Re-creating the Gaze: Peter Whitehead's Cinema and the Films of Others

Back to the Sixties

It was in the Sixties that the twentieth century faced up to itself, casting off the guardianship and moral blackmail of the preceding century and cultivating, with arrogance and bravado, the seeds of negativity, monstrosity and indecency which it had borne for so long—embarrassedly, almost guiltily—between the wars. It was in the Sixties that the twentieth century decreed, without the slightest regret, that the language of simplicity, innocence, purity and loyalty was to be excluded from life, while the understanding and knowledge of evil, perversity, pretense and trickery had made us all protagonists.

Cesare Garboli

Perhaps what Garboli meant is that in the sixties, through the development of media in general and cinema in particular,, we learned to read the world in all its complexity and truth, to decode reality in its endless game of fiction and appearances, to establish a credible dialogue between mise-en-scène and society. It is no coincidence that this all took place amid a powerful and unprecedented cultural and social clash, which brought to light a series of patterns, behaviors, and knowledge until then considered to be neither feasible nor accessible at mass level: generational disobedience, a new way to describe and encourage "the coming of the new," invisible minorities finally visible, a multicultural horizon suddenly expanded to include Eastern and African practices, a visionary and mobilizing new brand of rock and roll (which would find its dangerous synthesis in the "rock movie"), the endless rounds of drugs and a new sense of identity, as well as new fears that were growing in the looming shadow of nuclear war, and of a consumerism colonizing the burgeoning suburbs.

It is in these tempestuous and unpredictable times that we encounter the figure and films of Peter Whitehead, whose original contribution—a unique interpretation of the cinematic image, and hence of filmmaking—is little known. Here, I analyze specifically: the path he followed; the films that influenced him and led him to make such radical choices along the way; the critical reflection and professional experiences that drew him in deeper and deeper, until the confrontation and final defeat of The Fall; and his 1969 film about America and the "movement," which so destroyed him, physically and morally (not to mention economically), that he decided to leave filmmaking.

Whitehead's curious and in many ways exemplary story begins with his childhood in Liverpool: his father (a plumber, like Joe Cocker's) returned from the war a broken man, only to die a few years later. It is a tale that leads back to other stories and quotes, to other more or less mythical people, starting with John Lennon, also from Liverpool, also fatherless, also in love with music and cinema, and also increasingly sympathetic to the movement and youth of the sixties. But I'm thinking, too, of Roger Waters, leader and creative mind of Pink Floyd (after Sid Barrett's exit), who wasn't from Liverpool but had an identical path: an absent father, the art school in Cambridge, and a passion for experimental music. Except, having rejected science, theater, and art, Whitehead—as he has said himself—chose film partly by accident and partly to avoid death.

Carrie and William Wyler

Looking back on it all, I would say there were two very significant things that made me become a filmmaker, two quite different experiences. One was a film I saw when I was twelve or thirteen. My father had died. I was living with my mother in a council flat in Wandsworth, and went along to see a film at the local Granada, one evening, alone. It was a film called Carrie, based on a novel by Theodore Dreiser, starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier. It's about a young girl from the country who comes up to the city, wants to be an actress, meets this distinguished gentleman, and basically destroys him and becomes a successful actress. It totally and absolutely demolished me. I wept thinking about that film, for months and months. It did...