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MALCOLM MCLEAN
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ture directorial debut, The Scarlet
Tunic, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Napoleonic Wars-set story, The Melancholy Hussar.
McLean recalls: “I’d worked with Stuart on several things like Small Faces, which he was stunt co-ordinat- ing. He first asked John to do The Scarlet Tunic and when he couldn’t do it as he was off to do a film in the States, asked him if he could suggest someone else. John recommended me.”
Time Out pithily described the film thus: “Though it cost only £350,000, it has none of the self-conscious flashi- ness of a ‘calling card’ movie. Never balking at the melodramatic elements of Hardy’s vision, this tale of doomed love is told with clarity, passion and a keen eye for the beauty of Dorset...”
Behind this enthusiastic endorse- ment of a micro-budgeted period British film lay an altogether more complicated tale of a production which McLean diplomatically sums up simply as “turbulent” adding that he felt it “came out all right consider- ing I only had 100 feet of film left in the camera at the end. The actual cre- ative team managed to hold it all together. The crew were great, every- one mucked in.”
So Mclean was only too thrilled when, despite the tribulations of his first film, an older and probably wiser – this
time he was execu- tive producer too – St Paul asked him to work on his follow- up Devil’s Gate. “Stuart was
much more confi-
dent and assured
in himself and his
ideas. He has huge
energy and forced
the project for-
ward, often against
all the odds. I so
admire his energy
and fortitude. He’s really fought to get these films made. He’d been through the ringer on The Scarlet Tunic and wasn’t going to be manipulated this time round.”
Starring Laura Fraser – another old Small Faces alumnus – Luke Aikman, Callum Blue, Roger Ashton-Griffiths and Tom Bell, Devil’s Gate is set in a remote croft in the equally remote Shetlands to where cast and crew decamped courageously in the middle of last winter.
“We were in the top corner of the main island which really lent itself to this kind of story. I suppose I’d hoped to shoot something like The Claim [set in the snowy wastes of California’s Sierra Nevada] whose look I really like. So I was kind of hoping for clear skies
and snow storms. In fact, all we had was the rain, 15 knot winds and mud. The only day it snowed was on one of our days-off.
“A lot of the story is set in the croft and I gener- ally went for sim- plicity – big soft light outside then inside let it fall
off with perhaps a hint here and there of candlelight. Dark and moody is what I was after.
“I used the Fuji 250 Daylight and Tungsten all the way. I also took a bit of the F400 for a Bolex camera with which we had to film a big local Viking festival. The reason we shot so slow was that we were going the digital post-production route. The slower the stock you use for that, the better the blow up’s going to be.”
Despite the adverse weather con- ditions, McLean was clearly quite awed by the settings: “There’s a lot up there to be had, especially with these beautiful 300 foot cliffs going down into boiling seas.”
Devil’s Gate was, in fact, only the second ever feature to be shot up
there following Michael Powell’s famous The Edge Of The World filmed on Foula more than 65 years ago.
On their way home, McLean and St Paul found time to shoot some overhead scenes of Edinburgh for the film’s opening: “We couldn’t afford camera mounts so I just hung out of the door with a hand-held camera at sunset. You could call it guerrilla film-making.”
McLean, who hopes later this year to start work on a four one-hour docu- mentary series in Italy about the Medicis for director Justin Hardy, lists ten “thoughts on being a good DP – which I hope to be one day.”
In between, “Always lead from the front. You are in charge of the troops. Never ask them to do something that you would not,” and “say thank-you to everybody at the end of the day – this rule applies to directors and produc- ers as well,” is a useful modus operan- di for any aspiring cameraman.
“Most important,” he says, “is always trust your gut reaction to the look and feel of your work as those feelings are primarily why you were hired.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Devil’s Gate and The Scarlet Tunic were originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture negative
“As anyone will tell you,
a good gaffer’s worth his weight in gold.”
Photos top: Malcolm McLean on location in the Shetlands; above l-r: George Tiffin’s Soup; Michael Powell’s 1937 film, The Edge Of The World shot in the Shetlands (courtesy Moviestore Collection); Jean-Marc Barr and Emma Fielding in The Scarlet Tunic
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