The Making of - Lawrence Gordon Clark

Filming

Lawrence Gordon Clark had made his name as a BBC documentary director during the 1960s. The Stalls of Barchester was the first dramatic production he directed.[13] Clark recalled in an interview for the BFI's DVD release in 2012 that "the BBC at that time gave you the space to fail, and generously so too. They backed you up with marvellous technicians, art departments, film departments and so forth."[14]

I was itching to move into drama and knew I had exactly the source material I wanted. I'd discovered M.R. James at boarding school and loved him. So I met with Paul Fox, who was at the time Controller of BBC1. I brought a copy of M.R. James's Ghost Stories with me, with a bookmark stuck in "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral". The fact that period drama always has been very popular at the BBC probably helped.[15]

Lawrence recalls that "Paul Fox gave us a tiny budget ... and we set out to do a full-blooded drama on location. Budgets were really tiny, and we shot for ten days and brought the film in for about 8,000 pounds."[14] Unusually for a BBC television drama of the 1970s, each instalment was filmed entirely on location using 16 mm film.[13] As a result, the cameraman John McGlashan, who filmed the first five adaptations, was able to make use of night shoots and dark, shadowy interiors, which would not have been possible with the then-standard video-based studio interiors.[16] Clark notes that McGlashan, and the sound recordist Dick Manton's contribution to the series "was every bit as great as mine".[17][14]

In an interview in 1995, Lawrence Gordon Clark stated that the stories "focus on suggestion. The aim, they say, is to chill rather than shock. Partly because television is not best suited to carrying off big-screen pyrotechnics, but mainly because they want to keep faith with the notion of a ghost story in its literary rather than cinematic tradition."[18] Helen Wheatley notes that the best adaptations maintain the stories' "sense of decorum and restraint, ... withholding the full revelation of the supernatural until the very last moment, and centring on the suggestion of a ghostly presence rather than the horror of visceral excess and abjection."[19] Clark noted in a 2014 interview that he tried to make the second adaptation, A Warning to the Curious as "essentially, a silent film, with the tension building slowly throughout the visual images".[17] After the success of the first two low-budget adaptations which had been largely independently produced by Clark, the stories came under the wing of the BBC's Drama Department, with a new producer, Rosemary Hill, and an increased budget.[20]

A Ghost Story for Christmas is a strand of annual British short television films originally broadcast on BBC One between 1971 and 1978, and revived sporadically on BBC Four since 2005.[1][2] With one exception, the original instalments were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and the films were all shot on 16 mm colour film.[3] The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.[4]
Each instalment is a separate adaptation of a short story, ranges between 30 and 50 minutes in duration, and features well-known British actors such as Clive Swift, Robert Hardy, Peter Vaughan, Edward Petherbridge and Denholm Elliott. The first five are adaptations of ghost stories by M. R. James, the sixth is based on a short story by Charles Dickens, and the two final instalments are original screenplays by Clive Exton and John Bowen respectively.[5] The stories were titled A Ghost Story for Christmas in listings such as the Radio Times, although this did not appear on screen until ‘'The Signalman'’.[6]

Background

The first five films are adaptations of stories from the four books by M. R. James published between 1904 and 1925.[8] The ghost stories of James, an English mediaeval scholar and Provost of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, were originally narrated as Christmas entertainments to friends and selected students.[8][9]

The sixth film, The Signalman, is an adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens published in his magazine All the Year Round in 1866. In its original context it was one of eight stories set around the fictional Mugby Junction and its branch lines. It was inspired by the Staplehurst rail crash of June 1865, which Dickens himself survived, having attended to dying fellow passengers. He subsequently suffered panic disorders and flashbacks as a result.[10]

The final two stories were based on original screenplays, one by Clive Exton, who was an experienced television screenwriter, and the other by John Bowen, who was primarily known as a novelist and playwright,[11][12] but also had extensive television experience, including adapting The Treasure of Abbot Thomas earlier in the series.

Adaptation

The adaptations, although remaining true to the spirit of M.R. James, make alterations to suit the small screen - for example, A Warning to the Curious avoids the convoluted plot structure of M. R. James's original, opting for a more linear construction and reducing the number of narrators. In addition the central character, Paxton, is changed from a young fair-haired innocent who stumbles across the treasure to a middle-aged character driven by poverty to seek the treasure and acting in full awareness of what he is doing.[9] After the first two adaptations, both by Clark, the tales were adapted by a number of playwrights and screenwriters. For The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Clark recalls John Bowen's script "took some liberties with the story—which made it for the better I think...It's really quite a funny story until it gets nasty, although the threat is always there. James has a mordant sense of humour, and it's good to translate that into cinematic terms when you can. I'd always wanted to do a medium scene, and John came up with a beauty."[17]

Clark is less complimentary of the adaptation of The Ash Tree, which he felt didn't make Mistress Mothersole an effective villain, as a result of both his and adaptor David Rudkin's sympathy for witch trial victims; "We know so much about the hysteria of the witch trials and the ignorance and downright evil that fueled them that it was well-nigh impossible to portray her as James intended. Although, even he makes her a complicated character, hinting that she was popular with local farmers and the pagan fertility aspects that this implies. Frankly, I don't think the script quite did justice to the story, and maybe someone else should have a go at it."[17]
In his screenplay for The Signalman Andrew Davies adds scenes of the traveller's nightmare-plagued nights at an inn, and reinforces the ambiguity of the traveller-narrator by restructuring the ending and matching his facial features with those of the spectre.[10] The film also makes use of visual and aural devices. For example, the appearance of the spectre is stressed by the vibrations of a bell in the signalbox and a recurring red motif connects the signalman's memories of a train crash with the danger light attended by a ghostly figure.[10]

Clark's final Ghost Story for Christmas, Stigma, was an original story by Clive Exton filmed around the stone circles at Avebury, Wiltshire. He had wanted to film James' "Count Magnus", the teleplay of which had been written by Basil Copper, but was unable to obtain the budget.[17][21] Although he felt the substitute film was "effective", Clark had by this time left the BBC to go freelance, joining Yorkshire Television, where he and Exton made another James adaptation Casting the Runes in 1979.[17][22]

Locations

The filming of the adaptations took place at a variety of locations. Clark notes that James gave him "a wonderful excuse to discover...places where you could best impart tension and atmosphere."[23] East Anglia, where M. R. James set many of his stories, was the location for the two first films. The Stalls of Barchester was filmed at Norwich Cathedral and in the surrounding close.[24] For A Warning to the Curious, "Seaburgh" (a disguised version of Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was filmed on the coast of North Norfolk at Waxham, Holkham Gap, Happisburgh, Wells-next-the-Sea and on the North Norfolk Railway.[25][26] Clark recalls filming in North Norfolk in late February, with consistently fine cold weather "with a slight winter haze which gave exactly the right depth and sense of mystery to the limitless vistas of the shoreline there."[17]

Later locations include Ormsby Hall and the Pelham Mausoleum at Brocklesby, Lincolnshire for Lost Hearts, Wells Cathedral, the Orchardleigh Estate, Frome and its 13th century church for The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,[27] Prideaux Place near Padstow for The Ash-Tree[28] and the Severn Valley Railway near Kidderminster for The Signalman.[17][29][30] For The Signalman, a replica Great Western Railway signal box was erected in the cutting on the Kidderminster side of Bewdley Tunnel, and Highley signal box was used for the interior shots.[31]

Music

Adam Scovell, analysing the aural aesthetics of the BBC Ghost Stories, notes that although Clark talks about "stock music", the early adaptations make use of what were then new, avant-garde classical works found in the BBC's gramophone library at Egton House - A Warning to the Curious uses György Ligeti's Atmosphères to signify the appearance of the ghost of William Ager, and the high, meandering flute part of another contemporary work, Bruno Maderna's Hyperion III, is used in both this film and Lost Hearts.[32] Lost Hearts also makes use of Ralph Vaughan Williams's English Folk Song Suite and the hurdy-gurdy music of the ghostly Italian boy, who plays the tune L'amour De Moi.[32] The Treasure of Abbot Thomas was the only entry in the series to have its own original score.[20] Geoffrey Burgon's score consists of an organ, two countertenors and various unconventional percussion instruments; according to Clark, a "mixture of evensong and bicycle chains".[32]

Critical Reception

The critical reception of the films has been varied, but several are regarded as classic television ghost stories.[44] Dick Fiddy of the British Film Institute notes that the late hour of their broadcasts, and the contrast with the rest of the bright lights of the television schedules during the Christmas period meant that the adaptations made such an impact;
They went out late at night, when television wasn't a 24-hour experience, probably watched by the dying embers of the fire before the viewer turned in for the night; the nightmarish quality of the stories would linger as they went to bed. Such conditions can magnify the power of the pieces, adding to their creepiness and helping the tales imbed themselves within impressionable minds.

The adaptations have had an influence on the work of the writer Mark Gatiss. Interviewed in 2008, Gatiss said that Lost Hearts is his favourite adaptation because it is the one that frightened him as a child[48] and that "I absolutely love The Treasure of Abbot Thomas. The moment when Michael Bryant has found the treasure and ... is obviously losing his wits. He just says, rationally, 'It is a thing of slime, I think. Darkness and slime ...' There's also the fantastic scene where he thinks he's got away with it by putting the treasure back. The doctor is heading up the drive and he can't quite see him in the sunlight. Then it pauses to that amazing crane shot. ... Very spooky.[48]

Sarah Dempster, writing in The Guardian in 2005, noted that "Perhaps the most surprising aspect ... is how little its adaptations ... have dated. “Lurking within their hushed cloisters and glum expanses of deserted coastline is a timelessness at odds with virtually everything written, or broadcast, before or since."[46]
The production values have received particular praise. Helen Wheatley writes that "the series was shot on film on location, with much attention paid to the minutiae of period detail; ... it might be seen to visually prefigure the filmic stylishness and traditions of later literary adaptations such as Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown." However, she notes that, unlike those adaptations, the sinister tone of the period pieces could lend itself the label of a "feel bad" heritage television drama.[47]
"Denholm (Elliot) was so wonderful in that role, like a tightly coiled spring. There was such tension in the character: he was always only a step away from insanity."
Lawrence Gordon Clark[44]

The Signalman is perhaps the most critically acclaimed. Simon Farquhar suggests that the film is the first evidence of Andrew Davies's gift as an adaptor of literary fiction: "despite an extremely arduous shoot, Davies and Clarke's fog-wreathed, flame-crackling masterpiece manages something the production team could never have imagined: it's better than the book."[44] Dave Rolinson notes that, while "the adaptation inevitably misses Dickens's nuanced and often unsettling prose, ... it achieves comparably skilful effects through visual language and sound, heightening theme and supernatural mood. ... The production heightens the story's crucial features of repetition and foreshadowing."[10]

Sergio Angelini writes about A Warning to the Curious: "Of Clark's many adaptations of James's stories, this is perhaps the most varied in its use of landscape and the most visually arresting in its attempt to create an otherworldly atmosphere. ... Using long lenses to flatten the scenery and make the ghost indistinct in the background, John McGlashan's fine cinematography brilliantly conveys the ageless, ritualistic determinism of Ager's pursuit and signposts the inevitability of Paxton's demise."[9] Angelini is less appreciative of The Ash Tree, noting that the literal adaptation of the story's ending loses the atmosphere of earlier instalments: "While the creatures are certainly grotesque and threatening, compared with some of the other adaptations of the series, The Ash Tree does lose some power through this lack of ambiguity. The result overall remains satisfyingly unsettling, however, thanks also to Petherbridge's restrained, psychologically acute performance."[35]

The reception of the two later instalments, Stigma and The Ice House, was decidedly critical. Most reviewers concluded that switching to original stories instead of adaptations was "misjudged". David Kerekes writes that The Ice House is almost "totally forgotten".[49] Wheatley has commented that they heralded a divergence from the stage-inspired horror of the 1940s and 1950s to a more modern Gothic horror based in the present day, losing in the process the "aesthetic of restraint" evident in the original adaptations.[19]

The BBC Four revival beginning in 2005 with A View from a Hill was greeted warmly by Sarah Dempster, who stated that the programme was, "in every respect, a vintage Ghost Story for Christmas production. There are the powdery academics hamstrung by extreme social awkwardness. There is the bumbling protagonist bemused by a particular aspect of modern life. There are stunning, panoramic shots of a specific area of the British landscape (here, a heavily autumnal Suffolk). There is the determined lack of celebrity pizzazz. There is tweed. And there is, crucially, a single moment of heart-stopping, corner-of-the-eye horror that suggests life, for one powdery academic at least, will never be the same again."[46]

Release

The BFI released the complete set of Ghost Story for Christmas films plus related works such as both versions of Whistle and I'll Come to You on Region 2 DVD in 2012, in five volumes as well as a box set, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of M. R. James's birth.[56] The following year, an expanded boxset featuring Robert Powell and Michael Bryant narrating M. R. James in the series Classic Ghost Stories (1986) and Spine Chillers (1980) respectively.[57]

A Warning to the Curious, The Signalman and Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You were released as individual VHS cassettes and Region 2 DVDs by the British Film Institute in 2002 and 2003.[55][58] A number of the adaptations were made available in Region 4 format in Australia in 2011 and The Signalman is included as an extra on the Region 1 American DVD release of the 1995 BBC production of Hard Times. For Christmas 2011, the BFI featured the complete 1970s films in their Mediatheque centres.

Revivals

BBC Four revisited the series at Christmas 2004, and in 2005 began to produce new adaptations of stories by M. R. James, broadcast along with repeats of episodes from the original series.[34] BBC Two premiered a new adaptation by Neil Cross of M. R. James's Oh, Whistle and I'll come to You, My Lad on Christmas Eve 2010.[36]
Mark Gatiss's adaptation of The Tractate Middoth, another story by M. R. James, was broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Day 2013. This was followed by a documentary, M. R. James: Ghost Writer.[37]

Facts

Contents

The Stalls of Barchester (1971)
A Warning to the Curious (1972)
Lost Hearts (1973)
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974)
The Ash Tree (1975)
The Signalman (1976)
Stigma (1977)
The Ice House (1978)

The Stalls of Barchester (1971)

The first film was made in 10 days on a budget of around £8,000.

Exteriors were shot at Norwich Anglican Cathedral, a place with a ghostly presence of its own – a phantom medieval bishop has been reportedly sighted there.
It debuted on Christmas Eve 1971 on BBC1, sandwiched between an episode of The Onedin Line and a live broadcast of the Midnight Mass from the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name, Manchester – interesting scheduling, to say the least!

It picked up around 9 million viewers – even in the days of just 3 channels this was impressive for a programme screened after 11pm.

A Warning to the Curious (1972)

Made extensive use of the coast at Holkham Beach, Norfolk. It is currently a popular naturist’s spot.
Clive Swift made his second appearance in the series, the only actor to play a lead role in two adaptations. However, David Pugh holds the record for most appearances overall: John in The Stalls Of Barchester, the porter in A Warning To The Curious and the herdsman in The Ash Tree.
The first two productions were made outside of the BBC drama department, with Lawrence Gordon Clark writing, producing and directing. The films would come under the banner of the drama department the following year.

Lost Hearts (1973)

Filming moved across to Lincolnshire for this installment. The main location was Harrington Hall, whose gardens were latterly open to the public until 2013. It is now a private residence once again.

It is generally believed that Alfred Lord Tennyson used the gardens as the setting for his poem, Maud. It was inspired by Charlotte Rosa Baring – the Baring family lived there.

During filming, the young actors playing the ghostly children gave the cast and crew a shock by jumping in on them in full costume during dinner, saying “Roast hearts for dinner, anyone?”

For this production, Clark relinquished the producer role to Rosemary Hill, who would continue in that capacity for the rest of the original run.

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974)

Wells Cathedral provided the main setting this time, as James’ original locale of Germany was not practical for budgetary reasons.
Serendipity dictated a key location in the grounds: One gargoyle in particular caught Clark’s attention, and when he headed to the roof to examine it, he found that the gargoyle appeared to be gazing down at a strange tunnel. This was immediately requisitioned as the site of the titular treasure.
It is said that H.R. Hardy, a housemaster at Edgeborough School, Frensham, Surrey, photographed two ghostly figures on a staircase at the cathedral during a visit in the 1950’s. It was also said that he showed the photograph to many of the boys schooled there. The current whereabouts of the picture are unknown.

The Ash Tree (1975)

The production team was unable to find a suitable manor house with an Ash tree directly adjacent to it, as described in the original story, so some ingenuity was called for…
Main exteriors were shot at Prideaux Place near Padstow, Cornwall. The house was featured in series 6, episode 4 of Most Haunted. Ghostly sightings there include a scullery boy, and a mysterious green lady, believed to be Honor Fortescue, who fell from the balcony after the death of her beloved Humphrey Prideaux. Whether she fell or was pushed is debated to this day.
Scenes featuring the Ash tree were shot at a farmhouse nearby, where Clark and his family were living at the time. The crew left a hanging dummy witch after filming ended – it was discovered the next morning by Clark’s young son, who ran into the house screaming.
The tree was decimated by the drought of the long hot summer of 1976, and was dead within a couple of years,

The Signalman (1976)

The decision to make this Charles Dickens adptation was prompted by the belief that James’ remaining tales were simply too expensive to film on the available resources.
Shooting took place on the Severn Valley Railway, at Bewdley Tunnel near Kidderminster. There have been reports of visitors hearing a ghostly train pass along the track at great speed, but not seeing anything! There are also tales of stations along the route being haunted.
The railway’s management have downplayed such stories in the past, but have more recently run special Ghost Train services in late October.
Filming was disrupted by children from a nearby school throwing rocks at the cast and crew as they tried to work,

Stigma (1977)

The first story with a contemporary setting, from an original story by Clive Exton.
Avebury’s stone circle provided the locale, and is a place with enough strange recorded happenings to populate an article of its own! The Most Haunted team visited in episode 5 of their first series.

Lawrence Gordon Clark had left the BBC to go freelance by this point, but was invited back to make a seventh ghost story. He wanted to make a version of M.R. James’ Count Magnus, and a script was even readied, but lack of available BBC funds curtailed this venture.
Clark noted that the budget and shooting schedule were tighter than usual. He also noted that he had no wish to do another modern ghost story after Stigma. However, he would make a contemporary adaptation of James’ Casting The Runes for Yorkshire Television in 1979, and return to the form for the underrated 1995 anthology series, Chiller.

The Ice House (1978)

The original run ended with another contemporary story, this time written by John Bowen.
The episode was directed by Derek Lister, whose other credits include lengthy runs helming Coronation Street and The Bill.
Notably different in tone from its predecessors, it’s open to debate whether The Ice House really qualifies as a ghost story as such. It is, however certainly eerie. In retrospect, it might also be considered a bold attempt to try something different in the strand. However, it would bring the series to a halt, although repeats have become a staple of Christmas schedules since then, firstly on BBC2 and then BBC 4.

 FINAL FUN FACT:

The title, A Ghost Story For Christmas, was used in the Radio Times listings, but never actually appeared on screen. Regardless, It has firmly stuck with viewers.

Ghost Stories

Filming

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