Were the protests over Lord Snowden’s look at old age justified?
Nobody liked Antony Armstrong-Jones’s first documentary… except grumpy critic Milton Shulman
THE documentary is an art form that is nearly always perched precariously, and uncomfortably, on the horns of a dilemma.
If it has a point of view, it is unlikely to be denounced as unfair, partisan, perverse or provocative. If it hasn’t a point of view it is just as likely to be attacked as innocuous, bland, timid or uninspiring.
Don’t Count the Candles, Lord Snowdon’s documentary – which was made for CBS in America and shown on BBC 1 last week — had a point of view. It said that old age was a state none of us wanted, most of us resented and a few of us did every thing in our power to deny and resit.
As a generalisation it is hardly very original or very profound. Indeed, on this theme it is, perhaps, an almost classic statement of the obvious.
Yet it drew protests. People (not many, I am assured) phoned the BBC to complain that the programme was harrowing. Others were indignant because it did not show more happy and jolly old people.
Neglected
On “Late Night Line-up” a sociologist, Peter Townsend, thought the film was a complete failure because it had neglected, among other things, to show what the Welfare State was doing for old people.
None of these people was prepared, it would seem, to allow Lord Snowdon
who photographed and directed the documentary and Derek Hart, who wrote it, to project their own personal vision of the nature of old age.
Because the film did not correspond to what they thought old age was all about, these viewers denounced it. In other words, they wanted Lord Snowdon and Derek Hart to end up with a film they had never started to make.
Now these are dozens of aspects of old age that might be the subject of a programme of this kind: the opportunities of old age; its wisdom; its power; its physical and mental adjustments; its effect on the family; its sexual attitudes; its economic needs; its place in a modern, industrial state; its reflections on euthanasia. A documentary that attempted to discuss all these thoroughly would probably be about two weeks long. And even then someone would be bound to protest that something had been left out.
One of the persistent cliches that has bedevilled documentary makers is that their films ought to present “a slice of life”. By its very nature – limitations of resources; the tolerance of viewers; the inability of a camera to depict the fine nuances of logic – the best documentaries never attempt anything as large as “a slice of life.”
They concentrate on a wisp, a sliver, a chink, a scrap, a crumb, a morsel, a fragment or a shadow of life. They are more concerned with leaving out than putting in.
Lord Snowdon and Derek Hart had about 55 minutes in which to cram their tiny statement about old age. That meant a limited goal and a fierce problem of selection.
Essence
They decided to do a mood piece about the fear and frustrations of getting old. It was the essence of this state, not its reality, that they were trying to capture.
To complain that a great deal had been left out is to object to Modigliani painting only thin seamen when the world has many fat women in it — or to attack Graham Greene’s novels for concentrating on Catholic issues when Jews and Hindus also have religious problems.
But, judged by what it had set out to do, Don’t Count the Candles was a most successful documentary. Considering that it was Lord Snowdon’s first venture into TV filming, it was a most commendable achievement.
The close-ups were particularly telling: the wrinkled flesh; the knotted veins, the eyes being dabbed by an old man left in an old people’s home by his daughters; the desperate gaiety of the elderly trouper; the silent, resigned faces in a seaside hotel.
And if these images were necessarily bleak, they were counter balanced by Leopold Stokowski, at 80, conducting with all the fervour and intensity of a man in his prime — and Compton Mackenzie, even older still, planning to write another 25 novels.
I felt that there was probably too much emphasis on the attempts of the old beauty through health clinics, glandular extracts and dubious rejuvenators.
Promises
The middle-aged, too, are suckers for promises of eternal youth. And every current affairs or documentary programme — Panorama, Twenty-four hours, Whicker’s World, Man Alive – has a go at this very visual subject whenever ideas are scarce.
Because it was done by Lord Snowden, Don’t Count the Candles has had more critical analysis than such an exercise would normally have warranted. There have been much better documentaries that have received only a fraction of this attention.
But because he happens to be married to the Queen’s sister this should not prevent us from recognising the fact that if he was still Tony Armstrong-Jones he would probably now have earned a reputation as an exciting and imaginative film-maker.
