's society, tion of Watkins's experiments on this front the context in which he lived and worked, so are his most recent fictional films, The Free- much so that Munch recedes almost to the thinker and La Commune (Paris, 1871 j, both background of his own film. As in Culloden , period films which emphasize their artifi- Watkins presents a wealth of statistics and ciality and foreground their own making. observations on nineteenth- century Norwe- The Freethinker - another biographical film, gian society and stages interviews with the this time taking August Strindberg as its various characters to reveal the details of subject - expands on Munch's innovations: their daily lives. But Munch's inner life the film is an intricate and wide-ranging remains maddeningly elusive. Watkins has mixture of dramatic reconstructions, never shown much interest in his characters' archival photographs, narration, on-screen psychology, and while this approach may texts, and discussions with the cast and seem like a shortcoming in his speculative crew. La Commune, on the other hand, is a films, where the characters threaten to slip kind of companion piece to Culloden , focus- into abstraction or empty symbolism, here it ing on the short-lived socialist uprising in registers as an honest and admirably materi- Paris in 1871. Both films were made com- alist acknowledgment that the real Munch munally, far more so even than Punishment can only be an enigma. Park. The Freethinker was the culmination of M unch also makes plain what was easy to a two-year video production course Watkins overlook in Watkins's earlier films, thanks led at Nordens Folk High School near to their often confrontational nature - his Stockholm, and was made with a cast and mastery of editing, sound design, and film Convicted antiwar activists, pursued by crew largely consisting of Watkins's stu- structure. Both The Gladiators and Punish- National Guard troops, attempt to cross the dents, while La Commune was filmed in a ment Park alternated between parallel narra- desert in Peter Watkins's Punishment Park. large abandoned factory building, with a

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This content downloaded from 144.82.114.178 on Tue, 04 May 2021 08:50:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms not be any one particular film, but rather the development of And not a cinematic ayet, cinematic be any form Watkins's almost oneentirely form his particular own: a hybrid almost of fictiongreatest entirely film, contribution but his rather own: to the a film hybrid development history of fiction may of and documentary capable of encompassing an astonishing range of tones, modes, and varieties of information. Edvard Munch , The Free- thinker, and La Commune combine drama, text, speculation, debate, and a focus on process into a coherent whole in which each element engages the subject from a different angle, giving each film a breath- taking scope. Watkins expounds at great length, in his critical writ- ings about the media3, on the dominance of the Monoform, the lin- ear, literal-minded, narrative approach to image-making which he believes characterizes almost all mainstream television and film pro- duction, and which he finds fundamentally manipulative. He makes repeated pleas for the creation of alternative forms, ones that encourage reflection, that posit new ways of representing experience. And his later films show him genuinely putting theory into action. These are not just compelling and fascinating films - they represent a whole new approach, new avenues waiting to be explored, devel- Geir Westby portrays the great Norwegian painter in Peter Watkins's sublime Edvard Munch (1976). oped, and expanded. If few seem to be following his lead, the prece- dent has at least been set. cast of more than 220, most of whom were without prior acting Besides, Watkins surely has more films left in him - he has been experience. Both represent Watkins's collaborative approach to quiet in the seven years since La Commune , no doubt in part due to filmmaking at its most ambitious, with the actors responsible not the difficulty he has always had in bringing his projects to fruition. only for interpreting their roles, but for researching their characters' But he has always willed them into being eventually, and there is no lives and backgrounds, for contributing a piece of the historical evidence that his energy and determination are flagging - it seems mosaic. Indeed, both these films are achievements not only in drama likely to be only a matter of time before he makes another contribu- but also in historical research. Dry as that may sound, the results are tion to the project that has been his life's work. ■ anything but - the wealth of detail adds dimensions that most peri- od films hardly even suggest, the multitude of information heighten- End Notes ing the drama rather than bogging it down. Compelling as they are, 1 Gomez, Joseph A. Peter Watkins. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979, pp. 56-57. these films prove that high production values and the illusion of 2 Gomez, op. cit., p. 103. reality can be almost totally superfluous. 3 See Watkins's website, which includes extensive information on his films, Though Watkins's collaborative approach was hardly new, in The www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/ Freethinker and La Commune he makes this process an integral part of the finished product, interspersing the reconstructions of Strindberg' s life and of the uprising not only with the usual screen texts, but also with footage of the actors speaking about their relationship to their roles and discussing the project with each other, as well as debating the state of contemporary politics (an extension of one of the many elements of The Journey , large blocks of which involve group debates about nuclear war and the peace process). This transparency broadens the films' reach - each one is both the result of a process and a document of it. For all their flaws, The War Game and Punishment Park are important models of radical filmmaking, provocations that bravely tackle social and political issues that very few filmmakers would dare to broach. But it's the films Watkins has made beginning with Edvard Munch that are the core of his achievement. The new struc- tural and formal freedom he found with Munch has been apparent in almost all his films since, including The Seventies People and Evening Land (a speculative film with little evidence of the earlier films' shortcomings), finding its most elaborate and sustained expression in The Journey. This film, a kind of sequel to The War Game (or rather a reconceiving of the earlier film in the context of his mature style), marks Watkins's only engagement with documentary per se , combining the angry, impassioned activism of the earlier films with their successors' commitment to a free, open structure, and a patient, sophisticated presentation of information and of multiple viewpoints. Its departure point, as with The War Game, is the threat and the consequences of nuclear war, but The Journey expands to encompass a whole con- stellation of related themes and issues - the peace movement, media manipulation, the gulf between rich and poor, the process by which a state educates its people to demonize those of the so-called enemy power - as well as participants (it was filmed in the U.S., Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Mozambique, among other countries). Further developing the structure of Munch and The Freethinker , The Journey unveils its multitude of settings and topics relatively quickly, letting each strand develop in tandem with every other over the course of the film's fourteen-hour length. It is a monumental film, yet a carefully constructed and tightly woven one.

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