A magazine of the arts.
Tonight's edition includes:
Shelagh Delaney's Salford
The twenty-one year old author of "A Taste of Honey" and "The Lion in Love" looks at the town where she was brought up and where the action of both her plays takes place.
Themes and Variations
'To compare a great copy with a great original is to attend a conversation between great artists' with Michael Ayrton.
Introduced and edited by Huw Wheldon.
Darius Milhaud the most prolific composer of today, filmed at his home in Paris.
The Eye of Cartier-Bresson
The great French photographer at work.
Music through the Looking Glass
The fantasy world of Gerard Hoffnung.
Man in a Landscape
The art of Sidney Nolan, Australian painter.
Lillian Hellman talks to Huw Wheldon
Henry Moore, Sculptor, at home and in his studio.
The art of Sidney Nolan, australian painter.
Five million people in England go dancing every week.
A look at the strange and varied world of the dancers of England, from jive to ballroom, from folk dancing to flamenco.
Book of Hours
The seasonal calendar of the Duc de Berry.
Zadkine at the Tate
The famous Russian sculptor interviewed by Bernard Williams on the occasion of his retrospective exhibition opening at the Tate Gallery on January 5.
In 1960, Huw Wheldon visited Epidaurus and Athens to meet the Greek star of stage and screen Katina Paxinou. Having initially trained as an opera singer, she moved into acting, helping to re-establish the National Theatre of Greece in 1932. Due to the outbreak of World War Two, she found herself unable to return to Greece, and so emigrated to the US, soon securing the role of Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls - which won her an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. She returned to Greece in 1950 to resume her stage career, and alongside her husband, the actor and director Alexis Minotis, the pair achieved their dream of interpreting the Ancient Greek plays for a modern audience.
Emlyn Williams who is appearing at the Arts Theatre, London, in three plays: "Lunch Hour" by John Mortimer, "A Slight Ache" by Harold Pinter, and "The Form" by N.F. Simpson - under the title "Three". Tonight he discusses his roles in the plays with extracts from each of them.
George Chapman in the Rhondda
Life in the Welsh mining valleys as seen by the English painter George Chapman.
Ronald Searle on Toulouse-Lautrec
Kingsley Amis on Science Fiction
The Devils of Loudun
John Whiting returns to Loudun in France to tell the story of the possession by devils in the 17th century of the Ursuline nuns of the town. His new play 'The Devils' (from which extracts are shown) has just opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London.
Two Composers, Two Worlds
A film about the contrasts in the life and work of two outstanding young composers: Peter Maxwell Davies, Dudley Moore.
Young Conductors
A competition for young conductors, organised by the Philharmonia Concert Society and held last month in the Monitor studio at Lime Grove.
Judges: Otto Klemperer, Sir Adrian Boult, Carlo-Maria Giulini, Walter Legge and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill was the composer of 'Mack the Knife' and many other songs which created a new style of musical theatre in the Berlin of pre-Hitler days. Lotte Lenya was his wife and his finest interpreter. With the The English Chamber Orchestra
Jack Yeats
A first view of some of the great Irish artist's early drawings and paintings - work which he decided in the 1920s should not be seen again until three years after his death.
The teacher is Harold Lang. The students are from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
...For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits.
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
(Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2)
Facts and foibles concerning the Kings and Queens of England with Dorothy Tutin, Max Adrian, Richard Johnson, John Barton. A selection from the entertainment recently presented at the Aldwych Theatre, London.
Architect at Work: Denys Lasdun
The designer of rehousing schemes; luxury flats; Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge; The Royal College of Physicians, London; houses; banks; laboratories; shops, on the aims and intentions of a modern architect.
Extracts from the controversial production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford, and comments on their approach to the part and the play from Ian Bannen who plays Hamlet and Peter Wood who directs the production.
Brecht's Berliner Ensemble
The famous German Theatre Company at rehearsal and in performance at their theatre in East Berlin as seen by Kenneth Tynan with Helene Weigel Brecht's widow and the Ensemble's leading actress and scenes from the Company's production of 'The Threepenny Opera', 'Galileo', 'Arturo Ul'.
A fortnightly magazine of the arts.
Introduced and edited by Huw Wheldon.
Prokofiev
Portrait of a Soviet composer.
Daumier
A double life with illustrations from the Exhibition at the Tate Gallery organised by the Arts Council
A fortnightly magazine of the arts.
Introduced and edited by Huw Wheldon.
A selection from the films shown in Monitor over the past two years.
In this edition:
Shelagh Delaney's Salford
The twenty-two-year-old author of 'A Taste of Honey' and 'The Lion in Love' looks at the town where she was brought up, and where the action of both her plays takes place.
'... the brilliant meeting with Shelagh Delaney and the vision through her lucid eyes of the restless, slate-grey, black-brick spirit of Salford.....' (Punch)
and
Profile of a Quartet
A film about the life and work of a string quartet with The Allegri Quartet.
'... this elaborate, witty and human film profile....' (New Statesman)
*
Programme edited and introduced by Huw Wheldon.
A selection from the films shown in Monitor over the past two years.
In this edition:
Rudolf Bing at the Met
A portrait of an impresario filmed at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York.
'You could sense immediately the quality of the man who regards opera singers as spoilt children, who fired Maria Callas, who bends a world-famous institution to his sole will'. (News Chronicle)
and
The Death of Tolstoy
An impression of Tolstoy's last days, compiled from Russian archive newsreel material filmed during his lifetime and at his funeral.
'It was an exciting experience to have this legendary genius, on the hearthrug'. (The Observer)
Programme edited and introduced by Huw Wheldon.
A selection from the films shown in Monitor over the past two years.
In this edition:
Variations on a Mechanical Theme
An investigation into mechanical instruments from the musical box to the automatic orchestra.
'Much of Monitor's best work has appeared among its miscellaneous short films like "Mechanical Instruments"... a kind of discursive essay which is not generally possible elsewhere in the commercial cinema world' (Sight and Sound) and George Chapman
In The Rhondda
Life in the Welsh mining valleys as seen by English painter George Chapman.
'Chapman's sympathy was in every canvas and model of his that we saw, as Wilfrid Owen's pity for the soldier was in his poetry.' (The Listener)
Programme edited and introduced by Huw Wheldon.
A selection from the films shown in Monitor over the past two years.
In this edition:
Henry Moore
Sculptor at home and in his studio.
'At their best-the recent Henry Moore film, for instance-they can really seem to reveal something new about an artist and his psychology'. (Sight and Sound)
and
The Miners' Picnic
A brass band carnival filmed at Bedlington in Northumberland.
'...delightful, with only a scarcely perceptible touch of tongue-in-cheek satire'. (New Statesman)
Programme edited and introduced by Huw Wheldon.
The Light Fantastic
'Five million people in England go dancing every week'
A look at the strange and varied world of the dancers of England, from jive to ballroom, from folk dancing to flamenco.
'That dancing as the subject of cine camera reporting can be compulsive in the extreme was brilliantly demonstrated.... a most encouraging trail-blazing programme' (The Observer)
and
An Interview with Michelangelo
'A relief to return to the heights of the ingeniously presented interview with Michelangelo' (The Listener)
Programme edited and introduced by Huw Wheldon.
A selection from the films shown in Monitor over the past two years.
In this edition:
Katina Paxinou in Athens
The great tragic actress performing in the ancient Greek amphitheatre and interviewed with her husband Alexis Minotis actor and leading Greek producer.
'Her exposition of the magic of her craft was both electrifying and illuminating'. (Time and Tide)
and
Gerard Hoffnung
A glimpse at the fantasy world of the musical cartoonist.
'A brilliant exploitation of the camera's capacity to give static objects the dimension of music. Hoffnung's musical instruments danced about the screen...' (Western Mail)
Programme edited and introduced by Huw Wheldon.