 With a degree in physics and a burning ambition to "wangle it into
documentary", Michael Orrom graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1941.
He was fortunate enough to gain an audience with Paul Rotha, who, impressed by
his science credentials, offered Orrom a job at his production company, Films of
Fact, as researcher/scriptwriter on Science and War (1941), a two-reeler
illustrating how science was being deployed for the war effort. In the event,
the project had to be abandoned, but the ill-fated commission marked the
beginning of a substantial career that spanned five decades.
Apart from a three-year stint at the BBC in the mid-1950s, where he worked on
The World is Ours (1954-56) and Special Enquiry (1952-59) series, and the two
university-themed programmes he made for Channel 4 at the end of his career - A
Fragment of Memory (1984), and Not Just Another University (1987) - Orrom's
career unfolded largely in the sphere of the sponsored documentary. He made
films for four of its biggest commissioners - the COI, National Coal Board and
Shell film units and British Transport Films - as well for less prolific sponsors such as Cable
& Wireless, for whom he worked for more than 20 years.
His career varied in terms of genre, subject matter and the locations to
which he was dispatched by the disparate bodies for which he worked. It might
have been even more wide-ranging had his numerous experimental art films got
further than the pre-production stage; alongside his sponsored commissions Orrom
persistently tried to raise funding for personal projects. He belonged to that
category of postwar documentarists who saw sponsored work as a potential
stepping-stone to other genres of filmmaking. What followed was a career of that
appears fragmentary (though not unusually so for the postwar period) but Orrom's
divergent interests in science, politics, adventure and formal experimentation
are discernable.
After the liquidation of Films of Fact, which marked the end of
Orrom's illustrious apprenticeship, he was rescued from unemployment by Donald
Alexander, who offered him work at DATA, and his first directing role: Report on
Steel (1948), a pro-nationalisation account of the processes of steel
manufacturing for the Ministry of Supply. Orrom then turned his talents to
shorter forms of public information through a six-month diversion into the
eccentric world of Richard Massingham's Public Relationship Films and a handful
of commissions for British Transport Films. In the mid-1950s an unexpected
reunion with Rotha led to scripting and editing work on two feature projects.
The first, based on Leo Walmsley's novel The Phantom Lobster, sadly got no
further than the development stage, but the second, No Resting Place (1951),
concerning the plight of itinerant workmen in Ireland, enjoyed a small
theatrical release and competed at the Edinburgh and Venice film festivals.
He spent most of the later part of his career on the payroll of Cable &
Wireless,a position that presented him with unanticipated cinematic challenges
in some of the furthermost corners of the globe. He travelled from Hong Kong, for
East West Island (1966), to Ascension Island, a bleak outpost in the South
Atlantic, for Apollo in Ascension (1967), and to the Middle East, to make Arabia
the Fortunate (1974). By this point, he was increasingly seen as a scientific
filmmaker. Whatever genre he was assigned to, he sought to apply his
longstanding view that documentary should relate its subject to a wider social
milieu. As he put it (discussing his Cable & Wireless work): "I have tried
in the films to bring out something of the social implications of communications
to the setting in which they belong."
One significant diversion from the vagaries of telecommunications came in the
form of Portrait of Queenie (1964), a musical documentary featuring Queenie
Watts, the notorious East End jazz-blues singer and publican. Independently
produced by Eyeline Films and generously backed by British Lion, the project
allowed Orrom scope for the creative expression and experimentation he had been
hankering after. After this brief excursion he returned to the area of science
and industrial films, remaining with Cable & Wireless until the late 1970s,
producing as well as directing many of them though his own company, Film
Drama.
Following in the footsteps of John Grierson, Paul Rotha and other pioneers,
Orrom engaged with intellectual film discourse throughout his career. In this
respect, he was unusual among his postwar documentary peers, many of whom
preferred making films to writing about them. Whether by fluke, fate or
practical necessity, his vision was largely applied within the field of
sponsored documentary, which was considerably better off for his
contributions.
Katy McGahan
|
FILM & TV CREDITS
