Rudolph Cartier
Encyclopedia
Rudolph Cartier was an Austria
n television director
, filmmaker
, screenwriter
and producer
who worked predominantly in British television, exclusively for the BBC
. He is best known for his 1950s collaborations with screenwriter Nigel Kneale
, most notably the Quatermass
serials and their 1954 adaptation
of George Orwell
's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
.
After studying architecture and then drama, Cartier began his career 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 for BBC 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
and opera
, 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 1962 Salzburg Festival
. The British Film Institute
's "Screenonline
" website describes him as "a true pioneer of television", 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 as CinemaScope
."
, 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 a musical 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 in Berlin
, Germany. He then became a staff scriptwriter for UFA Studios
, the primary German film company of the era, for which he worked on crime film
s and thrillers. While at UFA, he worked with noted writers, directors and producers including Ewald André Dupont
and Erich Pommer
. In 1933 he became a film director
, overseeing the thriller Unsichtbare Gegner for producer Sam Spiegel
.
The same year as Unsichtbare Gegner was released, the Nazis
came to power in Germany, and the Jewish Cartier left the country. Several members of Cartier's family who had remained in Europe, including his mother, later died in the Holocaust
. Encouraged by a UFA colleague, Billy Wilder
, to come to Hollywood, 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.
Little further is recorded of Cartier's career until after the Second World War
, when he began writing storylines for several minor British films
. He also worked as a film producer
, overseeing a 1951 short film adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes
story The Man with the Twisted Lip
. Cartier returned for a time to the United States, where he studied production methods in the new medium of television
.
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, a job which also involved directing. At his interview, Cartier told Barry that he thought his department's output was "dreadful", 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.
, transmitted on the evening of 20 July 1952. It was initially adapted by Cartier from Albrecht Goes
' novel Unruhige Nacht, but Barry felt that the dialogue was "too Germanic" and assigned drama department staff scriptwriter Nigel Kneale
to edit the script. 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. 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".
Cartier and Kneale's first major production was the six-part serial The Quatermass Experiment
, broadcast in the summer of 1953. A science-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 the British Film Institute
's Screenonline
website as "one of the most influential series of the 1950s". 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, 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. Cartier, with his previous experience as a film director, particularly enjoyed working on these cinema-style filmed scenes.
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." 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). Of particular note was their collaboration on an adaptation
of George Orwell
's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
, originally broadcast on 12 December 1954, regarded as Cartier's most famous work. The Timess review the day after its broadcast noted its "vividness... the two minutes' hate
was, for instance, a wonderfully riotious orgy of vindictiveness." 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, and the BBC received several telephone calls threatening Cartier's life if the second live
performance, scheduled for 16 December, went ahead. 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 the Board of Governors of the BBC
voted that the second performance should go ahead as planned. The production had by this time received the backing of the Duke of Edinburgh
, who commented during a speech to the Royal Society of Arts
that he and the Queen
had watched and enjoyed the first performance.
Nineteen Eighty-Four had been a success, but it was also one of the most expensive television dramas ever made in the UK. 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:
(later known as the British Academy Television Awards
, or BAFTAs) he was the winner of the Drama category. He made a brief return to filmmaking in 1958 when he directed the feature Passionate Summer, but he saw himself primarily as a television director, and it remained his favourite medium. "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
and Christopher Hassall
and produced by Cartier in 1960, won the Merit Award in the Salzburg Opera Prize at the 1962 Salzburg Festival
.
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 a U-Boat
captain in a British prisoner of war
camp) and The July Plot (1964, about the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler
), as well as Firebrand (1967, about the 1933 Reichstag 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 the Warsaw Ghetto
orphanage) and The Joel Brand
Story (1965, about Adolf 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, starring Sean Connery
and Claire Bloom
) and Wuthering Heights (1962, a new version of Kneale's 1953 script, starring Bloom and Keith Michell
). Lee Oswald — Assassin (1966) was a drama-documentary
telling the story of Lee Harvey Oswald
, based on the Warren Commission
's findings, while Conversation at Night (1969) saw the first television acting appearance of Alec 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 for commercial 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, Corinne, 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.
, 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 the 100 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. 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."
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." Television historian Jason Jacobs, a lecturer in film
and television studies
at the University of Warwick
, wrote in 2000 that Kneale and Cartier together created an entirely new, more expansive vision for British television drama in the 1950s.
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." 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 flawed Warren Commission
report, 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 Passionate Summer: "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. 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 surviving telerecording copy of the second performance of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n television director
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
, filmmaker
Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
who worked predominantly in British television, exclusively for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. He is best known for his 1950s collaborations with screenwriter Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
, most notably the Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
serials and their 1954 adaptation
Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British television adaptation of the novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed...
of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
.
After studying architecture and then drama, Cartier began his career as a screenwriter and then film director in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, working for UFA Studios
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
. After a brief spell in the United States he moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and began working for BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of 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
Dramatic programming
Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...
and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, Cartier won the equivalent of a BAFTA
British Academy Television Awards
The British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . They have been awarded annually since 1954, and are analogous to the Emmy Awards in the United States.-Background:...
in 1957 for his work in the former, and one of his operatic productions was given an award at the 1962 Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
. The British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
's "Screenonline
Screenonline
Screenonline is a Web site devoted to the history of British film and television, and to social history as revealed by film and television. The project has been developed by the British Film Institute and funded by a £1.2 million grant from the National Lottery New Opportunities Fund.Reviews...
" website describes him as "a true pioneer of television", 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 as CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
."
Early life and career
Born in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
(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
Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
, who proved a major influence on Cartier. Reinhardt thought of a script as being similar to a musical 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
Film industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
in 1929, when he successfully submitted a script to a company based in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany. He then became a staff scriptwriter for UFA Studios
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
, the primary German film company of the era, for which he worked on crime film
Crime film
Crime films are films which focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film varies from realistic portrayals of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched evil doings of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal acts are almost always glorified in these movies.- Plays and films...
s and thrillers. While at UFA, he worked with noted writers, directors and producers including Ewald André Dupont
Ewald André Dupont
Ewald André Dupont was a German film director, one of the founders of the German film industry. He was frequently credited as E. A. Dupont....
and Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. He was involved in the German Expressionist film movement during the silent era as the head of production at Decla, Decla-Bioscop and from 1924 to 1926 at Ufa responsible for many of the best known movies of the Weimar Republic such as...
. In 1933 he became a film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, overseeing the thriller Unsichtbare Gegner for producer Sam Spiegel
Sam Spiegel
Sam Spiegel was an Austrian-born American independent film producer.-Life and career:Spiegel was born in Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary as Samuel P. Spiegel to a German-Jewish father and Polish mother and educated at the University of Vienna. His brother was Shalom Spiegel, a professor of...
.
The same year as Unsichtbare Gegner was released, the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
came to power in Germany, and the Jewish Cartier left the country. Several members of Cartier's family who had remained in Europe, including his mother, later died in the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. Encouraged by a UFA colleague, Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
, to come to Hollywood, 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.
Little further is recorded of Cartier's career until after the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when he began writing storylines for several minor British films
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
. He also worked as a film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, overseeing a 1951 short film adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
story The Man with the Twisted Lip
The Man with the Twisted Lip
"The Man with the Twisted Lip", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in December 1891...
. Cartier returned for a time to the United States, where he studied production methods in the new medium of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
.
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, a job which also involved directing. At his interview, Cartier told Barry that he thought his department's output was "dreadful", and that television drama needed "new scripts and a new approach". In a 1990 interview about his career, he told BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
's The Late Show
The Late Show (BBC2 TV series)
The Late Show is a British television arts magazine programme that was broadcast on BBC Two weeknights at 11.15pm — directly after Newsnight — often referred to as the "graveyard slot" in terms of television scheduling....
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 HeartArrow to the Heart
Arrow to the Heart is a British television drama, originally broadcast by BBC Television in 1952 and remade in 1956. It was adapted from the German novel Unruhige Nacht by Albrecht Goes, published in 1950...
, transmitted on the evening of 20 July 1952. It was initially adapted by Cartier from Albrecht Goes
Albrecht Goes
Albrecht Goes was a German writer and Protestant theologian.-Life:Albrecht Goes was born in 1908 in the Protestant rectory in Langenbeutingen. He spent his childhood there, but his mother died in 1911 and in 1915 he went to live with his grandmother in Berlin-Steglitz. He went to school there...
' novel Unruhige Nacht, but Barry felt that the dialogue was "too Germanic" and assigned drama department staff scriptwriter Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
to edit the script. 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. 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".
Collaborations with Nigel Kneale
The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by...
, broadcast in the summer of 1953. A science-fiction story, it relates the sending of the first humans into space by Professor Bernard Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
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 the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
's Screenonline
Screenonline
Screenonline is a Web site devoted to the history of British film and television, and to social history as revealed by film and television. The project has been developed by the British Film Institute and funded by a £1.2 million grant from the National Lottery New Opportunities Fund.Reviews...
website as "one of the most influential series of the 1950s". Cartier's contribution to the serial's success was highlighted in his 1994 obituary in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
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
Quatermass II
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the first of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives...
(1955) and Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial, originally transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC's Quatermass serials, although the character would reappear in a 1979 ITV production simply entitled Quatermass...
(1958–59), both produced and directed by Cartier and written by Kneale. Both were successful and critically acclaimed, and Cartier's production work on them became increasingly ambitious. For Quatermass II, he pre-filmed a significant amount of material on location
Filming location
A filming location is a place where some or all of a film or television series is produced, in addition to or instead of using sets constructed on a movie studio backlot or soundstage...
, using 35 mm film
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
, opening the drama out from a confined studio setting with the most ambitious location shooting yet attempted in British television. Cartier, with his previous experience as a film director, particularly enjoyed working on these cinema-style filmed scenes.
The appeal of the Quatermass serials has been attributed by the Museum of Broadcast Communications
Museum of Broadcast Communications
The Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
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." 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
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
(6 December 1953) and The Moment of Truth (10 March 1955), as well as Kneale's own The Creature (30 January 1955). Of particular note was their collaboration on an adaptation
Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British television adaptation of the novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed...
of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
, originally broadcast on 12 December 1954, regarded as Cartier's most famous work. The Timess review the day after its broadcast noted its "vividness... the two minutes' hate
Two Minutes Hate
In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes Hate is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies and express their hatred for them.-Details in Nineteen Eighty-Four:The film and its accompanying auditory and...
was, for instance, a wonderfully riotious orgy of vindictiveness." The production also attracted considerable controversy. There were questions asked in the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
concerning some of the graphic scenes of horror in the play, and the BBC received several telephone calls threatening Cartier's life if the second live
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
performance, scheduled for 16 December, went ahead. 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 the Board of Governors of the BBC
Board of Governors of the BBC
The Board of Governors of the BBC was the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It consisted of twelve people who together regulated the BBC and represented the interests of the public. It existed from 1927 until it was replaced by the BBC Trust on 1 January 2007.The governors...
voted that the second performance should go ahead as planned. The production had by this time received the backing of the Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
, who commented during a speech to the Royal Society of Arts
Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity...
that he and the Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
had watched and enjoyed the first performance.
Nineteen Eighty-Four had been a success, but it was also one of the most expensive television dramas ever made in the UK. 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
Rebecca (novel)
Rebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...
. 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 extrasExtra (actor)A background actor or extra is a performer in a film, television show, stage, musical, opera or ballet production, who appears in a nonspeaking, nonsinging or nondancing capacity, usually in the background...
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.
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 AwardsGuild of Television Producers and Directors Awards 1957
The 1957 Guild of Television Producers and Directors Awards were the fourth annual giving of the awards which later became known as the British Academy Television Awards. This year saw the expansion of the Awards from their initial four categories to seven...
(later known as the British Academy Television Awards
British Academy Television Awards
The British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . They have been awarded annually since 1954, and are analogous to the Emmy Awards in the United States.-Background:...
, or BAFTAs) he was the winner of the Drama category. He made a brief return to filmmaking in 1958 when he directed the feature Passionate Summer, but he saw himself primarily as a television director, and it remained his favourite medium. "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
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
(1957) and Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
(1962) as well as original productions written especially for television. Tobias and the Angel, written for the BBC by Sir Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
and Christopher Hassall
Christopher Hassall
Christopher Vernon Hassall was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after working together in the same touring company...
and produced by Cartier in 1960, won the Merit Award in the Salzburg Opera Prize at the 1962 Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
.
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
Sydney Newman
Sydney Cecil Newman, OC was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s...
, 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
Maigret
Jules Maigret, Maigret to most people, including his wife, is a fictional police detective, actually a commissaire or commissioner of the Paris "Brigade Criminelle" , created by writer Georges Simenon.Seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories about Maigret were published between 1931 and...
and Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
.
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 a U-Boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
captain in a British prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
camp) and The July Plot (1964, about the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler
July 20 Plot
On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government...
), as well as Firebrand (1967, about the 1933 Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
, 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 the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
orphanage) and The Joel Brand
Joel Brand
Joel Brand was a Hungarian sailor and odd-job man who became known for his role during the Holocaust in trying to save the Hungarian-Jewish community from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp....
Story (1965, about Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
's 1944 offer to the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
of the lives of 1 million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks). Other notable 1960s productions included adaptations of Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
(1961, starring Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...
and Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
) and Wuthering Heights (1962, a new version of Kneale's 1953 script, starring Bloom and Keith Michell
Keith Michell
Keith Michell is an Australian actor, particularly noted for his television and film performances as King Henry VIII of England.- Early life :He was born in Adelaide and brought up in Warnertown, near Port Pirie...
). Lee Oswald — Assassin (1966) was a drama-documentary
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
telling the story of Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
, based on the Warren Commission
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
's findings, while Conversation at Night (1969) saw the first television acting appearance of Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...
.
Cartier's career continued into the 1970s. In 1974, he directed episodes of Fall of Eagles
Fall of Eagles
Fall of Eagles is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series was created by John Elliot and produced by Stuart Burge....
; 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 for commercial television
Commercial Television
Commercial Television was the third free-to-air broadcast television station in Hong Kong. It first went on air in 1975, and ceased transmissions in 1978.-History:...
: "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, Corinne, 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
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
, another important figure in the history of British television drama, who died on the same day.
Legacy
Nearly all of Cartier's 1950s television productions were performed liveLive television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
, 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
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
(BFI) compiled a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes
100 Greatest British Television Programmes
The BFI TV 100 is a list compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute , chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened....
of the 20th century. Voted on by a group of industry professionals, the list featured both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Quatermass and the Pit. 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."
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." Television historian Jason Jacobs, a lecturer in film
Film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...
and television studies
Television studies
Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass-communication research, which tends to approach the topic from an empirical perspective...
at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
, 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-upClose-upIn filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
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."
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." 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 flawed Warren Commission
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
report, 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 Passionate Summer: "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
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
arts
The arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...
magazine programme The Late Show
The Late Show (BBC2 TV series)
The Late Show is a British television arts magazine programme that was broadcast on BBC Two weeknights at 11.15pm — directly after Newsnight — often referred to as the "graveyard slot" in terms of television scheduling....
produced an edition which featured a retrospective of Cartier's work, including a new interview with the director discussing his career. 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 surviving telerecording copy of the second performance of Nineteen Eighty-Four.