Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was an English filmmaker, theatre director, critic, and actor. He was considered a leading light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave, and a principal exponent of kitchen sink realism on both the stage and screen.
As a film director, he is best known for his "Mick Travis Trilogy" of films starring Malcolm McDowell, the first of which, if.... (1968), won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and earned Anderson a BAFTA nomination for Best Direction. He was also a prominent stage director, both at the Royal Court Theatre and at the West End. His father, Captain (later Major General) Alexander Vass Anderson, was a British Army officer who had come from Scotland. His mother Estelle Bell Gasson was born in Queenstown, South Africa, the daughter of a wool merchant. Lindsay was the second son. His parents separated in 1926, and Estelle returned to England with the two boys. In 1932 the couple tried to reconcile in Bangalore, and when Estelle returned to England she was pregnant with their third son, who was named Alexander Vass Anderson after his father.
Both Lindsay and his elder brother Murray Anderson (1919–2016) were educated at Saint Ronan's School in Worthing, West Sussex, and at Cheltenham College. It was at Cheltenham that Lindsay met his lifelong friend Gavin Lambert, who became a screenwriter and novelist, and later the director's biographer. Their colonel did not approve, he recalled a decade later, but took no disciplinary action against the junior officers.
Anderson returned to Oxford in 1946 but switched from classical studies to English; He and other leaders in the field believed that the British cinema must break away from its class-bound attitudes and that non-metropolitan Britain ought to be shown on the nation's screens. Anderson had already begun to make films himself, starting in 1948 with Meet the Pioneers, a documentary about a conveyor-belt factory.
Anderson was invited to join the British Film Institute's Board of Governors in 1969 with the aim of bolstering support for independent British directors, but left the role after a year.
Anderson developed an acquaintance from 1950 with John Ford. Anderson wrote what has come to be regarded as one of the standard books on that director, About John Ford (1981). Based on half-a-dozen meetings over more than two decades, and Anderson's lifetime study of the man's work, the book has been described as "One of the best books published by a film-maker on a film-maker".
Filmmaking
Along with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and others, he secured funding from a variety of sources (including Ford of Britain). Each of these founders made a series of short documentaries on a variety of subjects. One of Anderson's early short films, Thursday's Children (1954), concerning the education of deaf children, was made in collaboration with Guy Brenton, a friend from his Oxford days; it won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 1954.
These films, influenced by one of Anderson's heroes, the French filmmaker Jean Vigo, and made in the tradition of the British documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, foreshadowed much of the social realism of British dramatic cinema that emerged in the next decade. These included Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), and Anderson's own This Sporting Life (1963), produced by Reisz. Anderson's film drew some enthusiastic reviews but was not a commercial success, though stars Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts both received Oscar nominations. if.... received highly positive reviews and was a box-office success internationally. O Lucky Man! polarised critics and was only moderately successful commercially.
In 1986, Anderson served as a member of the jury at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, by invitation.
In 1992, as a close friend of the late actresses Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts, Anderson arranged a boat trip to scatter the women's ashes in the Thames River. Professional colleagues and friends were also on the boat and musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?". Anderson included this event in his autobiographical BBC film Is That All There Is?
Anderson, who had acted at Oxford, occasionally took film parts.
Theatre director
Anderson was also a significant British theatre director. He was long associated with London's Royal Court Theatre, where he was Co-Artistic Director from 1969, and Associate Artistic Director from 1972 until 1975.
Television
In 1978, Anderson directed The Old Crowd for LWT, from a script by Alan Bennett. Hyped before broadcast in the British press as a rare excursion by Anderson into TV work, it was then harshly reviewed. The experience soured Anderson on British television, though in 1989 he directed Glory! Glory!, a satirical miniseries for HBO about televangelism. He also presented a documentary about Free Cinema for Thames Television in 1986, Gavin Lambert, in his memoir Mainly About Lindsay Anderson, wrote about Anderson's homosexuality and repression of his orientation, drawing on his private diaries: This repression caused him intense grief by his later years, with writer David Storey stating, "Lindsay had a great battle with his homosexuality throughout his life. He just couldn't come to terms with it. This conflict was central to his life, and out of it came a terrible cynicism and an attitude that was more and more sour and embittered."
Anderson's friend and collaborator Alan Bennett wrote in a review of Lambert's book:
In November 2006, Malcolm McDowell talked to The Independent about Anderson's sexuality:
Death
Anderson died from a heart attack in Angoulême, France, on 30 August 1994, at the age of 71.
Legacy
Following the publication of his diaries and collected writings in 2004, there has been a revival of interest in Anderson scholarship, including several edited collections and monographs addressing his work from a variety of critical perspectives. Malcolm McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, Never Apologize.
Every year, the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) gives an acclaimed filmmaker the chance to screen his or her personal Top 10 favorite films. In 2007, Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari selected two of Anderson's short documentaries, O Dreamland and Every Day Except Christmas (1957), a record of a day in the old Covent Garden market, for his top 10 classics from the history of documentary.
The centenary of Anderson's birth in 2023 was marked by special events at the University of Stirling, where the Anderson papers are currently held.
Filmography
Filmmaking
Narrative films
{| class="wikitable"
!Year
!Title
!Director
!Writer
!Producer
!Notes
|-
| 1963
| This Sporting Life
|
|
|
|
|-
| 1967
| The White Bus
|
|
|
| Short
|-
| 1968
| if....
|
|
|
|
|-
| 1973
| O Lucky Man!
|
|
|
|
|-
| 1975
| In Celebration
|
|
|
|
|-
| 1982
| Britannia Hospital
|
|
|
|
|-
| 1987
| The Whales of August
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|
|
|
|-
| 1992
| Is That All There Is?
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|
|
| Mockumentary
|}
Television
{| class="wikitable"
!Year
!Title
!Notes
|-
| 1956–57
| The Adventures of Robin Hood
| 5 episodes
|-
| 1972
| Play for Today
| Episode: "Home"
|-
| 1979
| The Old Crowd
| Television film
|-
| 1980
| Look Back in Anger
|Television film; co-directed with David Hugh Jones
|-
| 1989
| Glory! Glory!
|Television film
|}
Documentary works
{| class="wikitable"
!Year
!Title
!Notes
|-
| 1948
| Meet the Pioneers
|
|-
| 1949
| Idlers That Work
|
|-
| rowspan="2" | 1952
| Trunk Conveyor
|
|-
| Three Installations
|
|-
| 1953
| O Dreamland
|
|-
| 1954
| Thursday's Children
|
|-
| rowspan="7" | 1955
| The Children Upstairs
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|-
| Henry
|
|-
| Green and Pleasant Land
|
|-
| Foot and Mouth
|
|-
| Energy First
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|-
| A Hundred Thousand Children
|
|-
| £20 a Ton
|
|-
| rowspan="2" | 1957
| Wakefield Express
|
|-
| Every Day Except Christmas
|
|-
| 1959
| March to Aldermaston
|
|-
| 1967
| The Singing Lesson
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |1986
|Free Cinema
|
|-
|If You Were There
|
|-
|1992
|John Ford
|Writer only
|}
Acting roles
Film
{| class="wikitable"
!Year
!Title
!Role
!Notes
|-
|1949
|Idlers That Work
| rowspan="3" |Narrator (voice)
| rowspan="4" |Short
|-
| rowspan="2" |1952
|Trunk Conveyor
|-
|Three Installations
|-
|1955
|The Pleasure Garden
|Michael-Angelico
|-
| 1968
| Inadmissible Evidence
| Barrister
|
|-
| 1973
| O Lucky Man!
| Film Director
| Uncredited
|-
| 1981
| Chariots of Fire
| Master of Caius
|
|-
| rowspan="2" | 1992
| Blame It on the Bellboy
| Mr. Marshall (voice)
|
|-
|Is That All There Is?
|Himself
|
|}
Television
{| class="wikitable"
!Year
!Title
!Role
!Notes
|-
|1963
|Der Schwur des Soldaten Pooley
|Narrator (voice)
|Television film, English-language version
|-
| rowspan="2" |1968
|Play of the Month
|Holz
|Episode: "The Parachute"
|-
|Omnibus
| rowspan="3" |Narrator (voice)
|Episode: "The Charm of Dynamite: Abel Gance"
|-
|1987
|Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow
|3 episodes
|-
|1989, 1993
|American Masters
|2 episodes
|-
| 1991
| Prisoner of Honor
| War Minister
| Television film
|}
Stage directing credits
All Royal Court, London, unless otherwise indicated:
- The Waiting of Lester Abbs (Kathleen Sully, 1957)
- The Long and the Short and the Tall (Willis Hall, 1959)
- Progress to the Park (Alun Owen, 1959)
- The Trial of Cob and Leach/Jazzetry (Christopher Logue, 1959)
- Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (John Arden, 1959)
- The Lily White Boys (Harry Cookson and Christopher Logue, 1960)
- Trials by Logue: Antigone/Cob and Leach (Christopher Logue, 1960)
- Diary of a Madman (Gogol adaptation, 1963)
- Box and Cox (John Maddison Morton, 1961)
- The Fire Raisers (Max Frisch, 1961)
- Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare, 1964)
- Andorra (Max Frisch, National Theatre at the Old Vic, 1964)
- The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Chichester Festival Theatre, 1966)
- Inadmissible Evidence (John Osborne, Teatr Współczesny, Warsaw, 1966)
- The Contractor (David Storey, 1969)
- Home (David Storey, also Morosco Theatre NY, 1970)
- The Changing Room (David Storey, 1971)
- The Farm (David Storey, 1973)
- Life Class (David Storey, 1974)
- In Celebration (David Storey 1974)
- What the Butler Saw (Joe Orton, 1975)
- The Seagull (Anton Chekhov, Lyric Theatre, 1975); in repertory with
- The Bed Before Yesterday (Ben Travers, Lyric Theatre, 1975)
- The Kingfisher (William Douglas Home, Lyric Theatre 1977, Biltmore NY, 1978)
- Alice's Boys (Felicity Brown and Jonathan Hayes, Savoy Theatre, 1978)
- Early Days (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1980)
- Hamlet (Theatre Royal, Stratford East, 1981)
- The Holly and the Ivy (Wynyard Browne, Roundabout New York, 1982)
- The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1983)
- The Playboy of the Western World (John Millington Synge, 1984)
- In Celebration revival (David Storey, Manhattan Theatre Club, NY, 1984)
- Holiday (Philip Barry, Old Vic, 1987)
- The March on Russia (David Storey, National Lyttelton Theatre, 1989)
- The Fishing Trip (Frank Grimes, Warehouse Theatre, 1991)
- Stages (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1992)
Awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Institution
!Year
!Category
!Work
!Result
!
|-
|British Academy Film Awards
|1969
|Best Direction
|If....
|
|
|-
| rowspan="4" |Cannes Film Festival
|1963
| rowspan="4" |Palme d'Or
|This Sporting Life
|
|