This worthwhile centenary documentary centres on the influence on Britten's music of the lifelong leftwing convictions, pacifism and hatred of cruelty that were engendered by his education at the progressive Gresham's school in Holt, East Anglia, the alma mater of Wh Auden and Donald Maclean. The case is well argued. There are useful contributions from, among others, the composer and teacher Joseph Horowitz and the cellist Anita Lasker Wallfisch (former inmate of Auschwitz, who heard him accompany Yehudi Menuhin at Belsen after the liberation in 1945). The music is well chosen and performed. John Hurt delivers the commentary with characteristic authority. Unfortunately, the dramatised sequences are acted with stilted tentativeness.
DocumentaryBenjamin BrittenPhilip French
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DocumentaryBenjamin BrittenPhilip French
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds...
- 5/25/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Neal Ascherson, the Observer's correspondent in eastern Europe in the 1960s, on the furtive world of the cold war spies
When I pull up memories of the cold war, the first thing I remember is a silence. The big steam-hauled train would come to a halt at Griebnitzsee, the last station before the frontier of West Berlin. Then a profound, infinite silence would fall, broken only by the soft, regular gasp of the locomotive's compressor, and sometimes by the crunch of jackboots pacing along the snowy platform. Even the passengers would speak only in whispers. They were forbidden to leave their compartments and look out of the corridor windows. The world seemed to have stopped turning.
I say "station", but nobody except uniformed frontier guards boarded the train at Griebnitzsee. No passenger left the train here – voluntarily. Very occasionally, the pacing of jackboots would change to the hustling of several feet,...
When I pull up memories of the cold war, the first thing I remember is a silence. The big steam-hauled train would come to a halt at Griebnitzsee, the last station before the frontier of West Berlin. Then a profound, infinite silence would fall, broken only by the soft, regular gasp of the locomotive's compressor, and sometimes by the crunch of jackboots pacing along the snowy platform. Even the passengers would speak only in whispers. They were forbidden to leave their compartments and look out of the corridor windows. The world seemed to have stopped turning.
I say "station", but nobody except uniformed frontier guards boarded the train at Griebnitzsee. No passenger left the train here – voluntarily. Very occasionally, the pacing of jackboots would change to the hustling of several feet,...
- 9/10/2011
- by Neal Ascherson
- The Guardian - Film News
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