- Rudolph Cartier
Infobox Person
name = Rudolph Cartier
image_size = 300px
caption = Rudolph Cartier in 1990, speaking about his career toBBC Two 's "The Late Show".
birth_date = birth date|df=yes|1904|4|17
birth_place =Vienna ,Austria-Hungary
death_date = death date and age|df=yes|1994|6|7|1904|4|17
death_place = London, United Kingdom
education = Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
occupation = television director
spouse =
parents =
children =Rudolph Cartier (born Rudolph Katscher;cite web|url=http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/cartierrudo/cartierrudo.htm|title=Cartier, Rudolph|first=Jason|last=Jacobs|publisher=
Museum of Broadcast Communications |accessdate=2007-02-23] 17 April 1904 – 7 June 1994) was anAustria ntelevision director who worked predominantly inBritish television , exclusively for theBBC . He is best known for his 1950s collaborations withscreenwriter Nigel Kneale , most notably the "Quatermass" serials and their 1954 adaptation ofGeorge Orwell 's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four ".After studying architecture and then drama, Cartier's initial career was as a screenwriter and then film director in
Berlin , working for UFA Studios. After a brief spell in the United States he moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and began working forBBC Television in 1952. He went on to produce and direct over 120 productions in the next 24 years, ending his television career with the play "Loyalties" in 1976.Active in both
dramatic programming andopera , Cartier won the equivalent of a BAFTA in 1957 for his work in the former, and one of his operatic productions was given an award at the 1962Salzburg Festival . TheBritish Film Institute 's "Screenonline " website describes him as "a true pioneer of television,"cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/1181098/index.html|title=Cartier, Rudolph (1904–1994)|first=Oliver|last=Wake|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-23] while the critic Peter Black once wrote that: "Nobody was within a mile of Rudolph Cartier in the trick of making a picture on a TV screen seem as wide and as deep asCinemaScope ."cite news|title=Rudolph Cartier; Obituary|publisher=The Times |date=1994-06-10 |page=21]Early life and career
Born in
Vienna ,Austria-Hungary (now Austria), Cartier initially studied to become an architect, before changing career paths and enrolling to study drama at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. There he was taught by Max Reinhardt, who proved a major influence on Cartier. Reinhardt thought of a script as being similar to amusical score , which should be interpreted by a director in the same way as a musician interpreting a piece of music—an approach with which Cartier agreed.Cartier became involved in the
film industry in 1929, when he successfully submitted a script to a company based inBerlin , Germany. He then became a staff scriptwriter for UFA Studios, the primary German film company of the era, for which he worked oncrime film s and thrillers.Murray, p. 22.] While at UFA, he worked with noted writers, directors and producers includingEwald André Dupont andErich Pommer . In 1933 he became afilm director , overseeing the thriller "Unsichtbare Gegner" for producerSam Spiegel .The same year as "Unsichtbare Gegner" was released, the Nazis came to power in Germany, and the
Jew ish Cartier left the country. Several members of Cartier's family who had remained in Europe, including his mother, later died inThe Holocaust . Encouraged by a UFA colleague,Billy Wilder , to come toHollywood , Cartier changed his surname and moved to the United States. However, unlike Wilder, Cartier did not find success in America, and in 1935 he moved again, to the United Kingdom.cite news|title=The Man Who Put 1984 Over on Television|publisher=The Times |date=1958-12-01 |page=14]Little further is recorded of Cartier's career until after the Second World War, when he began writing
storyline s for several minor British films. He also worked as afilm producer , overseeing a 1951short film adaptation of theSherlock Holmes story "The Man with the Twisted Lip ".cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/1181098/credits.html|title=Cartier, Rudolph (1904–94) — Film & TV credits|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-24] Cartier returned for a time to the United States, where he studied production methods in the new medium oftelevision .In 1952, Michael Barry, with whom Cartier had worked on an aborted project in 1948, became the new Head of Drama at BBC Television and interviewed Cartier for a post as a staff television producer in the drama department,Jacobs, p. 131.] a job which also involved directing. At his interview, Cartier told Barry that he thought his department's output was "dreadful,"Jacobs, p. 132.] and that television drama needed "new scripts and a new approach." In a 1990 interview about his career, he told
BBC Two 's "The Late Show" that the BBC drama department had "needed me like water in the desert." Barry shared many of Cartier's views on the need to improve television drama, and he hired him for the producer's job.BBC television
Cartier's first BBC television production was a play entitled "
Arrow to the Heart ", transmitted on the evening of 20 July 1952. It was initially adapted by Cartier fromAlbrecht Goes ' novel "Unruhige Nacht", but Barry felt that the dialogue was "too Germanic" and assigned drama department staff scriptwriterNigel Kneale to edit the script.Murray, pp. 22–23.] "Arrow to the Heart" was the first of many collaborations between the pair, who enjoyed during the next few years a highly productive working relationship, despite profound creative disagreements on occasion.Pixley, p. 4.] Cartier and Kneale were an important presence in the British television drama of the era and were, according to television historian Lez Cooke, "responsible for introducing a completely new dimension to television drama in the early to mid-1950s."Cooke, p. 20.]Collaborations with Nigel Kneale
Cartier and Kneale's first major production was the six-part serial "
The Quatermass Experiment ", broadcast in the summer of 1953. Ascience-fiction story, it relates the sending of the first humans into space by Professor Bernard Quatermass and the consequences when an alien presence invades the crew's rocket during its flight and returns to Earth in the body of the one remaining crewmember, having absorbed the consciousnesses and shredded the bodies of the other two. A critical and popular success, "The Quatermass Experiment" has been described by theBritish Film Institute 's "Screenonline " website as "one of the most influential series of the 1950s."cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/471469/index.html|title=Quatermass Experiment, The (1953)|first=Gavin|last=Collinson|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-25] Cartier's contribution to the serial's success was highlighted in his 1994 obituary in "The Times " newspaper, which also called the serial "a landmark in British television drama as much for its visual imagination as for its ability to shock and disturb."The success of "The Quatermass Experiment" led to two sequels, "
Quatermass II " (1955) and "Quatermass and the Pit " (1958–59), both produced and directed by Cartier and written by Kneale. Both were successful and critically-acclaimed,cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/441212/index.html|title=Quatermass II (1955)|first=Mark|last=Duguid|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-25] cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/438573/index.html|title=Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59)|first=Mark|last=Dugoid|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-25] and Cartier's production work on them became increasingly ambitious. For "Quatermass II", he pre-filmed a significant amount of material on location, using 35 mm film, opening the drama out from a confined studio setting with the most ambitious location shooting yet attempted in British television.Pixley, p. 19.] Cartier, with his previous experience as a film director, particularly enjoyed working on these cinema-style filmed scenes.Pixley, p. 20.]The appeal of the "Quatermass" serials has been attributed by the
Museum of Broadcast Communications to the depiction of "A new range of gendered fears about Britain's postwar and post-colonial security. As a result, or perhaps simply because of Kneale and Cartier's effective combination of science fiction and poignant melodrama, audiences were captivated."cite web|url=http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/Q/htmlQ/quartermass/quartermass.htm|title=Quatermass|first=Robert|last=Dickinson|publisher=Museum of Broadcast Communications |accessdate=2007-06-01] The Screenonline website suggests that the visual impact of Cartier's interpretation of Kneale's scripts was a major factor in their success, which it attributes to their "originality, mass appeal and dynamism... "The Quatermass Experiment" became a landmark of science fiction and the cornerstone of the genre on British television."Aside from the "Quatermass" serials, Cartier and Kneale collaborated on several one-off dramas, including literary and theatrical adaptations of "
Wuthering Heights " (6 December 1953) and "The Moment of Truth" (10 March 1955), as well as Kneale's own "The Creature" (30 January 1955).Pixley, p. 16.] Of particular note was their collaboration on an adaptation ofGeorge Orwell 's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four ", originally broadcast on 12 December 1954, regarded as Cartier's most famous work. "The Times"'s review the day after its broadcast noted its "vividness... the two minutes' hate was, for instance, a wonderfully riotious orgy of vindictiveness."cite news|title=Nineteen Eighty-Four — Orwell's Novel on Television|publisher=The Times |date=1954-12-13 |page=11] The production also attracted considerable controversy. There were questions asked in the House of Commons concerning some of the graphic scenes of horror in the play,cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6105578.stm|title=Quatermass creator dies, aged 84|publisher=BBC News Online |date=2006-11-01 |accessdate=2007-02-25] and the BBC received several telephone calls threatening Cartier's life if the second live performance, scheduled for 16 December, went ahead.Cooke, p. 27.] The BBC took these threats seriously enough to assign him bodyguards. Cartier appeared live on television himself to defend the production in a studio debate, and eventually theBoard of Governors of the BBC voted that the second performance should go ahead as planned.Murray, p. 39.] The production had by this time received the backing of the Duke of Edinburgh, who commented during a speech to theRoyal Society of Arts that he and the Queen had watched and enjoyed the first performance.Murray, pp. 38–39.]"Nineteen Eighty-Four" had been a success, but it was also one of the most expensive television dramas ever made in the UK.cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/438460/index.html|title=Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954)|first=Mark|last=Dugoid|publisher=
Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-25] Cartier often spent large amounts of money on his productions. Earlier in 1954, Michael Barry had heavily criticised him for the money and resources he had expended in an adaptation of "Rebecca". In a memo written after that production's transmission, Barry admonished Cartier for his over-ambitious production:The performance of "Rebecca" seems to me to have taken us further into the danger area instead of showing any improvement. I am unable to defend at a time when departmental costs and scene loads are in an acute state the load imposed by "Rebecca" on Design and Supply and the expenditure upon extras and costumes... the vast area of the hall and the stairway never justified the great expenditure of effort required in building and one is left with a very clear impression of reaching a point where the department must be accused of not knowing what it is doing.Jacobs, p. 134.]
Later life and work
Despite Barry's concerns, Cartier continued to work successfully in television, and at the 1957 Guild of Television Producers and Directors Awards (later known as the
British Academy Television Awards , or BAFTAs) he was the winner of the Drama category. He made a brief return to film-making in 1958 when he directed the features "Broken Journey" and "Passionate Summer", but he saw himself primarily as a television director, and it remained his favourite medium.cite book|title=America's Best, Britain's Finest: A Survey of Mixed Movies|last=Reid|first=John Howard|publisher=Lulu Press, Inc.|year=2006|location=Morrisville|id=ISBN 141167877X|page=189] "The essence of television is that you can control the viewer's response to a much greater extent than other media permit," he told "The Times" in 1958.Cartier also directed several
operas for the BBC, a genre for which he had a great passion. He oversaw adaptations of established operas such as "Salome" (1957) and "Carmen " (1962) as well as original productions written especially for television. "Tobias and the Angel", written for the BBC by Sir Arthur Bliss andChristopher Hassall and produced by Cartier in 1960, won the Merit Award in the Salzburg Opera Prize at the 1962Salzburg Festival .cite news|title=Salzburg Award for B.B.C. TV Opera|publisher=The Times |date=1962-08-27 |page=12]Cartier continued to direct television dramas during the 1960s, although after Barry stepped down as Head of Drama in 1961, he lost much of his creative independence. Barry's successor,
Sydney Newman , abolished the BBC's traditional producer-director role and split the responsibilities into separate posts, leaving directors such as Cartier with less control over their productions. Cartier also found himself assigned to direct episodes of regular drama series, as such as "Maigret " and "Z-Cars ".Cartier was still able to direct several notable productions during the decade, including a number which explored the Nazi era in Germany from which he had escaped in 1933. These included the World War II dramas "Cross of Iron" (1961, dealing with the
court martial of aU-Boat captain in a Britishprisoner of war camp) and "The July Plot" (1964, about the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler), as well as "Firebrand" (1967, about the 1933Reichstag fire , an event Cartier had personally witnessed). He also began, for the first time, to direct pieces which dealt with the Holocaust, such as "Doctor Korczak and the Children" (1962, concerning theWarsaw Ghetto orphanage) and "TheJoel Brand Story" (1965, aboutAdolf Eichmann 's 1944 offer to the Allies of the lives of 1 million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks). Other notable 1960s productions included adaptations of "Anna Karenina " (1961, starringSean Connery andClaire Bloom ) and "Wuthering Heights" (1962, a new version of Kneale's 1953 script, starring Bloom andKeith Michell ).cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1203222/index.html|title=Wuthering Heights (1962)|first=Oliver|last=Wake|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-25] "Lee Oswald — Assassin" (1966) was a drama-documentary telling the story ofLee Harvey Oswald , based on theWarren Commission 's findings, while "Conversation at Night" (1969) saw the first television acting appearance ofAlec Guinness .Cartier's career continued into the 1970s. In 1974, he directed episodes of "
Fall of Eagles "; and his final credit came with the play "Loyalties", screened in 1976. By this time, he had worked on over 120 productions for the BBC. Subsequently, he worked for a time for the BBC's "purchased drama" department, advising on which plays and series might be bought-in from European broadcasters. Throughout his career, Cartier refused to work forcommercial television : "I hate the idea of my creative work being constantly interrupted for commercial reasons, " he once commented. "I am an artist, not a salesman."Cartier was married three times, lastly to Margaret Pepper from 1949 until his death. He had one daughter with Pepper, and another from a previous marriage. Cartier died on 7 June 1994, at the age of 90; his death was overshadowed in the media by that of
Dennis Potter , another important figure in the history of British television drama, who died on the same day.Murray, p. 175.]Legacy
Nearly all of Cartier's 1950s television productions were performed live, and the majority of them were not recorded — he once described them as being "gone with the speed of light." Several of those which do survive have been highly regarded by later reviewers. In 2000, the
British Film Institute (BFI) compiled a list of the100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century. Voted on by a group of industry professionals, the list featured both "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Quatermass and the Pit".cite web|url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100/list/list.php|title=The BFI TV 100: 1-100|publisher=British Film Institute |date=2000|accessdate=2007-02-25] In the accompanying analysis of each entry to the list, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was described as "An early example of the power of television drama... Even now, the torture sequences retain their power to shock and disturb."cite web|url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100/list/prog.php?id=73|title=73: Nineteen Eighty-Four|first=Mark|last=Duguid|publisher=British Film Institute |date=2000|accessdate=2007-02-25]Nigel Kneale, scriptwriter of both of the Cartier dramas acclaimed by the BFI, felt that the productions would not have been as successful as they were had they been handled by any other director. "I don't think any of the things I wrote then would have come to anything much in other hands. In his they worked."cite video|people=
Nigel Kneale |year=2005|title=Cartier & Kneale in Conversation|format=Documentary using archive interview material. Extra feature on "The Quatermass Collection" set|accessdate=2007-02-25|medium=DVD |publisher=BBC Worldwide ] Television historian Jason Jacobs, a lecturer in film andtelevision studies at theUniversity of Warwick , wrote in 2000 that Kneale and Cartier together created an entirely new, more expansive vision for British television drama in the 1950s."It was the arrival of Nigel Kneale... and Rudolph Cartier... that challenged the intimate drama directly. Cartier is rightly recognised as a major influence on the visual development of British television drama... Cartier and Kneale had the ambition for their productions to have an impact on a mass audience, and the scope of their attention was not confined to the 'cosy' aesthetics of intimacy. Cartier uses the
close-up both to reveal emotions and as a shock device: a more threatening — and perhaps exhilarating — method than was used before. 'Intimacy' is reformulated by Cartier in terms of his power and control over the viewer — no longer a part of the family, but isolated in his home."Jacobs, pp. 130–131 and p. 137.]Cartier's pioneering use of an increased number of pre-filmed sequences to open out the studio-bound, live television drama productions of the 1950s is also praised by Lez Cooke. "While film inserts were being used in television drama from the early 1950s, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" represented the most extensive use of them in a TV play up to that time, and signalled Cartier's determination to extend the boundaries of TV drama."Cooke, p. 25.] Similarly, his "Times" obituary stated that: "At a time when studio productions were usually as static as the conventional theatre, he was widely respected for a creative contribution to British television drama which gave it a new dimension."
In addition to his 1950s productions, several of Cartier's later works have also been regarded as influential. His 1962 production of "Wuthering Heights" was praised by Dennis Potter, then a television critic, who wrote in the "
Daily Herald " newspaper that the production "was like a thunderstorm on the flat, dreary plains of the week's television... The howl of the wind against the windows, the muted pain of Claire Bloom as the wretched Cathy, and the hunted misery of Keith Mitchell as Heathcliff, made this a more than adequate offering of a great work." While "Screenonline" states that "Lee Oswald — Assassin" (1966) "could be argued [to be] of historical interest only," due to its basis in the flawedWarren Commission report,cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1181129/index.html|title=Lee Oswald — Assassin (1966)|first=Oliver|last=Wake|publisher=Screenonline |accessdate=2007-02-25] "The Times" praised it as being "possibly the first drama-documentary."Not all of Cartier's work was so well regarded; in particular, his cinematic efforts have not achieved the level of praise of his television work. In the book "America's Best, Britain's Finest: A Survey of Mixed Movies", critic John Howard Reid says of Cartier's 1958 film "Broken Journey": "It's hard to believe that... anyone could make such a dull movie. Yet this is precisely what director Rudolph Cartier has done. I've never heard of Mr Cartier before or since but presumably he made this brief foray into films from that synthetic world of ugly close-ups—TV."
Speaking to "The Times" in 1958, Cartier explained that television was still developing as a medium, and that part of his work was to help create the next generation of those who would produce television drama. "The BBC is producing producers as well as plays. They are feeling their way towards what television drama will one day be, and we are trying to create a generation of writers who study the medium." His 1994 obituary in the same newspaper judged that he had been successful in creating a lasting influence on later producers, describing his 1962 production of the opera "Carmen" as "an example and inspiration to a younger generation of television producers."
In 1990, the
BBC Two arts magazine programme "The Late Show" produced an edition which featured a retrospective of Cartier's work, including a new interview with the director discussing his career.Pixley, p. 40.] This feature was repeated on BBC Two under the title "Rudolph Cartier: A Television Pioneer" on 1 July 1994, followed by a tribute screening of the survivingtelerecording copy of the second performance of "Nineteen Eighty-Four".Cooke, p. 199.]Footnotes
References
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*External links
*imdb name|id=0142056|name=Rudolph Katscher (German career)
*imdb name|id=0142057|name=Rudolph Cartier (English career)
* [http://www.quatermass.org.uk Quatermass.org.uk - Nigel Kneale & Quatermass Appreciation Site]Persondata
NAME=Cartier, Rudolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Katscher, Rudolph
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Television director
DATE OF BIRTH=17 April 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH=Vienna ,Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH=7 June 1994
PLACE OF DEATH=London , England
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