 Denis Mitchell (1911-90) was well into his forties before entering the noted
phase of his career. Within a short period, however, he had become one of a
small number of late 1950s television documentary makers applauded as
significant artists of their time. His is virtually the only name of that group
still readily cited.
Between 1957 and 1988, he enjoyed a small screen career that was in some ways
extremely varied. He was both a director and a producer (in the latter capacity,
his directors on the interesting series This England (ITV, tx. 1965-67; 1977-80)
included Mike Newell, Michael Grigsby and Dick Fontaine). Though he is strongly
associated with Granada Television and its key position in the documentary
culture of the 1960s and '70s, his first creative successes were at the BBC. He
also made programmes for ATV, Rediffusion, and finally Channel 4, and pioneered independent production with his company Denis Mitchell Films.
His projects ranged from prestigious feature length films like Morning In the
Streets (BBC, tx. 25/3/1959), to touching vignettes such as the ten-minute films
broadcast as Impressions (BBC, 1981). His settings could be urban or pastoral,
as in Soho Story (BBC, tx. 22/4/1959) and The Pennines: A Writers Notebook (This
England, ITV, 1979), but he also filmed in many international locations
(Chicago: Portrait of a City (BBC, tx. 21/12/1961) in the US; The Wind of Change
(BBC, 1960) and Spring In Ethiopia (ITV, tx. 28/3/1967) in Africa). Technically,
he was famous for his creative use of 16mm film, often combined with
unsynchronised sound, yet he was also responsible, as early as 1964, for several
of the first British documentaries to be shot entirely on 2" video (beginning
with The Entertainers (ITV, 25/3/1964), produced by Mitchell but with direction
credited to John McGrath).
The structure of his films was similarly varied: he drew liberally on the
repertoire of stock non-fiction 'storylines'. Some of his most acclaimed films
were snapshots of community life. Night in the City (Eye to Eye, BBC, tx.
14/6/1957) observed Manchester from dawn to dusk; while A Wedding on Saturday
(ITV, tx. 1/4/1964), made with long-time collaborator Norman Swallow, stands out
among the hundreds of films made about coal mining communities for the depth it
brings to its study of a Yorkshire mining village's celebration of the wedding
in its midst. By contrast, the films in the Seven Men (ITV, 1971) and Private
Lives (ITV, 1974) series were portraits of individuals; Quentin Crisp first came
to public attention in 1971 as one of Mitchell's subjects. Mitchell also put
together studies of working institutions (The House on the Beach, ITV, tx.
13/10/1965), thoughtful travelogues (A European Journey, ITV, 1972-73) and
behind-the-scenes documentaries (The Dream Machine, ITV, 11/11/1964). His
coverage of these subjects variously incorporated observational, interactive and
lyrical components, and in his earlier films, snatches of staged drama.
Yet the sensibility that he brought to this diverse range of
subjects and formats was doggedly consistent. Common to his films is the
transformation of everyday imagery and sounds into what feel like timeless
statements by means of strong photographic compositions and telling editing.
Sometimes hailed as a 'cinematic' talent - certainly a maker of 'films' rather
than mere 'programmes' - and with little sympathy for the journalistic approach
of much television documentary, he was nonetheless entirely a man of
broadcasting. His creative use of sound, especially, owed more to his earlier
career in BBC radio than to any forebears in cinema. The overall results were
rarely unmemorable, though they were often flawed in places. Among the most
intriguing aspects of his films is that for all their sympathetic observation of
people and places, their prevailing mood is often very dark.
Mitchell was himself the subject of a documentary, revealingly
entitled Television's Master Film Maker (tx. 17/10/1970), screened within ITV's
arts series Aquarius. As the next two decades wore on, however, the filmmaker
who had attracted such acclaim grew somewhat out of fashion, a little unfairly.
Not all of his later films came off, but the better ones continued to be very
good indeed. Never And Always (ITV, tx. 15/6/1977) was amongst his most personal
(and bleakest) films, an impressionistic record of a year passing in Norfolk,
where he lived: it presciently anticipates the concerns for the British
countryside that have lately become a political issue, but expresses them
reflectively rather than hysterically. Later, the two series of Shades of Green
(Channel 4, 1982/1985) were likeable documentaries about life in the Republic of
Ireland, and the films in the Changing Times series (Channel 4, tx. 1986)
wrought interesting observations about social change from the apparently
unpromising subject of local museum collections.
Following his death, his contribution was celebrated by memorial screenings
of his work, appropriately both at the National Film Theatre and on BBC
television.
Patrick Russell
|
FILM & TV CREDITS
