With the forthcoming release of Shadows in the Sun, David Rocksavage has taken time out from his alternate life as David George Philip Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, to discuss his new film and his experiences of the filmmaking process.

MV: The film is very different from the kind of films made in Britain at the moment, is it hard to get these films made?

DR: Yes, it is difficult. You need one or two people who really like the story or the idea, and having Jean [Simmons] was very helpful. But it was mostly private investors who were prepared to come in. It's also difficult to get a film made when it's not an adaptation of a famous book or a biography. Getting your audience for new stories is not an obvious process. You just have to hope that people will be interested. This sort if film is much more common in France!

MV: The film had a very intimate, personal feel to it: how much of it was taken from your own experiences?

DR: Quite a lot, not so much the story but the atmosphere and the situation. I used to go to visit my grandmother on the coast all my child. So I had these happy memories and a nostalgia for that which I really wanted to get into the film. And Hannah is a little bit of my grandmother but also other people I met later on as a teenager. There was an amazing lady I knew in Tangiers who had a poetry programme just after the war, and you'd go into this tiny room piled with books and she just loved young people visiting and was interested in everything that was going on. So it almost more her as an inspiration than my grandmother. That gave me the idea for the rapport you can have between big generation gaps, it can be a very strong relationship that is often misunderstood by the families.

MV: There was also a complex web of interactions between the characters, was that a hard thing t prepare for?

DR: Certainly in the cottage there were a lot of scenes which we wanted but had to cut for one reason or another, and you end up with a more fast-paced and sometimes abrupt tale. So, as you say, you have to convey a lot in perhaps a line or two, or even just a word or a look. But as actors grow into a role the audience can pick up on that immediately.

MV: How did you go about directing the actors in this situation?

DR: I very much left it to them when they were inhabiting their characters. I would occasionally, when they didn't quite get the mood or the interpretation of what's being said, I'd just take it again... I don't know really. Maybe interjecting to suggest something should be more strong, or less good. But they were all so good, such naturals, and immediately got the points. Of course it's difficult because sometimes you think it's worked and you see it back and it hasn't! That's particularly difficult with something like this when you've got just four weeks, twenty-four days, you can't often go back and re-do scenes.

MV: Although as we talk about this I remember that you had a very experienced cast member in Jean Simmons who must have been a big help.

DR: She was, and she was so simple in some ways. She'd done all the work, she knew her lines, she knew her part, the atmosphere, the characters. So that was already there, as it were. And she gave me reassurance, and that sort of emanates. James Wilby sparked off very well, which is very interesting.

MV: I always wonder when someone like Jean Simmons, at the end of a glittering career, plays someone at the end of their lives if they feel sad or depressed. It must make them ponder things themselves.

DR: I think it did put her in a position of thinking about it, of course. Especially as a director you tend to step back and let someone play out those scenes that are so personal because you are reaching into your own thoughts. She's so unassuming though, and she said she hadn't acted for some time so she felt it took her a little time to get into it and worried she wouldn't enjoy it I think. But then it all came flooding back and she really did enjoy it, and kept saying that it made her want to do more again. I hope she does!

MV: It's good to hear she enjoyed it because it's easy to see these films and think that these roles must make these people feel morbid.

DR: Mind you I think actors have a thing where they have had to go into these feelings so many times that they can come out of it again, and she did. She went into it and came out again and was making jokes! I think she got frustrated sometimes though because we didn't have enough time really to take things again.

MV: It was shot in a very traditional style rather than the more gritty hand-held style, what made you decide on this?

DR: MY DP wasn't happy in this situation with much hand-held, I was in two minds I must say and thought we would do a bit more than we did, more because of the timing issue than anything else. Probably if we had the time again I would do more! But on the other hand, for the landscapes and to get that sort of nostalgic atmosphere a slow-moving camera without much movement is probably the atmosphere we wanted. I hope it's too traditional though, and the cutting is more modern.

MV: It is certainly cut to move quicker than I expected, with fewer long shots of the scenery.

DR: We didn't want to sentimentalise all of it and do beauty for beauty's sake. So we did cut out of things a little quickly. The colours, though, have come out well on the Super-16.

MV: The weather must have dictated the colours a lot though.

DR: I thought we'd get warmth and people could swim and so on, but it was so cold! It was strange, bizarre, weather. But on the other hand it means you can get very interesting skies.

MV: But the characters were much more important in this film, and in particular the role of mysterious stranger Joe in bringing the family together.

DR: There's a little bit of Terence Stamp's character in Pasolini's Theorum [Teorema] in Joe, although he says almost nothing I think.

MV: Do you think it sometimes takes this fresh perspective to make people understand one another?

DR: Yes. Of course the little boy's point of view was very much where I had envisaged it from because when you meet older people at that age you engage in a kind of hero worship. At least that's what I remember, and that remains an important part of it. A child needing to find someone who they can talk to.

MV: It's interesting you say that because the film is interesting because it covers the impact of events on each character quite evenly.

DR: Well it started as that [the boy's POV] at first, and then when Margaret [Glover] came in she was interested to develop more of the other characters and their relationships rather than seeing everything through the little boy's eyes. So the script developed and ended up quite different.

MV: Do you think there's an argument that filmmakers play the role of that fresh perspective for people today?

DR: Yes, I think they always have. Escapism is one way of putting it, but it's lifting our spirit, maybe discovery. Like all the arts it's a catalyst and can make you think, the small independent films which I prefer tend to be like that, films that force you to make an effort but are immensely rewarding. But I think now a lot of people aren't willing to make that effort.

MV: You're not a filmmaker all of the time, does that make the process all the more special?

DR: It's very special, I'm always amazed how many films are made: knowing how difficult they are to get made! I feel it is a passion and that I should be doing more. I'm an amateur, in the good sense of the word I hope though.

 

 

Shadows In The Sun is out in the UK on Friday 5th June, you can read our review HERE.

 

 

Interview by Michael Edwards