Jeremy Isaacs's Look Me In The Eye is a fascinating memoir looking back over almost half a century in television. The early chapters bring a bygone age to life. The final chapters debate central issues facing television today. However, the best chapter in the book is on The World at War, an eloquent tribute to the role of collaboration in television. Television critics usually go on about writers, actors and, occasionally, producer-directors. Everyone else remains invisible. Isaacs brings to life the different contributions of the unsung heroes.
He begins with the historical adviser, Noble Frankland, then director of the Imperial War Museum. Frankland had had problems with the earlier BBC series, The Great War. He "was driven to despair" by not being given enough time to view and comment on each episode as it was made and was apparently "outraged" by the BBC's cavalier use of archive film, reusing sequences from one battle to illustrate a different one. Frankland was the only consultant on The World At War. Seeing the tiny credits often given to historical consultants, it is hard to imagine their crucial role. They not only keep production teams on the straight and narrow, but keep them up to date with the latest research. Laurence Rees would be the first to acknowledge the importance of his relationship with Ian Kershaw for his two major series on the Nazis.
Every production team also has its own editorial conscience, the person who keeps the team "honest." On The World at War this was Jerome Kuehl, the associate producer. Kuehl's role was "to check facts, keep an eye open for script errors, and spot, challenge and correct misuse of film." For example, should you employ footage of one thing to illustrate something else, even if only a military expert would know the difference? Does it really matter if you use footage of a German tank from 1944 when someone is speaking of a Panzer Mk IV from the battle of Demyansk in 1942?
Isaacs pays tribute to the way one researcher on The World at War, Susan McConachy, tracked down former members of the SS and persuaded them to speak on record. This process can take weeks, even months. Often it is the researcher who does the interviews. Here again problems arise. When interviewing a Nazi or a collaborator about a particular atrocity, should the interviewer remain impassive or allow their outrage to come through (as happened several times in Laurence Rees's Auschwitz)?
Film researchers must show the same dogged perseverance when dealing with obdurate archive officials. The World at War's main film researchers were John Rowe and Raye Farr. They put in long hours, trying to wear down the officials. Isaacs quotes Farr: "Not until you have made a nuisance of yourself do the staff throw up their hands in exasperation and say, 'See for yourself'… Or, better yet, they realise you're still not going and say, '…you may as well look at this—we don't know what's in these cans because we've never had time to go through them.'" Often, instead of reusing newsreel footage, they would go back to the original negative, to find material which the wartime censors hadn't cut out.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the chapter is the section on the supervisory film editor, Alan Afriat. Afriat describes how differently individual producers work. "Some producers will supply a very detailed pre-production script with what could almost be a final commentary, while at the other extreme the editor may just get a list of sequence headings with a bundle of marked-up transcripts of interviews to be slotted in somehow." Some producers haunt the cutting room, others leave the editor to it for weeks, knowing that a fresh pair of eyes will see a new shape. Then comes "the truly brutal business" of taking the loose rough cut and bringing it down to the required running length. This isn't just about timekeeping. It involves crucial choices: which tells the story better, commentary or image? Does silence speak louder than music over a pile of bodies or a destroyed city? How much silence is right?
Here Isaacs pays tribute to the composer (Carl Davis), the narrator (Laurence Olivier), the writers and, finally, the dubbing mixer, Freddie Slade, who got the audio balance right, so that you can hear every word of the commentary, every note of music and watch without the images being overwhelmed by either. He quotes the commentary for the first programme, written by Neal Ascherson. Thirty years on it still makes the hair on your neck stand on end.
Critics often praise directors without realising that the people who have really made the film are the cameraman and the editor—or the executive producer. The great programme editors—Isaacs himself, Laurence Rees at Timewatch, Alan Yentob and Anthony Wall at Arena—didn't just commission programmes or tinker with bits of commentary. They would take over the editing, shoot new material and re-cut until the programme was completely transformed. There is a great series to be made of cutting-room tales.
Isaacs's book is a wonderful evocation of a vanished world. It is also a deeply generous one, paying tribute to many unsung heroes and their crafts.
