Glorious 39 - Stephen Poliakoff interview
Interview by Rob Carnevale
STEPHEN Poliakoff talks about returning to the film work for World War II thriller Glorious 39, some of the truth behind the appeasement movement and why he believes his leading lady, Romola Garai, is the next Kate Winslet…
Q. What attracted you to Glorious 39?
Stephen Poliakoff: I’d been thinking for a while about coming back to the cinema. The television work had been incredibly consuming, all-consuming, because I wrote and directed it all myself. And I’ve always loved suspense films, in the sort of Hitchcock tradition and also Rosemary’s Baby, which is one of my favourite movies. I thought it would be really interesting to attempt that. I was also incredibly fascinated by this period, just from the simple fact that I, as a Jew, would not be here if history had turned out differently. We came within a millimetre of them doing a deal with Hitler and us staying out of the Second World War, which would of course almost certainly have lead to us becoming almost a puppet state, like France, and all the Jews and many other people would have been rounded up.
So, I thought that was a really good setting for a suspense film, because I felt that the only way of dramatising that extraordinary few weeks, just before the beginning of the war and the first few weeks of the war, was for people to realise what a close-run thing it was.
Q. What do you think happened to people like the family you depict, once it was clear that Churchill was in and he was going to prosecute the war?
Stephen Poliakoff: Well, although the film is a fiction in terms of the family, there were many people, especially many aristocratic families who were deeply passionate about what the appeasers were doing and were sympathetic to Hitler – they weren’t all Nazis, although some of them sympathised, but the much greater fear was Communism. And there was violent anti-Semitism amongst a lot of the upper class and the political class and no doubt the Secret Service, which was very active. So I don’t know what would have happened to them… people changed very, very quickly.
Everybody in the elite… I’m exaggerating because there was always a powerful, small minority that objected to the appeasement policy in the elite. But nearly every newspaper editor and proprietor and a vast majority of the House of Commons – because the Tories had a huge majority – and even the Royal Family were all very, very pro-appeasement. When Chamberlain fell at the end of April 1940, they wanted Lord Halifax, who was a great appeaser and wanted to do this deal with Hitler. So, people who thought Churchill was a bounder and a dangerous person quickly changed sides. Even his own Private Secretary, Lord Colville, was saying one minute: “God forbid it’s going to be Winston!” And the next minute he’s working for him!
Q: Is there any historical background to David Tennant’s character? Were there any ministers who committed suicide or died in mysterious circumstances?
Stephen Poliakoff: Well, no – I can’t claim that I have evidence that people were blackmailed to the point that they killed themselves or were murdered, like Hugh Bonneville’s character was, because obviously that would be a sensational historical coup, but what is true is that they were put under great pressure. What is true is that there was an enormous amount of listening to phone calls, and tapping of phone calls. Churchill’s phone was listened to all the time – Chamberlain wrote to his sister: “I know what he’s doing every hour of every day and he has no idea that I know.” That’s really extraordinary, considering that Churchill was about to become Prime Minister.
But the Secret Service were much more well-organised than we think, than we imagine in the ‘30s, because in ‘30s films, the sets are quite unsophisticated compared to what they would become and we think of that and mostly they’re putting on these strangulated accents and we think they’re somehow slightly amateur. Also, because of the way that people were portrayed, like Rex Harrison in the play Night Train to Munich or Leslie Howard in Pimpernel Smith, it’s always the amateur… so we think of the Secret Service as this sort of gentlemanly, shambolic sort of thing. But it wasn’t, it was extremely well organised in keeping and recording these conversations and phone calls, spying on people. And there was great pressure, in the familiar way that people have always been pressurised with MPs. I mean it still goes on. It’s always gone on.
There’s a tremendous book called Troublesome Young Men… it’s an American book by someone called Lynne Olson, which describes the Secret Service campaign as “a dirty tricks campaign equivalent to Nixon’s Watergate”. So, it was quite hairy stuff and I built on that. There were people who had to be very, very brave, and who were regarded as enemies of the State. People stood up in Parliament and said: “These characters should be shot.” So, it’s not much of a stretch to think that they were being incredibly pressured.
Q: You’ve described Romola Garai as “the next Kate Winslet”. What was it about her that appealed to you?
Stephen Poliakoff: I was thrilled with her performance, especially when I started putting the film together. I mean, I knew at the time, when we shot it that she was being great, but when I put it together, I thought: “This is just a fantastic performance!” And that’s when I thought, yeah, she’s the next Kate Winslet. By which I mean that she has the charisma and the power and the range that Kate Winslet has… and that sort of extraordinary luminosity on screen. She’s also very, very intelligent and extremely articulate. I loved her debut in I Capture The Castle. She’d actually played the lead in Daniel Deronda on telly but I didn’t see that, but I saw her in I Capture The Castle and I thought she was fantastic in other roles, before Atonement.
I saw her in a mini-series on television where she was sent to Australia as a convict, called Mary Bryant, which she was also brilliant in and I thought: “God, this young woman is extraordinary.” And then in Atonement I thought she was brilliant. So I’d been watching her career. But she did surprise me… she went up another level. I knew she could carry a movie. She did a brilliant audition… a really luminous, extraordinary audition and I think she’s a star. Coincidentally, she’s just been captivating in my wife’s adaptation of Emma.
Q: Did you write the characters with any particular actors in mind?
Stephen Poliakoff: Only Bill [Nighy]‘s character. I did have Bill in mind. I didn’t tell him anything about it – I did say: “I might have something cooking but I don’t know when it’ll be!” But because we’d worked together twice, on The Lost Prince and Gideon’s Daughter and it had been a very happy collaboration, I thought he was just perfect for the dad because of that charm and nonchalance and that slight sort of English understatement and not taking things too seriously – which was the style of the time – but underneath, dark things cooking.
Also, I think it shows a side of Bill that I don’t think we’ve seen on the screen. I mean I know he’s played parts of great range. Certainly the two parts I’ve done with him before, he was essentially the nice guy – he was the nice courtier advisor in The Lost Prince and obviously, Gideon’s Daughter, he was the person who was having a break-up who you feel for, so I thought this was a really interesting side to him.
Q. And the rest of the cast?
Stephen Poliakoff: I was thrilled that Julie [Christie] wanted to do it, because she’s very choosy about what she wants to do and Christopher Lee… it was extraordinary to have him in. He’s such a legend of my youth as well. Eddie [Redmayne] is a remarkable young actor, as is Juno [Temple]. She’s only 20 but she’s made about 15 movies already, including Cracks, which is coming out shortly. Charlie Cox, who was in Stardust, is also a very appealing actor. And then having such good supporting performances from Jeremy Northam, who’s wonderful, and Hugh Bonneville. Jenny [Agutter] and I go back a long way. I was thrilled when she wanted to do that part because although it’s very small, it’s vital and when she lets Romola go, it’s so like what I imagine would have happened to my family, what happened in Warsaw, where one minute you’ve got a lovely house and the next minute you’re in your underclothes in the street and people are pursuing you in the ghetto.
Q: Are you going to make more films now?
Stephen Poliakoff: I hope so, yes. Obviously, the credit crunch is going to hit the British film industry like everything else. But I didn’t mean to stay away from cinema for so long, as I said, it was because the television work was so consuming. But yes, I have various ideas for movies and if I can keep attracting starry casts, that’s a way of getting finance, so I’m very much definitely going to be pursuing movies, yes.
Read our review of Glorious 39
Read our interview with Romola Garai