Happy Birthday, Thorold Dickinson! Born today in 1903 as Thorold Barron Dickinson, this British educator, screenwriter, producer and film director was also Britain's first university professor of film.
Born in Bristol, England, United Kingdom, Dickinson was a son of Norwegian descent to his father, the Archdeacon of Bristol from 1921 to 1927.
Years later, Dickinson was educated at Clifton College and Keble College, Oxford where he read theology, history and French.
Afterwards, he was sent down from Oxford in his last year because his interest in theatre and film caused him to neglect his studies; he was inspired by lectures given by English modernist theatre practitioner Edward Henry Gordon Craig.
During his time at Oxford, Dickinson interrupted his studies to observe the film industry in France where he worked with pioneering English film director, producer and screenwriter George Pearson, mainly in the silent film era. Pearson was the father of an Oxford friend.
For Pearson, he wrote the scenario of "The Little People" in 1926. Years later, this would become S03E28 of the American black and white anthology television series The Twilight Zone (1959–1964), airing on March 30, 1962.
Following writing for Pearson, Dickinson observed the American industry's transition to sound in New York in 1929.
During the 1920s and 1930s, he was active in the London Film Society (LFS), being responsible for the technical presentation of films and worked as a film editor.
At the LFS, he helped introduce the work of Sergei M. Eisenstein ('Strike', 'Battleship Potemkin', 'October: Ten Days That Shook the World', 'Ivan the Terrible: Parts 1 & 2') and Dziga Vertov ('Man with a Movie Camera') to British audiences.
In 1936, Dickinson became Vice-President of the Association of Cine-Technicians, observing the Soviet film industry for his craft union the following year, remaining in the post until 1953.
Two years after Dickinson became Vice-President, he visited Spain during the Civil War. While there, he co-directed two documentary shorts.
The most notable of these was the twenty-minute 1938 British black and white documentary short film 'Spanish A.B.C', of which Dickinson described "is a sober advocacy of the educational policy of Republican Spain".
Two years later, at short notice, Dickinson took over direction of the 1940 British black and white psychological thriller/mystery film 'Gaslight' (marketed in the United States as 'Angel Street'). The feature was later suppressed for some years when MGM bought the rights for its own version.
The film had been based on English playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play "Gas Light".
Two years later, Dickinson directed the 1942 British black and white WWII propaganda film 'The Next of Kin' (also known as 'Next of Kin'), expanded from what was originally intended as a training film.
Produced by the British television and film production company Ealing Studios, the feature was originally commissioned by the British War Office as a training film to promote the government message that "Careless talk costs lives".
'The Next of Kin' was later described by British teacher, literary critic and specializer in 19th century literature Philip Horne as "one of the most interesting, and thrillingly ruthless, propaganda films of the War".
Two years later, George Cukor ('Camille', 'The Philadelphia Story', 'Adam's Rib', 'A Star is Born', 'My Fair Lady') directed the 1944 American psychological thriller/mystery film 'Gaslight' for MGM. It starred Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Angela Lansbury, Joseph Cotten and May Whitty.
However, this led to an invitation to work in Hollywood from American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive David O. Selznick which was rejected by Dickinson.
Three years later, for the 1949 British black and white drama/fantasy-horror film 'The Queen of Spades', Dickinson assumed responsibility at five days' notice.
This was after he was recommended by Austrian actor Anton Walbrook, the star of Dickinson's 'Gaslight', when the production was close to collapse.
Following an aborted attempt to adapt English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy's 1886 psychological fiction novel The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character in time for the Festival of Britain, Dickinson returned to his other film.
This was with the 1952 British black and white crime/drama film 'Secret People'; a long-cherished project of which Ealing Studios took up. However, the film was later unsuccessful at the box office and became Dickinson's last British-made feature.
'Secret People' was notable for providing Audrey Hepburn with her first supporting film role. Performing all of her own ballet moves during the dance sequences, Dickinson went on to film the screen test of Hepburn, which eventually led her to international stardom.
In the screen test, she describes how she used to dance for audiences to raise funds for the resistance in The Netherlands during World War II.
The screen test was later sent to William Wyler ('Dodsworth', 'Jezebel', 'Wuthering Heights', 'Mrs. Miniver', 'The Best Years of Our Lives', 'The Heiress', 'Ben-Hur'). This led him cast her as Princess Anne in his 1953 American black and white romantic comedy/drama film 'Roman Holiday'.
In Israel, Dickinson co-edited (along with his wife Joanna), co-produced and directed a short film for the Israeli Army. It was also the film of which he is best known.
This was with the 1955 Israeli black and white war/drama film 'Giv'a 24 Eina Ona' ('Hill 24 Doesn't Answer'). The first movie produced in Israel that described the outbreak of hostilities during the war for independence in the late 1940s.
Set during the 1948 Arab--Israeli War, the conflict that led to the creation of the state of Israel, this landmark Israeli film is among the first features from that country to draw an international audience.
Four soldiers of fortune -- a Palestinian, an Irishman, an American and a Yemenite -- have aligned themselves with the Jewish forces.
As the group tries to maintain control of a key stronghold outside of Jerusalem, known as Hill 24, each character relates his reason for joining the fight. The film was later entered into the 8th Cannes Film Festival that same year.
During the undulations of his career, Dickinson assumed various key official positions.
These included co-ordinator of the British Army Kinematograph Service's film unit during WWII, Chief of Film Services at UNESCO, Professor of Film at the Slade School of Fine Art and Chief of Film Services for the United Nations between 1956 and 1960.
During this time, in 1959, he was a member of the jury at the 1st Moscow International Film Festival in August of that same year.
After his work with the United Nations, Dickinson devoted the final part of his life to teaching about film.
In 1960, he established the film studies department at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where one of his first students was Raymond Durgnat, the prominent British film critic.
However, whether beyond or behind the film camera, Dickinson stayed the eternal outsider, never comfortable in an Establishment niche.
In 1967, Dickinson was head of the jury at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival. Later that same year, he was named a professor in the department, becoming the first professor of film studies in the United Kingdom.
Dickinson served in the post until 1971, just as structuralism, semiotics and other French imports began their invasion of film studies, a development he felt no sympathy for. Two years later, he was appointed CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours 1973.
However, he remained a much-respected figure, both as a teacher and as a director whose scattered films and curtailed career give eloquent evidence of the unequal battle in British cinema between idealism and commercial necessity, imagination and servitude.
Eleven years later, Dickinson passed in Oxford, England, United Kingdom on April 14, 1984. He was 80.
In the years prior to 2003 Dickinson's work received much praise, with fellow director Martin Scorsese describing him as "a uniquely intelligent, passionate artist... They're not in endless supply."
John Boorman ('Point Blank', 'Deliverance'), referring to the 2008 biographical film criticism book Thorold Dickinson: A World of Film, has said, "He had Michael Powell's daring, David Lean's taut editing and Carol Reed's emotional tension, yet he was lost in their shadows.
Now Philip Horne and Peter Swaab have brilliantly rescued him from his perplexing obscurity and, in the course of their forensic enquiries, reveal a fascinating man and etch a sharp picture of the times he lived in.”
The Thorold Dickinson Archive is currently held at the University of the Arts London's Archives and Special Collections Centre.
The films of Dickinson, now being rediscovered, engage with major issues including national identity, the post-colonial world, and political violence - and they also show a rare mastery of style, a thrilling eroticism, a preoccupation with the psychology of betrayal.
The director was responsible for making the original screen version of the psychological thriller 'Gaslight', the WWII propaganda film 'The Next of Kin' and the genuinely strange and haunting version of the Pushkin semi-fantasy 'The Queen of Spades'.
His adventurous and truly global involvement in film took him to Paris, France in the heyday of silent cinema in the 1920s, to Stalin's USSR in 1937, to the Spanish Civil War, to Africa, India, Israel and America.
Both his life and career give a lively, multi-angled account of conveying a sense of his own voice and fascinating character.
Though somewhat overlooked during his lifetime, in recent years Dickinson's work has received much praise.
To his credit, Dickinson was a skilled, intelligent director with a flair for fluid camerawork and a penchant for melodramas about men under great duress.
Dickinson had been active from 1930–1958.
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