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Lindsay Anderson - in his own words
Introduction to Every Day Except Christmas, from Free Cinema 3 programme, May 1957 (LA 1/2/5/7).
When you are making a film like this - or rather while you are editing it, waiting for a reel to be joined, or reprints to come in from the lab - it is easy to talk about what you are trying to do. But when you have finished, it is difficult. The film speaks for itself, you feel; and if it does not, you have failed, and statements of intention are merely pretentious.
But perhaps I should say what I was not trying to do. I was not trying to make an information film, or an instructional film. And I was not trying to make a picturesque film. When John Grierson first defined the word "documentary", he called it "the creative interpretation of actuality". In other words the only vital difference between making a documentary and making a fiction film is that in documentary you are using "actual" material, not invented situations and actors playing parts. But this actual material still has to be interpreted, worked on creatively, or we are left with nothing but publicity. And if we are to interpret, we must have an attitude, we must have beliefs and values. It is in the light of my belief in human values that I have endeavoured to make this film about Covent Garden market. I hope it makes my commitment plain.
I have been reproached on the one hand for not giving more "information" about the people in the film; and on the other for not making a more explicit social comment. I have nothing against information films, and no doubt there are some very interesting ones to be made about Covent Garden (statistics, dates, weights, wages, etc.).
But this is not the kind of information I wanted to give about these people - and about people in general.
Similarly with social comment. I feel that at the moment in this country it is more important for a progressive artist to make a positive affirmation than an aggressive criticism. (The criticism will be implicit in the affirmation anyway, if it is a genuine one.) In aggressive criticism there is too often a sense of inferiority. The Left in Britain suffers too much from such complexes of opposition. I want to make people - ordinary people, not just Top People - feel their dignity and their importance, so that they can act from these principles. Only on such principles can confident and healthy action be based.
I am extremely grateful to the Ford Motor Company, through whose remarkable and liberal policy of sponsorship I was able to make this film without restriction; and particularly I wish to thank Karel Reisz and Robert Adams for their encouragement and their continuously indulgent support. Equally I would like to thank Leon Clore, of Graphic Films, through whose generosity Every Day Except Christmas was able to end up as something considerably more ambitious than was at first envisaged.
Abandoned by the community, at the mercy of publicists and government departments, British Documentary can only exist through the enterprise and sense of responsibility of people like these.
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Finally: I have used the first person a lot in this note. But none knows better than I that this film owes its life, and whatever merit it may possess, equally to the devoted work of my collaborators - most particularly to Walter Lassally, John Fletcher and Daniel Paris. For their complete understanding of the spirit of the venture, for their unfailing support, and for the splendid quality of their contributions, I am deeply grateful.
Lindsay Anderson.
© University of Stirling 2004
