"Winstanley"; or, Kevin Brownlow Camps Out on St. George's Hill

Boxes within boxes. Small wonder that Stuart Klawans has hailed Winstanley as "among the rigorously modernist films of the seventies," where all events are visual texts, "offered in place of a reality that could not be directly apprehended."17

Meanwhile, as a result of the commercial failure of Winstanley and It Happened Here, Brownlow and Mollo withdrew from commercial filmmaking. Bowing to the exigencies of the situation, to this day they have made no more independent theatrical features. "I don't think we'll resurrect the British film industry by making films this way," Brownlow says wryly, "although it's surprising how many remarkable independent films are being made in this fashion. . . . But the experience is extraordinary. The people one works with are extraordinary."18

As a footnote to all this, it is worth noting that the story of Gerrard Winstanley and his Diggers will not die. In a recent interview, Brownlow sardonically noted a recent "re-creation" of the Diggers' occupation of St. George's Hill:

Did you realize that the year 1999 marks the 350th anniversary of the Diggers? St. George's Hill was peacefully occupied again so a memorial stone to Winstanley could be set up. A summons for trespass was issued-in the name of Gerrard Winstanley, believe it or notand the Diggers appeared in the High Court. It was all very civilized, until too many Diggers tried to speak, and the magistrate began intoning lines which could have come from our film. Naturally, they were given an eviction order. I just wonder what happened to the memorial. St. George's Hill is now the richest part of the stockbroker belt, you know. It's where all the pop singers live. It'll be interesting to see how they'll react. The new Parson Platt might turn out to be George Harrison or Elton John!19

In the final analysis Winstanley confirms the indeterminate, mysterious nature of the past. It reminds us that all history is a negotiation between familiarity and strangeness, between past and present, between objective record and personal autobiography-between what Thomas Babington Macaulay characterized as the "map" of factual data and the "painted landscape" of personal memory and public speculation. Not for Macaulay, notes historian Simon Schama, was there the slightest anxiety that the record of the past might be distorted in the service of the present. For Macaulay the fate of history is "conditional on its self-appointed masters being prepared to reacquaint themselves with the imaginative skills of the storyteller."20

Notes

1 See the following for information regarding the production and reception of Winstanley: John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, "Kevin Brownlow and Winstanley" Films in Review 30:7 (Sept. 1979): 432-33; Lenny Rubenstein, "Winstanley and the Historical Film," Cineaste X:4 (Fall 1980): 22-25; "Gilbert Adair from London," Film Comment 16:3 (May-June 1980): 6-7.

2 See the following for information regarding the production and reception of It Happened Here: Kevin Brownlow, How It Happened Here (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968); David Robinson,"It Happened Here," Sight and Sound 34:1 (Winter 1964-1965): 39; Dean Brian, "Film Critics Protest Over Cuts in Nazi Scene," Daily Mail 16 Feb. 1966; Lenny Rubenstein, "It Happened Here: A Second Look," Film Comment 1:4 (1975): 36; Sophie Walker, "British 'Nazi' Film To be Shown Uncut After 30-Year Ban," The Independent (29 Sept. 1996): 2; Stuart Klawans, "It Happened Here," The Nation 268:3 (25 Jan. 1999): 43.