Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994)^[1] was an English filmmaker, theatre director, critic, and actor. He was considered a leading light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave,^[2][3] and a principal exponent of kitchen sink realism on both the stage and screen.^[4][5]

As a film director, he is best known for his "Mick Travis Trilogy" of films starring Malcolm McDowell, the first of which, if.... (1968), won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and earned Anderson a BAFTA nomination for Best Direction.^[6] He was also a prominent stage director on the West End, most notably at the Royal Court Theatre.^[2]

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was born in Bangalore, South India, where his father was stationed with the Royal Engineers, on 17 April 1923.^[7][8] His father, Captain (later Major General) Alexander Vass Anderson,^[9][10][11] was a British Army officer who had come from Scotland. His mother Estelle Bell Gasson was born in Queenstown, South Africa, the daughter of a wool merchant.^[12][13] Lindsay was the second son. His parents separated in 1926, and Estelle returned to England with the two boys. In 1932 the couple tried to reconcile in Bangalore, and when Estelle returned to England she was pregnant with their third son, who was named Alexander Vass Anderson after his father.^[12] The Andersons divorced. Estelle married again in 1936, to Major Cuthbert Sleigh.^[12] Lindsay's father remarried while in India. Gavin Lambert writes, in Mainly About Lindsay Anderson: A Memoir (Faber and Faber, 2000, p. 18), that the father Alexander Vass Anderson "cut (his first family) out of his life", making no reference to them in his Who's Who entry. However, Lindsay often saw his father and looked after his house and dogs when he was away.^[14]

Both Lindsay and his elder brother Murray Anderson (1919–2016) were educated at Saint Ronan's School in Worthing, West Sussex, and at Cheltenham College.^[15][16] It was at Cheltenham that Lindsay met his lifelong friend Gavin Lambert, who became a screenwriter and novelist, and later the director's biographer.^[12]

The UK had been at war for years when Anderson won a scholarship in 1942 for classical studies at Wadham College at the University of Oxford.^[12] In the next year he entered the Second World War, serving in the Army from 1943 until 1946, first with the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps. In the final year of the war he was a cryptographer for the Intelligence Corps, based at the Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi.^[8]

In August 1945, Anderson assisted in nailing the Red flag to the roof of the Junior Officers' mess in Annan Parbat, after the victory of the Labour Party in the general election was confirmed.^[17] Their colonel did not approve, he recalled a decade later, but took no disciplinary action against the junior officers.

Anderson returned to Oxford in 1946 but switched from classical studies to English;^[12] he graduated in 1948.^[8]

Anderson was passionate about film, and with his friend Gavin Lambert, and Peter Ericsson and Karel Reisz, co-founded Sequence magazine (1947–52), which became influential. Anderson became a prominent film critic.^[12] He also later wrote for the British Film Institute's journal Sight and Sound, and for the New Statesman, a left-wing political weekly.^[7]

In a 1956 polemical article, "Stand Up, Stand Up" published in Sight and Sound, Anderson attacked contemporary critical practices, in particular the pursuit of objectivity. Taking as an example some comments made by Alistair Cooke in 1935, in which Cooke had claimed to be without politics as a critic, Anderson responded:

The problems of commitment are directly stated, but only apparently faced. …The denial of the critic's moral responsibility is specific; but only at the cost of sacrificing his dignity. … [These assumptions:] the holding of liberal, or humane, values; the proviso that these must not be taken too far; the adoption of a tone which enables the writer to evade through humour [mean] the fundamental issues are balked."^[17]

Following a series of screenings which he and the National Film Theatre programmer Karel Reisz organized for the venue of independently produced short films by himself and others, he developed a philosophy of cinema that was expressed in what became known, by the late 1950s, as the Free Cinema movement.^[18] He and other leaders in the field believed that the British cinema must break away from its class-bound attitudes and that non-metropolitan Britain ought to be shown on the nation's screens. Anderson had already begun to make films himself, starting in 1948 with Meet the Pioneers, a documentary about a conveyor-belt factory.^[19]

Anderson was invited to join the British Film Institute's Board of Governors in 1969 with the aim of bolstering support for independent British directors, but left the role after a year.^[20]

Along with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and others, he secured funding from a variety of sources (including Ford of Britain). Each of these founders made a series of short documentaries on a variety of subjects. One of Anderson's early short films, Thursday's Children (1954), concerning the education of deaf children, was made in collaboration with Guy Brenton, a friend from his Oxford days; it won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 1954.^[7] Thursday's Children was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.^[21]

These films, influenced by one of Anderson's heroes, the French filmmaker Jean Vigo, and made in the tradition of the British documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, foreshadowed much of the social realism of British dramatic cinema that emerged in the next decade. These included Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), and Anderson's own This Sporting Life (1963), produced by Reisz. Anderson's film met with mixed reviews at the time, and was not a commercial success.^[22]

Anderson is perhaps best remembered as a filmmaker for his "Mick Travis trilogy", all of which star Malcolm McDowell as the title character: if.... (1968), a satire on public schools; O Lucky Man! (1973), a Pilgrim's Progress–inspired road movie; and Britannia Hospital (1982), a fantasia taking stylistic influence from the populist wing of British cinema represented by Hammer horror films and Carry On comedies.^[23]

In 1981, Anderson played the role of the Master of Caius College at Cambridge University in the film Chariots of Fire.

Anderson developed an acquaintance from 1950 with John Ford. Anderson wrote what has come to be regarded as one of the standard books on that director, About John Ford (1983). Based on half-a-dozen meetings over more than two decades, and Anderson's lifetime study of the man's work, the book has been described as "One of the best books published by a film-maker on a film-maker".^[24]

In 1985, producer Martin Lewis invited Anderson to chronicle Wham!'s visit to China, among the first-ever visits by Western pop artists. Anderson made the film Wham! in China: Foreign Skies. He admitted in his diary on 31 March 1985, to having "no interest in Wham!", or China, and he was simply "doing this for the money".^[25] Anderson's own cut of the tour, titled If You Were There, was never released after George Michael objected to this version. It featured only four songs from the tour, instead focusing predominantly on the effects of the reform and opening up policies on Chinese society. Anderson was fired from the project, and Michael turned out the film that was entitled Wham! in China: Foreign Skies.^[26]

In 1986, Anderson served as a member of the jury at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, by invitation.^[27]

In 1992, as a close friend of the late actresses Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts, Anderson arranged a boat trip to scatter the women's ashes in the Thames River. Professional colleagues and friends were also on the boat and musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?". Anderson included this event in his autobiographical BBC film Is That All There Is?

Anderson was also a significant British theatre director. He was long associated with London's Royal Court Theatre, where he was Co-Artistic Director 1969–70, and Associate Artistic Director 1971–75. He directed premiere productions of plays by David Storey, among others.

Gavin Lambert's memoir Mainly About Lindsay Anderson wrote that Anderson was gay and repressed his orientation, which was seen as a betrayal by his other friends.^[28] This caused him intense grief by his later years, with writer David Storey stating, "Lindsay had a great battle with his homosexuality throughout his life. He just couldn't come to terms with it. This conflict was central to his life, and out of it came a terrible cynicism and an attitude that was more and more sour and embittered."^[29]

In November 2006, Malcolm McDowell told The Independent that he believed Anderson was gay, stating:

I know that he was in love with Richard Harris [the star of Anderson's first feature, This Sporting Life]. I am sure that it was the same with me and Albert and the rest. It wasn't a physical thing. But I suppose he always fell in love with his leading men. He would always pick someone who was unattainable because he was heterosexual.^[30]

Anderson died from a heart attack in Angoulême, France, on 30 August 1994, at the age of 71.^[31]

Following the publication of his diaries and collected writings in 2004, there has been a revival of interest in Anderson scholarship, including several edited collections and monographs addressing his work from a variety of critical perspectives.^[32] Malcolm McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, Never Apologize.^[23]

Every year, the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) gives an acclaimed filmmaker the chance to screen his or her personal Top 10 favorite films. In 2007, Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari selected two of Anderson's short documentaries, O Dreamland and Every Day Except Christmas (1957), a record of a day in the old Covent Garden market, for his top 10 classics from the history of documentary.[3]

The centenary of Anderson's birth in 2023 was marked by special events at the University of Stirling, where the Anderson papers are currently held.^[33]

All Royal Court, London, unless otherwise indicated:

• Kitchen sink realism

• About John Ford (1983), ISBN 0-85965-014-6
• Film, Negation and Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique Will Kitchen (2023), ISBN 979-8765105535
• Going Mad in Hollywood and Life with Lindsay Anderson David Sherwin (1996), ISBN 0233989668
• The Diaries of Lindsay Anderson ed. Paul Sutton (2004), ISBN 0-413-77397-3
• Never Apologise: The Collected Writings of Lindsay Anderson (2004), ISBN 0-85965-317-X
• Lindsay Anderson: Cinema Authorship (British Film Makers) John Izod, et al. (2012), ASIN B00SLT0DCC
• Lindsay Anderson: Maverick Film-Maker Erik Hedling (1998), ISBN 0304336068
• Six English Filmmakers (2014), ISBN 978-0957246256 - Anderson and his colleagues in conversation with Sutton.

• Lindsay Anderson at IMDb
• Lindsay Anderson at Theatricalia
• The Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation Archived 18 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine
• Portraits of Lindsay Anderson at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Lindsay Anderson – A Celebration
• Watch O Dreamland on FourDocs Archived 23 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine
• The BFI's "screenonline" on Free Cinema Archived 6 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine
• The BFI's "screenonline" for Lindsay Anderson Archived 9 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
• The Lindsay Anderson Archive at Stirling University, Scotland Archived 20 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
• Lindsay Anderson Bibliography Archived 8 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine (via UC Berkeley)