Rudolph Cartier
Rudolph Cartier | |
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The Late Show. | |
Born | Rudolph Katscher 17 April 1904 |
Died | 7 June 1994 , England, United Kingdom | (aged 90)
Education | Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art |
Occupation | Television director |
Rudolph Cartier (born Rudolph Kacser, renamed himself in Germany to Rudolph Katscher;.
After studying architecture and then drama, Cartier began his career as a screenwriter and then film director in
Active in both
Early life and career
Born in
Cartier became involved in the
The same year as
Little further is recorded of Cartier's career until after the Second World War, when he began writing storylines for several minor British films.[3] He also worked as a film producer, overseeing a 1951 short film adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story The Man with the Twisted Lip.[7] Cartier returned for a time to the United States, where he studied production methods in the new medium of television.[6]
In 1952,
BBC television
Cartier's first BBC television production was a play entitled Arrow to the Heart, transmitted on the evening of 20 July 1952.[7] It was initially adapted by Cartier from Albrecht Goes' novel Unruhige Nacht, but Barry felt that the dialogue was "too Germanic" and assigned drama department staff scriptwriter Nigel Kneale to edit the script.[11] Arrow to the Heart was the first of many collaborations between the pair, who enjoyed during the next few years a highly productive working relationship, despite profound creative disagreements on occasion.[12] Cartier and Kneale were an important presence in the British television drama of the era and were, according to television historian Lez Cooke, "responsible for introducing a completely new dimension to television drama in the early to mid-1950s".[10]
Collaborations with Nigel Kneale
Cartier and Kneale's first major production was the six-part serial
The success of The Quatermass Experiment led to two sequels,
The appeal of the Quatermass serials has been attributed by the Museum of Broadcast Communications to the depiction of "A new range of gendered fears about Britain's postwar and post-colonial security. As a result, or perhaps simply because of Kneale and Cartier's effective combination of science fiction and poignant melodrama, audiences were captivated."[18] The Screenonline website suggests that the visual impact of Cartier's interpretation of Kneale's scripts was a major factor in their success, which it attributes to their "originality, mass appeal and dynamism... The Quatermass Experiment became a landmark of science fiction and the cornerstone of the genre on British television."[13]
Aside from the Quatermass serials, Cartier and Kneale collaborated on several one-off dramas, including literary and theatrical adaptations of
Nineteen Eighty-Four had been a success, but it was also one of the most expensive television dramas ever made in the UK.[25] Cartier often spent large amounts of money on his productions. Earlier in 1954, Michael Barry had heavily criticised him for the money and resources he had expended in an adaptation of Rebecca. In a memo written after that production's transmission, Barry admonished Cartier for his over-ambitious production:
The performance of Rebecca seems to me to have taken us further into the danger area instead of showing any improvement. I am unable to defend at a time when departmental costs and scene loads are in an acute state the load imposed by Rebecca on Design and Supply and the expenditure upon
extras and costumes... the vast area of the hall and the stairway never justified the great expenditure of effort required in building and one is left with a very clear impression of reaching a point where the department must be accused of not knowing what it is doing.[26]
Later life and work
Despite Barry's concerns, Cartier continued to work successfully in television, and at the
Cartier also directed several
Cartier continued to direct television dramas during the 1960s, although after Barry stepped down as Head of Drama in 1961, he lost much of his creative independence. Barry's successor, Sydney Newman, abolished the BBC's traditional producer-director role and split the responsibilities into separate posts, leaving directors such as Cartier with less control over their productions.[3] Cartier also found himself assigned to direct episodes of regular drama series, as such as Maigret and Z-Cars.[3]
Cartier was still able to direct several notable productions during the decade, including a number which explored the Nazi era in Germany from which he had escaped in 1933. These included the World War II dramas Cross of Iron (1961, dealing with the
Cartier's career continued into the 1970s. In 1974, he directed episodes of
Cartier was married three times, lastly to Margaret Pepper from 1949 until his death.[1] He had one daughter, Corinne, with Pepper, and another from a previous marriage.[4] Cartier died on 7 June 1994, at the age of 90; his death was overshadowed in the media by that of Dennis Potter, another important figure in the history of British television drama, who died on the same day.[31]
Legacy
Nearly all of Cartier's 1950s television productions were performed
Nigel Kneale, scriptwriter of both of the Cartier dramas acclaimed by the BFI, felt that the productions would not have been as successful as they were had they been handled by any other director. "I don't think any of the things I wrote then would have come to anything much in other hands. In his they worked."[34] Television historian Jason Jacobs, a lecturer in film and television studies at the University of Warwick, wrote in 2000 that Kneale and Cartier together created an entirely new, more expansive vision for British television drama in the 1950s.
It was the arrival of Nigel Kneale... and Rudolph Cartier... that challenged the intimate drama directly. Cartier is rightly recognised as a major influence on the visual development of British television drama... Cartier and Kneale had the ambition for their productions to affect a mass audience, and the scope of their attention was not confined to the 'cosy' aesthetics of intimacy. Cartier uses the close-up both to reveal emotions and as a shock device: a more threatening—and perhaps exhilarating—method than was used before. 'Intimacy' is reformulated by Cartier in terms of his power and control over the viewer—no longer a part of the family, but isolated in his home.[35]
Cartier's pioneering use of an increased number of pre-filmed sequences to open out the studio-bound, live television drama productions of the 1950s is also praised by Lez Cooke. "While film inserts were being used in television drama from the early 1950s, Nineteen Eighty-Four represented the most extensive use of them in a TV play up to that time, and signalled Cartier's determination to extend the boundaries of TV drama."[36] Similarly, his Times obituary stated that: "At a time when studio productions were usually as static as the conventional theatre, he was widely respected for a creative contribution to British television drama which gave it a new dimension."[4]
In addition to his 1950s productions, several of Cartier's later works have also been regarded as influential. His 1962 production of Wuthering Heights was praised by Dennis Potter, then a television critic, who wrote in the
Not all of Cartier's work was so well regarded; in particular, his cinematic efforts have not achieved the level of praise of his television work. In the book America's Best, Britain's Finest: A Survey of Mixed Movies, critic John Howard Reid says of Cartier's 1958 film Passionate Summer: "It's hard to believe that... anyone could make such a dull movie. Yet this is precisely what director Rudolph Cartier has done. I've never heard of Mr Cartier before or since but presumably he made this brief foray into films from that synthetic world of ugly close-ups—TV."[27]
Speaking to The Times in 1958, Cartier explained that television was still developing as a medium, and that part of his work was to help create the next generation of those who would produce television drama. "The BBC is producing producers as well as plays. They are feeling their way towards what television drama will one day be, and we are trying to create a generation of writers who study the medium."[6] His 1994 obituary in the same newspaper judged that he had been successful in creating a lasting influence on later producers, describing his 1962 production of the opera Carmen as "an example and inspiration to a younger generation of television producers".[4]
In 1990, the
Selected filmography
Screenwriter
- The Game of Love (dir. Victor Janson, 1928)
- Tales from the Vienna Woods (dir. Jaap Speyer, 1928)
- Mascots (dir. Felix Basch, 1929) — based on an operetta by Georg Okonkowski and Walter Bromme
- The Smuggler's Bride of Mallorca (dir. Hans Behrendt, 1929)
- Im Prater blühen wieder die Bäume (dir. E. W. Emo, 1929)
- The Tiger Murder Case (dir. Johannes Meyer, 1930)
- The Shot in the Talker Studio (dir. Alfred Zeisler, 1930) — based on a novel by Curt Siodmak
- The Copper (dir. Richard Eichberg, 1930)
- Täter gesucht (dir. Carl Heinz Wolff, 1931) — based on a novel by Frank Arnau
- Das gelbe Haus des King-FuKarl Grune, 1931) — based on a play by Josef Matthäus Velter (dir.
- The Yellow House of Rio (dir. Karl Grune, Robert Péguy, 1931) — based on a play by Josef Matthäus Velter
- Express 13 (dir. Alfred Zeisler, 1931)
- Tropical Nights (dir. Leo Mittler, 1931) — based on Victory by Joseph Conrad
- The Squeaker (dir. Karel Lamač, Martin Frič, 1931) — based on The Squeaker by Edgar Wallace
- Salto Mortale (dir. E. A. Dupont, 1931) — based on a novel by Alfred Machard
- The Paw (dir. Hans Steinhoff, 1931)
- The Man with the Claw (dir. Nunzio Malasomma, 1931)
- A Shot at Dawn (dir. Alfred Zeisler, 1932) — based on a play by Harry Jenkins
- Coup de feu à l'aube (dir. Serge de Poligny, 1932) — based on a play by Harry Jenkins
- The Star of Valencia (dir. Serge de Poligny, 1933)
- The Star of Valencia (dir. Alfred Zeisler, 1933)
- The Man from Morocco (dir. Mutz Greenbaum, 1945)
- Corridor of Mirrors (dir. Terence Young, 1948) — based on a novel by Chris Massie
- The Avenger (dir. Karl Anton, 1960) — based on The Avenger by Edgar Wallace
Director
- Teilnehmer antwortet nicht (co-director: Marc Sorkin, 1932)
- Invisible Opponent (1933)
- The Oil Sharks (co-director: Henri Decoin, 1933)
- Arrow to the Heart (1952, TV film) — based on the novel Unruhige Nacht by Albrecht Goes
- The Quatermass Experiment (1953, TV miniseries)
- Wuthering Heights (1953, TV film) — based on the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954, TV film) — based on the novel 1984 by George Orwell
- Quatermass II (1955, TV miniseries)
- Passionate Summer (1958) — based on the novel The Shadow and the Peak by Richard Mason
- Quatermass and the Pit (1958–1959, TV miniseries)
- Adventure Story (1961, TV film) — based on the play Adventure Story by Terence Rattigan
- Maigret (1961–1963, TV series, 3 episodes) — based on Maigret novels by Georges Simenon
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g Jacobs, Jason. "Cartier, Rudolph". Museum of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on 2007-03-05. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
- S2CID 162389472.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Wake, Oliver. "Cartier, Rudolph (1904–1994)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Rudolph Cartier; Obituary". The Times. 1994-06-10. p. 21.
- ^ a b Murray, p. 22.
- ^ a b c d "The Man Who Put 1984 Over on Television". The Times. 1958-12-01. p. 14.
- ^ a b c d "Cartier, Rudolph (1904–94)—Film & TV credits". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-24.
- ^ Jacobs, p. 131.
- ^ a b Jacobs, p. 132.
- ^ a b Cooke, p. 20.
- ^ Murray, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Pixley, p. 4.
- ^ a b Collinson, Gavin. "Quatermass Experiment, The (1953)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Duguid, Mark. "Quatermass II (1955)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Duguid, Mark. "Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Pixley, p. 19.
- ^ Pixley, p. 20.
- ^ Dickinson, Robert. "Quatermass". Museum of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on 2007-03-02. Retrieved 2007-06-01.
- ^ Pixley, p. 16.
- ^ "Nineteen Eighty-Four — Orwell's Novel on Television". The Times. 1954-12-13. p. 11.
- ^ "Quatermass creator dies, aged 84". BBC News Online. 2006-11-01. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ a b Cooke, p. 27.
- ^ Murray, p. 39.
- ^ Murray, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Duguid, Mark. "Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Jacobs, p. 134.
- ^ ISBN 1-4116-7877-X.
- ^ "Salzburg Award for B.B.C. TV Opera". The Times. 1962-08-27. p. 12.
- ^ Wake, Oliver (11 January 2014). "Doctor Korczak and the Children (1962)". British Television Drama. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
- ^ a b Wake, Oliver. "Wuthering Heights (1962)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Murray, p. 175.
- ^ "The BFI TV 100: 1–100". British Film Institute. 2000. Archived from the original on November 30, 2005. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Duguid, Mark (2000). "73: Nineteen Eighty-Four". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 2006-02-23. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Nigel Kneale (2005). Cartier & Kneale in Conversation (Documentary using archive interview material. Extra feature on The Quatermass Collection DVD set). BBC Worldwide.
- ^ Jacobs, pp. 130–131 and p. 137.
- ^ Cooke, p. 25.
- ^ Wake, Oliver. "Lee Oswald—Assassin (1966)". Screenonline. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ Pixley, p. 40.
- ^ Cooke, p. 199.
References
- Cooke, Lez (2003). British Television Drama: A History (hardback). ISBN 0-85170-884-6.
- Jacobs, Jason (2000). The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (paperback). ISBN 0-19-874233-9.
- Murray, Andy (2006). Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale (paperback). ISBN 1-900486-50-4.
- Pixley, Andrew (2005). The Quatermass Collection—Viewing Notes (paperback). London: BBC Worldwide. BBCDVD1478.
- Hochscherf, Tobias (2010). "From Refugee to the BBC: Rudolph Cartier, Weimar Cinema and Early British Television". Journal of British Cinema and Television. 7 (3). Edinburgh University Press: 401–420. S2CID 162389472. Retrieved 2011-11-24.
External links
- Rudolph Cartier at IMDb