Echoes… The Stone Tape (1972), BFI, The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men

 

The Stone Tape is a made for TV play broadcast as a Christmas ghost story in 1972 but on the Southbank early in the New Year half a century later it is still viscerally unsettling. Screening as part of Mark Jenkin’s season showing The Cinematic DNA of his new film, Enys Men, it shows men pitting technology against ancient forces, attempting to control and to commercialise that which they barely comprehend, in complete denial about the possibilities that they may have found one of those things undreamt of in their philosophy.

Written by Nigel Kneale who specialised in macabre tales mixing the supernatural with the scientific most famously in the Quatermass series and who also adapted many literary works for cinema including John Osborne's plays Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer for director Tony Richardson, both a far cry from sci-fi horror mash ups and yet which explain his grasp of character which adds so much to The Stone Tape. The human interactions and corporate politics mask the unfolding mystery so that when at last it is truly revealed, we’re all wrong-footed.

Filmed largely in studio and directed with superb timing and economy by Peter Sasdy, it featured some of the leading British actors of the time all of whom act their collective socks off in service to Kneale’s script… you really wouldn’t expect a studio play to be so affecting, you can see the “joins”, the studio floor, the artificiality of the lighting but it magnifies the tension, as you suspend that disbelief, born away by the players and the uncanny expectation.

Jane Asher stands alone

There’s one exception to the masculine rationality and that’s ace computer analyst, Jill Greeley (Jane Asher) who arrives at Ryan Electronics' new research facility “Taskerlands”, an old Victorian property about to be transformed into a research hot-house to help the electronics firm keep pace with the Japanese competition. As she pulls up two Ryan lorries apparently start reversing into Jill’s car… she reverses away in panic into a pile of sand: it’s a foretaste of the ordeal to come.

Shouting down Jill’s intuitions is Peter Brock (Michael Bryant), the head of a research team and a natural leader, if natural leaders are required to be obnoxious, bullying and aggressive,  as well as decisive and competitive, always with an eye for the main chance. He’s married with children (and a horse) but has been having an affair with his computer prodigy… he must have hidden charms.

There’s something very strange about their new base and foreman Roy Collinson (Iain Cuthbertson, who always so good at expressing doubts when following orders), reveals that the builders have refused to work on one room saying that it’s haunted. Naturally Brock dismisses this but Jill is shaken to the core as she sees an apparition of a woman in Victorian dress, screaming in terror… The sightings continue until even Brock is convinced there’s something awry… boldly he decides that this is something worth investigating: “… a mass of data... waiting for a correct interpretation.” He marshals his team and they move their kit and computers into the room to analyse and nail the phenomenon.

Iain Cuthbertson and Michael Bryant

They’re a mix of sceptics covering the full gamut of 70’s TV scientists from rough and ready (Peter Angelis) to bearded and contemplative (Michael Bates).  But, not only do they not believe some, literally, cannot see or hear the apparition… there are other sensitives like Jill who perceive the sound and vision and others who cannot feel anything at all, a mystery with lots of nuance, all designed to suspend our belief as well as motivate the denial on screen.

 

The story is well structured with rationality and investigation boldly pursued by the scientists, the kind of forensic approach that usually explains everything. Then, even after evidence from some locals and some palpable if not recordable, evidence felt by most, Brock decides to pound the issue with pure sound, before deciding that the very stones are a recording mechanism which, naturally could make his company very rich and make him the hero, commercially speaking.

As with any good such tale of this time, authority is generally stupid and brave scientists are often ignored even when, in this case, some should be ignored. Such tropes seem to be commonplace in an era when science was more trusted and supernatural fear was unsettling rather than graphic; a general paranoia and society ill at ease with the chaos of nuclear uncertainty only a couple of decades after such weapons were deployed, not once but twice to conclude the war after the war to end all wars.

Jane Asher is virtually the only woman and carries the mystery with her for long portions of the story, the sensitive human anchor amongst all the testosterone. scientific posturing and macho denial. The men want to control, to follow orders not instinct but she wants to genuinely understand and Brock’s casual in-bred exasperation - “bloody women!” - rebounds emphatically on him in the end.

Encapsulating the creeping disruption throughout is the sizzling static of a score which seems to have been sucked directly from the stones by Desmond Briscoe and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Workshop sound evokes the science mysteries of my youth and their influence of their experimental early synthesisers is long-lasting, informing the sounds of labels such as Ghost Box, Castle in Space, Woodford Halse and many more. These labels feature many an album of imagined scores for films that could have been made around the time of The Stone Tapes… the ghosts of electronica past inhabit the very vinyl of my study… the cardboard and plastic containers and even electrostatic patterns on newly-minted cassettes… we’re living in Brock’s world of endless-storage, nothing is forgotten, all is recorded. Still, we struggle to make sense of it.

All of which leads onto Enys Men and Mark Jenkins’ own score, which resonates with these same mysteries of sound and stone. Which is where we came in.

Details of The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men can be found on the BFI website along with screening information for the film itself. Nigel Keane will be there, spirit infused in the huge concrete walls of the Southbank.

There's a highly-collectable slice of vinyl too...

Seeing red… Deep End (1970)

Jane Asher

Too often Jane Asher has been seen as a celebrity cake-maker, a red-headed “Lumley” for celeb reality shows or in terms of her relationships: wife of political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, ex- girlfriend of a Beatle (Macca) … but anyone who has seen Deep End knows different.

Having watched the film as a student on my tiny black and white TV it left an indelible mark for its strange and unpredictable story of young love and obsession. Now, seeing the BFI’s Blu-ray in glorious full colour, I can appreciate the full depth of Jerzy Skolimowski’s extra-ordinary film.

The poet, painter and soccer fan had come to the fore in co-scripting Polanski’s Knife in the Water and went on to make his own films, including the polemical Hands Up! which effectively got him exiled from his native Poland. He came to London where he rented an apartment next to Jimi Hendrix and produced Deep End from his own script. Inspired by the story of an incident in a swimming pool and a couple who lost a diamond in the snow… he ties the two events together very well: how would you look for a diamond in a hundred-weight of icy snow?

The film was based in London but was actually filmed mostly in Munich using a lot of German actors with English overdubs.. Skolimowski expertly blends exterior shots of Soho, Leytonstone and Fulham Public Baths with customised German interiors. Great credit here to designer Anthony Pratt (who is the nephew of one Boris Karloff…) who took the elegant public baths of Munich and converted them into run-down, paint-peeling, garishly coloured, British ones…

John Moulder-Brown

The film starts with a drop of blood from the hand of a young man holding a bike. It’s Mike (John Moulder-Brown) a 15 year old who has just left school and is about to start his first job. We see him cycling through London free of school and with his life ahead, looking forward to his first stab of independence…

He has a job as an attendant at the local public baths, hardly salubrious but it’s a step up from school. He’s met by the manager who tells him that he could be sitting behind his desk if he applies himself…Mike is non-plussed. The film is full of this gentle humour and it acts to mask some of the darker themes which, as in life, are always there if we but look.

There’s a very pretty red-haired girl, Susan (Jane Asher) who shows Mike the ropes in suitably perfunctory style… she has no ambition to inherit the boss’ office but she knows there’s something else out there for her.

Jane Asher and Karl-Michael Vogler

As it is she’s happy to work her hours and pick up the plentiful tips from the regulars. She tells Mike he should do well with some of the middle-aged clientele and so it transpires. In a superbly brave cameo, Diana Dors (the British Monroe no less) plays a rapacious housewife who has her way with Mike under the cover of a running commentary on football and in particular the playing style of George Best.

This scene was largely improvised and shot in two takes leaving Moulder-Brown slightly bruised and bemused. 17 at the time and not quiet the novice that his character is, he was still overwhelmed by the intensity of Dors’ moment.

Diana Dors and John Moulder-Brown

Gradually the patterns of life at the pool are revealed. A salacious school teacher (Karl-Michael Vogler) arrives with a gaggle of schoolgirls whom he prods and pats into the water. Susan looks on in mild disgust and it is only later that we learn that she is having an affair with him. She’s engaged to a young businessman Chris (Christopher Sandford) although she seems indifferent to the longer-term outcomes of this relationship. She’s hard to fathom but fun at the same time. Hardly much older than Mike, she has more in common with him than these two sexually mature men.

The two youngsters quickly become allies but Mike doesn’t know how to read Susan and he certainly doesn’t know what she wants or how to give it to her. The story is set over a mere seven days but things move very quickly in the minds of youth and Mike is soon besotted with Susan.

John Moulder-Brown and Jane Asher

He follows her and Chris on a date to a adult film (The Science of Sex made by Skolimowski as a spoof backdrop for this scene) and fondles Susan from the row behind. She complains and Chris calls the manager but while he’s away she gives Mike a lingering kiss… The two are complicit even though Susan seems to push the situation as far as she can. The police arrive but she takes Chris off so no charges can be made.

Mike follows the couple home where they share a half-hearted goodnight kiss before Susan sends Chris on his way. He walks off disconsolate behind the spying Mike who then tells a policeman that Chris is importuning him… childish tit for tat, but there could be adult consequences.

Christopher Sandford, Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown

Susan and Mike are children playing with the adults but they’re also being preyed upon by adults who all seem united in their sterile decadence. Even the maintenance man wants to someday “give her one” whilst the receptionist (Erica Beer) is eaten up with jealousy of the younger woman and lust for Mike.

But Susan is half-way to being the kind of adult she despises. Chris buys her an expensive diamond engagement ring and takes her on another date. Mike follows again and tries to find a way to get closer to Susan… he doesn’t have a plan just an instinct.

John Moulder-Brown and Warrington's finest, Burt Kwouk

One of the best sequences is filmed around Soho with Mike buying a series of hotdogs from a stall run by Burt Kwouk. This segment is accompanied throughout by the relentless propulsion of Can’s Mother Sky. One of “krautrock’s “ finest exponents, Can’s pared down "blues" has dated far less than many British groups of the period and their music gives an almost anachronistic spin to events as Mike tries to hide away from a sex shop owner having stolen a life-size cardboard cut-out that may or may not have been Susan (it certainly was Jane Asher, as she now confirms, "every inch from top to toe").

He takes refuge in the flat of a prostitute (Louise Martini) who has broken her leg but still worked out a way of carrying on working… Another football fan, she’s kind to Mike but only wants his money in the end. Mike escapes with his cardboard cut out and confronts Susan on the train. She refuses to confirm or deny whether it is her and Mike smashes it into the lights – his first real display of anger towards this girl whom he loves but cannot understand (they had to reimburse London Underground later for that inspirational accident).

He escapes back to the pool and takes a swim with the cut-out which morphs into Susan in his mind… he is becoming enveloped in obsession and reality is blurred around the object of his desire.

John Moulder-Brown and Jane Asher

The next day he follows Susan and her school-teacher to the school race. He joins in for the first lap and then sabotages the teacher’s sports car. In a rage Susan lashes out at him and her diamond is knocked into the snow. Searching for the stone in panic, Mike works out a way of finding it and scoops up all of the snow into plastic bags.

Back at the pool they begin to defrost the snow using a kettle… Mike finds the diamond and tries to use it to make Susan have sex with him. The couple have a union of sorts but it doesn’t appear to be consummated either physically or in terms of the intimacy Mike so obviously craves. Susan is in control and he cannot understand why she appears to want him and then not at all. I won’t reveal the end as it is such an important part of the film: the reason Skolimowski reveals, that he made the film.

Deep End benefits from extraordinary camera-work from Charly Steinberger who worked with a hand-held camera for most of the film. This adds a great deal to the immediacy and uneasy reality of the film and must have taken a huge amount of strength to carry off in the days before “steady-cams”.

He also perfectly captures Asher’s incredible red hair turning it into one of the running colour motifs for the film. When Mike and Susan finally connect in the swimming baths, the hair is swirling around both of them… a rainbow of glorious golds. But Mike's fingernails are dirty...it's an imperfect moment.

Jane Asher, Erica Beer and painter man...

The set design is outstanding, plugging the gaps between Munich and London in seamless fashion but also allowing Skolimowski to introduce running themes and subtle foreshadowing of the narrative. His editor Barrie Vince must have also played a major part in this continuity as well as the film’s economy (a number of scenes were cut in order to allow the story to flow better…difficult to decisions to make and a sign of the collaborative work ethic Skolimowski fostered.

This is also epitomised by the two mesmeric leading actors, who part-improvised their way through proceedings in a way which challenged their formal training and gave an unpredictable freshness to their portrayals. Both had been acting since their childhood and yet they could easily have been making their first movie here… vibrantly awkward.

The BFI Blu-ray/DVD set is accompanied by a 74 minute making of documentary which is one of the best I’ve seen with main actors, director, set designer and cameraman all still proud and enthused by their work decades later.

It’s also very interesting to see Jane Asher discussing her character’s motivations with John Moulder-Brown. Both have different viewpoints and clearly this was true at the time as they improvised key scenes…But, whilst Deep End may be a tale with lots of accidental meaning there are clear and deliberate messages about the enduring truths of youth, sex and communication.

Deep End is available from all good Amazons and the BFI themselves. In addition to the making of feature, there's a full-some booklet of essays and a short feature, Careless Love (1975) featuring Asher.