As part of the Cambridge Film Festival’s strand celebrating the centenary of Dylan Thomas, a writer whom Philip Toynbee once called ‘the greatest living poet in the English language’, Andrew Sinclair was on hand to introduce two films he had directed: DYLAN ON DYLAN (2002) and UNDER MILK WOOD (1971).
In his introduction to the documentary DYLAN ON DYLAN, Sinclair emphasised how his film, unlike many contemporary documentaries which seem designed to glorify the presenter as much as the subject, puts Dylan well and truly centre stage. As much as possible it draws on Dylan’s own words, and uses contemporary archive footage, as well as reconstructions and interviews with those who knew him.
Included in the film is Dylan’s description of himself as having the ‘face of an excommunicated cherub’, and DYLAN ON DYLAN covers the usual aspects of the life of this angelic rogue: from the young poet of Cwmdonkin Drive, to the drunken man who at the end of his life was hailed as a genius. The film contains many interesting and revealing stories, especially in the interviews: for instance, the story of how a sober Thomas had a pleasant evening with an acquaintance, but immediately faked drunkenness when meeting friends. The image of the drunken Welsh bard had to be maintained! There is also some excellent archive footage and photographs, and a particular treat is the excerpt from a wartime documentary which Thomas scripted.
The sequences where encounters are reconstructed or the poetry is illustrated by staged scenes are less successful, often too literal and lacking subtlety. However, one sequence with an actor playing an older Dylan giving a speech to camera is brilliantly effective. The language of Dylan Thomas is most familiar to many through a handful of well known poems, such as Fern Hill, and also his play for voices, UNDER MILK WOOD. Finished in haste at the end of his life, and never revised as was intended, MILK WOOD is a meditative and comic look at the fictional Welsh fishing town of Llareggub.
‘It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black’
Sinclair’s film of the same name is an effective transfer onto the big screen of a play intended only to be heard. The long opening sequence, with the whole town asleep and dreaming, has some of the most beautifully lyrical prose in the English language, and is wonderful on the big screen. Sinclair makes an inspired decision when he depicts the play’s two narrators as strangers (Richard Burton and Ryan Davies) wandering unseen through the town like ghostly visitations, their dialogue spoken in voice-over as if we are hearing their thoughts. The combination of Richard Burton’s mesmerising voice, the night-time town, and those wonderful opening lines – ‘To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black’ – is irresistible.
Sinclair recounted in the post-screening Q&A how Dylan’s widow Caitlin had told him that the film is ‘exactly as Dylan would have made it’: praise indeed. However, it’s difficult to countenance Dylan being entirely happy with a few of Sinclair’s choices. The rather unnecessary episode with the two narrators seducing a woman in a shed (although based on a Thomas story) just feels sleazy now, and some of the more literal representations of the text are rather jarring lapses of judgement.
Yet there is plenty else to enjoy in this star-studded venture. Peter O’Toole is the most impressive, as the all-hearing Blind Captain Cat in his ‘seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best cabin of Schooner House’. There are a host of well-known British actors, including a young David Jason in his first film role. Talfryn Thomas gets Mr Pugh, the meek husband with murderous fantasies, just right, and Ann Beach is wonderful as the sensuous Polly Garter .
UNDER MILK WOOD is best a appreciated on the big screen, where Llareggub and its cast of curious characters can truly come to life and where you can fully immerse yourself in the beautiful, luscious language of Dylan Thomas.
httpvh://youtu.be/3fvcW5VJOAI