Penda's Fen

So, I've finally seen Penda's Fen and I would say that it lived up to its considerable reputation. The picture and sound quality were ok but deteriorated badly at the end - someone's home video - when is this going to be released on DVD with other examples of David Rudkin's work? What I liked most, apart from the strange unsettling visions, was the unashamed introduction and discussion of powerful ideas about religion, politics and national identity. The Only Way is Essex it wasn't. As I've written here before, I loathe the 'Spacehoppers and Spangles' media view of the 1970s: the Dominic Sandbrook series that's just finished was adequate, but had a distinct right-wing bias (constant reiteration of 'unreasonable' demands by workers) and didn't take enough risks - also couldn't the BBC have used someone who was an adult at the time? Anyway, Penda's Fen addressed many of the issues at the heart of the 1970s in a far more interesting way; at one point I thought it was going to turn into an episode of the X Files and there was an intriguing reference to the construction of a large bunker for government personnel (similar to Burlington) in the local landscape. There is an excellent review of it here which says much of what I would probably have written here - I love his phrase ' a world of controlled triviality' (unfortunately the links at the bottom don't work). The writer puts it in a trilogy with The Owl Service (see post below) and The Changes by Peter Dickinson, which I shall now have to seek out. Found it on You Tube but it will take a while to watch - don't remember it, but it definitely looks like the kind of thing I would have watched.

Old, Weird Britain

An interesting article in this month's Sight and Sound by Rob Young called 'The Pattern under the Plough' (a quote from folklorist George Ewart Evans who wrote, amongst other things, a classic study of the hare in English folklore) on English films that draw on the landscape and folklore of olde Albion. I can pat myself on the back that I have seen most of the films mentioned - usual suspects mentioned in previous post plus Powell & Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale and Patrick Keiller's films. I'm sure I saw The Owl Service when it was originally on tv in 1969.

There are a number, however, that I have not yet seen but have mostly been aware of for some time: Winstanley, Derek Jarman's Journey to Avebury, Akenfield and Gallivant (Andrew Koetting came round our house to pick up a filing cabinet I was discarding, but I was out at the time, if I had known it was him I would have stayed in). Ones I hadn't heard of that sounded intriguing were Alfred the Great with David Hemmings and some obscure documentaries such as The Flora Faddy Furry Dance. The one that I have been wanting to see for many years was Penda's Fen by David Rudkin, a Play for Today from 1974 (what a brilliant concept that was); I don't remember seeing it although I saw a lot of those plays around that time - it is not available on dvd so it's very frustrating - it's always mentioned in articles of this kind so I would have thought a reissue was overdue. PS I have since discovered that Rob Young has a forthcoming book and blog called Electric Eden that overlaps at many points with my interests and have added it to the blog list opposite.