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Following on from his breakthrough success with Pennies From Heaven (BBC,
1978), Dennis Potter produced perhaps his most straightforward and naturalistic
play, one that also signalled a significant stylistic shift in the presentation
of his work.
'Blue Remembered Hills' (Play for Today, BBC tx. 30/1/1979) in fact completely
breaks away from the studio-based, video-recorded productions with which he had been
closely associated until then, and of which Pennies From Heaven can now
be seen as the apotheosis. Instead, the new play was shot entirely on film and
on location (in Dorset), and it is clear that cinematographer Nat Crosby and
director Brian Gilbert revelled in the scenic possibilities offered by the
locations, alternating fluid camera movements with static, sumptuously
photographed tableaux of the countryside.
The title comes from A.E. Housman's 'Into my heart an air that kills', a
paean to lost childhood which Potter himself recites at the end of the play over
images of the burning barn. This serves as an ironic counterpoint to Potter's
typically complex and ambivalent look at childhood, something also subtly
reflected in Marc Wilkinson's music score, which combines simple melodies evoking the childhood of the period (it's set in 1943) with a dissonant underlay to suggest something more sinister.
The play offers a fairly dark meditation on pre-pubescent imagination and
innocence, a point emphasised through its celebrated use of well-known adult
actors in the roles of young children, a technique Potter first explored in
'Stand Up, Nigel Barton' (The Wednesday Play, BBC, tx. 8/12/1965). 'Blue Remembered
Hills', as if to offset the very artificiality of this conceit, observes the
unities of time and place very strictly, so that all the events take place over
the 71 minute running time of the play in and around the Forest of Dean, never
abandoning the exclusive point of view of the seven children, the only
characters in the piece.
As the tormented Donald, the dour Colin Jeavons is perhaps the only one of
the cast who physically fails to be entirely convincing as a young child, while
the moon-faced Colin Welland and Michael Elphick are particularly well chosen.
Strong religious symbolism is felt throughout, from the opening scene, in
which Welland bites into an apple, through to the conclusion, when, after the
accidental death of Donald, the remaining children shamefully hide in a field as
if expelled from their Edenic childhood existence.
Sergio Angelini
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1. War Games (3:06)
Production stills
