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In her review of the film, Jan Dawson discusses aspects of the film’s plot, themes and how these relate to aspects of current events at the time of the film’s release and creation.

Similarly to Dawson (1968) this article was published under the umbrella of the British Film Institute, in the magazine Sight and Sound which is still running till to this day.

In his thesis article published for the Doctorate of Philosophy, Hall discusses British cinema as a whole through the examination of five key films, one of the major of these five being Herostratus.

This work is a thesis paper for which the author received their Doctorate in Philosophy, from the University of York.

This article comes from an independent, peer-reviewed journal and the author Sarah Street is a professor of film at the University of Bristol who has published numerous books through international academic publishers as well as more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

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I am not sure how I can create my own media that would actually be suitable for the article, as it is a film from 1967.

Herostratus Draft

Herostratus is a 1967 drama film directed by Don Levy, and produced by Levy and James Quinn. The film follows a young poet Max (Michael Gothard) who attempts to publicise his suicide through the mass media in an attempt to gain posthumous fame. The film also stars Gabriella Licudi, Peter Stephens, Antony Paul, and Mona Hammond (credited as Mona Chin) in central roles and notably Helen Mirren in her first credited film role.

The film’s initial release was limited to film festivals and art house cinemas in Europe, and it did not have a wider cinematic release . In 2009 the film was re-released by the British Film Institute as part of the BFI Flipside series. Prominent themes in the film include a critique of capital and the advertising industry of the time, as well as presenting ideas on death and the legacy of individuals. The film also touches on themes of alienation, urbanisation, and the growing counter-cultural movement of the time. Levy used a number of unorthodox directing and editing techniques in the creation of the film with the aim of heightening the film’s emotional impacts, some of which greatly distressed other members of the film crew.

Cast

·      Michael Gothard as Max

·      Gabriella Licudi as Clio

·      Peter Stephens as Farson

·      Antony Paul as Pointer

·      Mona Hammond as Sandy

Production

Don Levy developed the idea for the film in 1962 from a story written by Alan Daiches whilst a post-graduate student at the Slade School of Fine Art under the supervision of Thorold Dickinson. He presented his initial draft to the British Film Institute’s Experimental Film Fund in attempt to gain funding for the film and was rejected, with the chairman of the fund, Michael Balcon, writing in a letter to its secretary, Ralph Stevenson, that the film was “a project for a somewhat adventurous commercial company” and expressing “bewilderment” at the film’s script. As well as this, in his initial proposal Levy requested £3,235 to produce a 60-80 minute film. The committee in charge of funding did not believe that Levy would be able to produce a film of that size on such a small budget, and also stated that such a sum would take up a significant portion of the fund’s available resources. However in a series of letters to both Balcon and Stevenson, film director and critic Basil Wright provided significant support for the film and its script and this support led to the Experimental Film Fund providing £1500 for the film’s production.

Levy received further funding from the then Controller of BBC Television Programmes Huw Wheldon who provided an additional contribution from the BBC of £1500, and £1500 more from James Quinn who overshot Levy’s budget forecast to ensure that the film could be made in colour. This whole process took two years, and by 1964 the cost of production had risen to the extent that Levy had to rely on gifted and loaned equipment from the production crew as well as others in the film industry to keep the film within budget.

Pre-production

In casting for the film Levy spent a considerable amount of time running potential actors through improvisational auditions, and eventually selected Michael Gothard, Gabriella Licudi and Peter Stephens for the lead roles. These improvisational auditions were an attempt by Levy to heighten the emotional reality presented by the film, and through the film he attempts to use this improvisational acting to distinctly induce specific feelings and emotions in the audience. Although he had developed a script for the film, the actors were never given a copy or any other specific directions.

Production/Filming

Throughout the filming Levy directed the characterisation and dialogue through what he described as “a very complicated process of improvisation and recall,” with the goal of “enveloping the characters of the play.” He used these techniques in an attempt to bring forwards the subconscious feelings of the actors and create a heightened emotional state that extended to those heightened emotional states to the audience, in a process he described as a form of “experimental psychology”. Alongside the actors he chose and the directorial decisions he made Levy chose to shoot the majority of the film on location in London, utilising the urban environment to heighten the emotional impact of the film as well as its exploration of the impacts of urbanisation. Filming started on the 20^th of August in 1964, and took only eight months ending in April of 1965.

Post-production

The film contains a number of montages and disjointed cuts as well two recurrent intercut sequences, one of a striptease and another of a cow being slaughtered, that are repeated five and eight times respectively through the film. These scenes provide the most prominent examples of Levy’s editing style, which he utilised to convey thematic meaning as well as distinct emotional contexts to the audience. The film is also edited in a non-linear fashion with flash-forward sequences and sequences with no distinct timeline interwoven in the narrative of the film. Levy and cinematographer Keith Allans also worked heavily on the colour of the film, with almost all the film’s scenes containing some form of colour correction or change in exposure. In an interview before the release of the film Levy stated that “The colour is very closely controlled and tied to the film’s emotional forces.” The film was first screened publicly on the 3^rd of May 1968 having taken a total of six years to develop from the initial scripting.

Themes

Emotion

Levy was particularly interested with the audience’s experience of films emotionally rather than the experience of a coherent narrative, and also how breaking the barrier between the film and its audience can produce an "alienation effect". While at Slade he wrote that he wished to “investigate the problems of perception, memory, time-sense and emotion associated with the techniques of the film medium,” and throughout Herostratus the composition of many scenes rests on their emotional impact rather than any pervasive symbolic meaning. In his essay “You CAN get out: Herostratus Now” critic Amnon Buchbinder discussed the recurrent slaughterhouse and striptease scenes as one example of the film's emotional purpose, and presented that these scenes do not convey distinct symbolic meaning. To Buchbinder the combination of these sequences was intended to convey the experiences of desire and disgust to the audience, through the juxtaposition of visceral scenes of both “the rending of flesh and the revealing of flesh".

Key to reinforcing the emotional impact of the film was Levy's directing of the actors, specifically what he referred to in his notes for the film as a "special form of improvisation... exploiting the subconscious". Although the specifics of this technique are not known, Levy discussed aspects of his directorial techniques in an interview before the release of the film. Levy highlighted that none of the actors were provided scripts for the scenes, and that the directorial techniques that were being used led to some of the actors being in a seemingly hypnotic state during filming. Critic Stuart Heaney stated that this style of directing is an attempt to heighten the emotional reality of the film by removing the boundaries between the director and the actors, and also impacting the boundaries between the actors and the audience. Buchbinder also presented a similar view of the film, stating that "Levy's actors are surrogates for the audience" and further stating that "the film's method is to traumatise its audience, and then cauterise the wound with beauty".

Other aspects of the film's editing are also designed specifically to develop an emotional impact. The film features a number of extended single shot scenes, and long black spacing between some cuts, which were included by Levy and the film's cinematographer Keith Allans in a further attempt to control the emotional impact of the film. These extended shots and black spacing shots were inspired by the concept of "rhythm" in the editing of films, and Levy's interest in how the rhythm of shots and the space between them can directly influence an audience's emotional response to a film. As well as this other aspects such as the colours of individual scenes, and the film's non-linear storyline have been identified as working to highlight the emotional impact of the film.

More direct line between wanting to influence audience's emotions -> do this by breaking the barrier between the audience and the film -> improvisational directing to achieve this

Dawson critises the film for exactly this

This emotional discourse with the audience has its roots in Bertolt Bretch’s concept of alienation, which Levy discusses in an interview for the film (Levy, 1973).

·      Alienation -> techniques that break down the barrier between the film and the audience, blatantly and directly attempting to induce emotional effects. The aim is to have the separation between the audience and the actors broken down “Levy’s actors are surrogates for the audience” as put by Buchbinder(Buchbinder, 2009). This goal of alienation is central to much of the film’s construction including the non-linear story (May, 2015, Buchbinder, 2009), its use of colour and mise-en-scene (Street, 2020, May, 2015, Hall, 2018), and the non-scripted acting.(Gillett, 1965, Levy, 1973, May, 2015, Buchbinder, 2009)

·      Levy was also particularly interested in concepts of rhythm in film (May, 2015, Street, 2020), utilising long single shot scenes and black spacing between cuts to distinctly separate the emotional impacts of many of the film’s scenes (May, 2015). “because of rhythm and impact, and because it separates images in a special way.’ That is to say, black spacing ‘can separate emotional shocks, and stops the meaning of otherwise adjacent images from bleeding into one another.” –  Levy as quoted in May (2015). I still need to find the original reference for this quote.

Advertising and Consumerism

Much of the plot of Herostratus concerns advertising, Max is overtly manipulated and controlled by Farson's advertising agency and his attempts to subvert this control are all thwarted due to the immense power/control of the advertising agency. Street discusses the washing glove advertisement scene as a key scene which highlight's the film's criticisms of advertising and the ways in which people are manipulated by advertising agencies. The tight control of colour is a key aspect of this scene and the film as a whole, and is used to influence audience's emotions. Kitchen glove scene closely ties the treatment and sexualisation of women in advertisements with consumerism (could be read as a feminist critique of the portrayal of women in advertisements, especially the absurd scripts used in advertisements). Overall the scene is a representation of conventions of advertising at the time, which viewed through the outsider perspective of Max allows the audience to more clearly see the conventions, and understand Levy's critique.

Another scene where Max cuts up advertisments into strange and horrific combinations. Street argues that this is a metaphor for Max's desire to control the situation that he is in, that by "controlling" the advertisements to horrifying ends Max similarly whishes to control his suicide (which is now an advertisement due to Farson) and the impacts it has on people.

Throughout all of this, "Max is being used to articulate a reactionary message about annihilating undesirable elements of society," by the advertising agency, highlighting the reactionary politics and perspectives perpetuated through advertising.

Street presents that the striptease scene does have symbolic meaning, in that the slaughterhouse and the striptease are both explotations of flesh, and so too does Max become little more than meat or a product for the advertising agency to sell. Max longs for freedom from oppressive socio-political-historical forces (Farson - advertising agency, london commuters - explotation of workers)

Generally a critique of the glossy hegemony of advertising in the 1960s, and represent's Levy's "profound distrust" of the advertising industry.

ALL FROM STREET

·      Much of the cinematography within the film is based around hyper-representation of concepts in advertising (Street, 2020) The film contends that its characters are trapped within the system of advertisement and consumerism that they work in, and that by extension the audience is trapped by the world around them (Buchbinder, 2009, Street, 2020). The film’s central plot is that of Max and Clio trapped within the control of the advertising company that Max sells his suicide to, and their attempts to escape from that control as it perverts their intentions.

·      The film ends with Clio’s anguished cry “I want to get out,” and the disembodied voice of Levy replying “You can get out”. This scene is analysed in (Street, 2020, Buchbinder, 2009, Hall, 2018, May, 2015) all discussing exactly what Clio is trapped in and why it is Levy that replies. Theses sources all discuss different interpretations of what it is that Clio is trapped in, but they all accept that Clio as a surrogate for the audience is trapped by the structures of the environment and society represented by Levy’s disembodied voice (Street, 2020, Buchbinder, 2009, Hall, 2018, May, 2015).

·      Street (2020) provides the most direct analysis of the film’s relationship with advertising and consumerism, and in particular looks at the aesthetics of contemporary advertising and how Herostratus appropriates and critiques them. Of particular note are the animated sequences which take familiar images of newspaper advertisements and recontextualise them, and the scene of Helen Mirren as an unnamed actress performing in an advertisement for kitchen gloves. These scenes also look directly at the role of women within advertisements of the time and the commodification of sexualisation (Street, 2020).

The Urbanisation of London

The film is entirely shot on scene in London, and distinctly captures the aesthetic qualities of the city while also not directly locating itself in London. Max’s relationship with the city and its housing is transient, renting within the dilapidated remains of a house that is described in the film as having been a mansion in the past. The other people that rent alongside Max further represent portions of the working class in an increasingly urbanised society. Further, Max, those that rent alongside him have been interpreted as a representation of many of the concepts that the Greater London Council was working against as it attempted to push for ‘slum clearance’ and ‘urban renewal’ as the population of the city drastically changed throughout the 60s.

Locations within the film are often repeated and re-used with different weather or environmental conditions, designed to provide 'reverberation for the psychological context of the scene.' - Street

Release

The film was initially released at a screening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1968, and was then screened at a number of festivals across Europe through the rest of the year. Apart from showings in minor independent cinemas throughout Europe the film had no widespread release until 2009 when it was released on DVD by the British Film Institute’s Flipside strand, alongside a number of Levy’s other smaller films.

Reception

The initial screening of the film was well received by the limited audience at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, however since the film did not have a widespread showing in commercial cinemas reviews from the initial release are mostly limited to those of film critics. In a review for the The Monthly Film Bulletin, Jan Dawson describes Herostratus as a "passionate, exhausting, and disturbing film", and specifically criticises the film's emotional impact as being "more often the result of physical assault than artistic subtlety" although she does praise the film's cinematography.