Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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they were the only solid basis for the project. The characterisations and the linking
narrative were (in a literal sense) secondary. At a subsequent meeting, Ward expressed
his liking for the detail of the sample dialogue Tetley had written and they discussed
films that Ward admired. Tetley recalls that he mentioned in particular, Spirit of the
Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973), the films of Buster Keaton, Wim Wenders and Werner
Herzog (particularly Aguirre the Wrath of God, 1972 and Fitzcarraldo, 1982). 593
When it came to starting work on the script, Tetley remarked that: “I didn’t know what I
was doing for quite a long time really. I would write scenes here, scenes there, and I
had no idea about the overallness of the film at that stage”. 594 Ward’s method of script-
writing was:
to begin with clusters and constellations of images – there were two nightmares,
for example – and the scripting was like detective work, deciphering these
images and letting them build. It was like being in a mist or fog through which
you catch glimpses of things and try to grab hold of them and work out what
they’re about […]. I was constantly trying to find out what the story was about.
It was a process of clarification – which is not to say I didn’t know what I
wanted to say. You start with a number of experiences you’ve observed and
which fit into a view of the world which you want to put into the film, and there
are a range of characters which are receptacles for those ideas. 595
Even after Tetley became involved, Ward and Tetley continued working with images to
a large extent. Ward had to proceed intuitively, and script developments that might
seem logical (according to narrative logic as spelled out in script-writing textbooks)
would be overruled at once if he did not feel intuitively that they were true to the story
(if one can call it that) that he was seeking to bring into focus. The image of the tractor
“was always there” and the notion of things having “a life of their own became a really
important line that we worked around”. 596 In Draft Two, for example, Birdie says to
Toss, in relation to the tractor: “You see, everything has a spirit of its own. It sends out
593 Roger Horrocks remembers screening Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973) for Ward and
Bollinger at Ward’s request, before they began filming Vigil. There are indeed echoes of Erice’s film in
Vigil. Spirit has a girl as central character and there are several similar scenes (such as the girl using blood
as lipstick).
594 Lynette Read, interview with Graham Tetley, 4 December 1998.
595 Ward quoted in Mitchell, "Vincent Ward: The Eloquence of Isolation," 38.
596 Lynette Read, interview with Graham Tetley, 4 December 1998.