Basil Wright, who died recently at the age of 80, was one of the Young Turks of the British documentary movement of the 1930s, whose leader, John Grierson, called him “the best cutter in the business”. His Song of Ceylon is one of the enduring classics and a monument to the best of British documentary; but it is only one in a whole corpus of work as director and producer. He was also a distinguished critic and a brilliant teacher.
Basil Charles Wright was born on June 12th, 1907. He was educated at Sherborne and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where he read Classics and economics.
He went into films after coming down from Cambridge, becoming Grierson’s assistant in the formation of the Empire Marketing Board’s film unit, which later developed into the GPO Film Unit.
In its day under the aegis of the Empire Marketing Board, Wright soon found himself directing a series of documentaries such as Windmill in Barbados, Cargos from Jamaica, and Liner Cruising South – all inspired basically by aspects of the board’s work but transcending the immediate propaganda purpose by making a personal and poetic statement of response to exotic locations.
The climax of the series came in 1934 with the highly acclaimed Song of Ceylon. It was constructed on musical lines, a poetic evocation of Ceylon and its people working in the fields, worshipping at their shrines, mingling the past with the present in a traditional way of life which contrasted violently with the roar of big business and the development of industry which are presented in the film’s central section.
It was, certainly a romantic view, but the documentary movement had room for the poetic as well as the didactic, and Wright’s work, as well as evoking a ready response at home, did much to spread the fame of British documentary abroad, winning, among other prizes, the Gold Medal and Prix du Gouvernement at the Brussels Festival in 1935.
The same year saw another famous documentary, Night Mail, which Wright directed with Harry Watt for the GPO Film Unit. This short film – beautifully photographed and sharply edited – boasted more famous names than many features: the verse-commentary was by Auden, the music by Britten and the sound tract was directed by Cavalcanti.
In 1937, Wright broadened his interests to include film production. He founded the Realistic Film Unit, which provided a production framework for many of his own films as well as those by younger directors.
In 1945, he was appointed producer-in-charge of the Crown Film Unit, and in 1946 he became adviser to the Director General of the Ministry of Information, so that it was not until 1950 that he was able to do anything new – Waters of Time, an exquisite study of the Thames with a verse commentary by Paul Dehn, commissioned for the Festival of Britain.
More of the best, however, was yet to come. In 1953, he and Paul Rotha were recruited by UNESCO to film World Without End – an attempt to show how men may help others while also helping themselves. It was a physically complex collaboration: Wright went to Siam while Rotha went to Mexico, and although they had agreed beforehand on the main theme, each decided for himself how best to illustrate it. World Without End was a tour de force, a lucid exposition of UNESCO’s work in backward communities with many moments of outstanding visual beauty.
Another film of this period brought Wright back home from foreign fields for something quintessentially English – The Stained Glass at Fairford, a lovely exploration of the mediaeval glass in a village church, which, incidentally, gave his first opportunity to use colour on film.
Wright was, first and foremost, a poet of the film. His view of life was unabashedly romantic and personal, so that his films, apart from their own very considerable merits, formed a welcome oasis in the mass of the more didactic documentaries of the 1930s.
He spent his later years lecturing and teaching, particularly in the United States. He published, in 1949, The Use of the Film, and, more recently, in 1974, The Long View, a personal journey across the previous four decades of film-making.
Wright was a man on whom others could, and did, rely. He had integrity, a quiet disposition, and was the godfather to countless children. He himself never married.
The Times, 15 October 1987.
Basil Charles Wright (1907-1987)
Born on 12 June 1907 at Sutton, Surrey.
Attended Sherborne School (Harper House) September 1921-July 1926: Scholar, Classical Sixth, School Prefect, Head of Harper House, English Verse Prize (1925), Leweston Classics Prize (1926), Marson Greek Prize (1926), Longmuir English Prize (1926), Scholarship Medal (1926), editor of The Shirburnian (1925-26).
Scholar, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Mawson Scholar; 1st class Classical Tripos. Read Classics and Economics. Joint editor and contributor to Cambridge Poetry 1929 (London: Hogarth Press, 1929)
Worked from 1929 with John Grierson as his assistant in the formation of the Empire Marketing Board’s film unit which later developed into the General Post Office (G.P.O.) film unit (1933-37).
Co-founder of the Realist Film Unit (1937).
Executive producer at the Film Centre (1939-44).
Producer-in-charge of the Crown Film Unit at Pinewood Studios (1945-46)
Adviser for the film division of the Ministry of Information (1946-49/50) and associate producer on a large number of Ministry of Information productions.
Governor of the British Film Institute (1953).
Fellow of the British Film Academy (1955).
Taught at the University of Southern California (1962-68), the National Film and Television School in London (1971-73), Temple University in Philadelphia (1977) and Houston University (1978).
President of the International Association of Documentary Filmmakers.
Film critic for The Spectator and a regular contributor to Sight and Sound.
Council of Europe Gold Medal.
Gold Cross of Royal Order of King George I of Greece.
Basil Wright Film Award awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Major films: Song of Ceylon (1934), Night Mail (1936), Children at School (1938), Instruments of the Orchestra (1946) featuring Benjamin Britten’s ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’, The Immortal Land (1959), A Place for Gold (1960).
Author: Joint editor with Christopher Saltmarshe and John Davenport and contributed three poems to Cambridge Poetry 1929 (London: Hogarth Press, 1929), The Use of the Film (London: The Bodley Head, 1948), The Long View. An International History of Cinema (London: Secker & Warburg, 1974), Michael Ayrton, Work Of The 1950s, with an introduction by Basil Wright (Bruton Gallery, 1974). A.C. Marshall, The Innocent Eye. The Life of Robert J. Flaherty (London: W.H. Allen, 1963) is based on research by Paul Rotha and Basil Wright.
Died on 14 October 1987 at Little Adam Farm, Freith, Buckinghamshire.
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