Jane Arden (director)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jane Arden (October 19, 1927 - December 20, 1982) was a film director, actor, screenwriter, playwright, songwriter and poet born in Pontypool, South Wales. After training at RADA she began her acting career in the late 1940s on television and in the cinema.
Contents |
[edit] Early Acting Career
Arden appeared in a TV production of Romeo and Juliet in the late 1940s, and then went onto star in two British Crime movies: Black Memory (1947) directed by Oswald Mitchell - which provided iconic South Africa-born Carry On actor Sid James with his first screen credit (billed as Sydney James) - and Richard M. Grey's A Gunman Has Escaped (1948). There are copies of both films in The National Film Archive but the copy of A Gunman Has Escaped is incomplete.
[edit] Writing and Theatre
In the 1950s, following marriage - to the distinguished director Philip Saville - and children, Arden concentrated on writing for the stage and for television. Her stage play Conscience and Desire, and Dear Liz (1954) attracted interest, and her comedy TV drama Curtains For Harry (1955), starring Bobby Howes and Sidney Tafler (1916-79), was broadcast on 20th October 1955, making it one of the first programmes transmitted by the newly-established ITV network. The latter also featured future 'Carry On' star Joan Simms, and Arden's co-writer on this piece was the American Richard Lester, who went on to become an internationally renowned film director who is still perhaps best remembered for his work with The Beatles on A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help (1965).
From the late 1950s Arden worked with some of the key figures of British theatre and cinema. For example, in 1958 her play The Party was directed in London by Charles Laughton. It turned out to be Laughton's last appearance on the London stage and, in contrast, provided Albert Finney with his first role in the theatre. Her 1959 television drama The Thug provided a powerful early role for actor Alan Bates. And in 1964 Arden appeared with Harold Pinter in a TV production of Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos, directed by Phillip Saville.
[edit] Feminism, Film and Radical Theatre
Arden's work became increasingly radical following her growing interest and involvement in feminism and the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s. This is particularly evident from 1965 onwards, starting with the TV drama The Logic Game, which she wrote and starred in. The Logic Game also starred the distinguished British actor David de Keyser who worked alongside Arden again in the film Separation (1967). Arden, again, wrote the screenplay and the film was directed by her new close associate Jack Bond (born 1937). Separation also featured music by the chart-topping British group Procol Harum.
Arden and Bond had previously worked on a 1966 documentary Dali in New York, which mainly consists of the renowned surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Jane Arden walking the streets of New York discussing Dali's work. This film was resurrected and shown at the 2007 Tate Gallery Dali exhibition.
Arden's television work in the mid-sixties included appearances in Philip Saville's Exit 19, The Interior Decorator by Jack Russell and the popular satirical programme That Was The Week That Was fronted by David Frost.
Jane Arden's work in experimental theatre in the late 1960s and the 1970s coincided with her return to cinema as actor, writer and director (or co-director). The play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven (1969), starring Victor Spinetti (who had worked with Richard Lester in both of his films featuring The Beatles) and Sheila Allen, played to packed houses for six weeks at London's Arts Lab. It was described by Arthur Marwick, in his mammoth study The Sixties (Oxford 1998) as 'perhaps the most important production' at the venue during that period. Also around this time Arden penned the drama The Illusionist.
In 1970 Arden formed the radical feminist theatre group Holocaust and then wrote a play called The Holocaust. This would later be adapted for the screen as The Other Side of the Underneath (1972). Arden directed the film and appeared in it uncredited; screenings at film festivals, including the 1972 London Film Festival, caused a considerable stir. The film depicts a woman's mental breakdown and rebirth in scenes at times violent and highly shocking; the writer and critic George Melly described it as 'a most illuminating season in Hell', while the BBC Radio journalist David Will declared the film to be 'a major breakthrough for the British cinema'.
Throughout her life Arden's interest in other cultures and belief systems increasingly took the form of a personal spiritual quest. In the 1970s she spent much time in ashrams in India and Morocco and in an August 1978 interview in the Guardian with the journalist Angela Neustatter she spoke of her openness to all ideas for personal evolution: 'I believe in trying anything and everything. That's my advice to everyone: explore all the possibilities for mobilising your energy'.
Following The Other Side of the Underneath there were two further collaborations with Jack Bond in the 1970s: Vibration (1974), described by Geoff Brown and Robert Murphy in their book 'Film Directors in Britain and Ireland' (BFI 2006) as 'an exercise in meditation utilising experimental film and video techniques', and the futuristic Anti-Clock (1979), which featured Arden's songs on the soundtrack and starred Sebastian Saville. The latter opened the 1979 London Film Festival.
In 1978 Jane Arden published the book You Don't Know What You Want, Do You? and supported its publication with public readings and discussions, such as that at The King's Head Theatre in London on October 1st 1978. Although loosely defined as poetry the book is also a radical social and psychological manifesto which has been compared with R.D. Laing's Knots. By this time Arden had moved on from feminism to a view that all people needed to be set free from the tyranny of rationality.
[edit] Death and Legacy
Jane Arden took her own life at Hindlethwaite Hall in Coverdale, Yorkshire on 20th December 1982. She is buried in Darlington West Cemetery.
Having been largely neglected by most chroniclers of Post-War British film and theatre, there is now renewed interest in Arden's work on stage and screen. Although her films are, as yet, seldom seen and her books - poetry and plays - are currently out of print, when her work becomes available again it is likely that Arden will be seen as one of the most visionary and radical artists in British culture of the last few decades.
Jane Arden's life and work is documented at a MySpace site created in 2007 by the film editor Tracy Granger: [[1]]
[edit] Selected Works
As Jane Arden worked in a wide range of media and formats and in variety of different roles her career is better shown as a timeline of selected key works rather than as a series of lists.
1940s Romeo and Juliet (BBC TV) (actor)
1947 Black Memory (1947 film) (actor)
1948 A Gunman Has Escaped (1948 film) (actor)
1954 Conscience and Desire, and Dear Liz (theatre) (playwright)
1955 Curtains For Harry (ITV) (co-writer)
1958 The Party (theatre) (playwright)
1959 The Thug (ITV) (writer)
1963 Exit 19 (commentator)
1964 Huis Clos (BBC TV) (actor)
1965 The Logic Game (BBC TV) (writer, actor)
1965 The Interior Decorator (actor)
1966 Dali in New York (BBC TV) (interviewer)
1968 Separation (film) (writer, actor)
1968 The Illusionist (writer)
1969 Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven (theatre) (writer)
1970 The Holocaust (theatre) (writer)
1971 A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches (theatre) (playwright)
1972 The Other Side of the Underneath (1972 film) (writer, uncredited actor, director)
1974 Vibration (film) (writer, co-director)
1978 You Don't Know What You Want, Do You? (poetry) (writer)
1979 Anti-Clock (film) (writer, composer, co-director)
