Viva Lewes Issue #146 November 2018

MY LEWES:
MICHAEL VOIGT
For years you were Head of
English at Priory School?
Where you also ran a
legendary film club? Yes. I
joined the English department
of the Boys’ Grammar in
1964. This merged with the
Girls’ Grammar and the local
Secondary Modern in 1969,
and Priory School was born.
That same year I started the
film club. In those days, it
was rare to see films on TV,
so I was showing classic films
to pupils who wouldn’t otherwise get to see
them. And film was flourishing: the 1960s and
70s were a great time to be interested. I used
to order the films from distributors and they’d
arrive in these heavy boxes, the reels, and I had
to learn how to handle 16mm projectors.
And now you host The Voigt Film Club at
the Depot? I do. Carmen and Lisa Wardle
at the Depot gave me a great opportunity to
introduce and show some of my favourite films
once a month, followed by a discussion. The
Depot is a beautiful building, marvellously
comfortable and friendly, and state-of-the-art.
I only wish it had come along twenty years
ago. This month we shall be watching Sunset
Boulevard, and in December It’s a Wonderful Life.
So when did you first discover film? In 1946,
when I was ten, my mother and aunt were going
to the cinema; my brother and I pleaded with
them to take us to see Margaret Lockwood and
James Mason in The Wicked Lady. I remember
the incident vividly – and the film! I saw my
first Art film, Bergman’s Wild Strawberries,
at a flea-pit on the banks of the River Liffey
in Dublin where I was an undergraduate. In
1963, when teaching in Brighton, I joined The
New Sussex Film Club in Hove; then – after
doing some lecturing for the
BFI – the Committee of the
Brighton Film Theatre, which
was chaired by Sir Michael
Balcon, former Head of Ealing
Studios. I also did a Certificate
in Film, run by the BFI and
London University, and
wrote a dissertation, on Carol
Reed, which was subsequently
published in a magazine called
Focus on Film (1974), my only
published work. Rendering me
a footnote in film history!
What to you is great cinema? My wife and
I go to the cinema regularly, and are always
interested – though we choose quite carefully.
But I do draw a distinction between art and
entertainment. The Seventh Seal is art, whether
it entertains you or not. The director is the key
figure to my mind, and his or her personality
imbues the work to a greater or lesser extent –
whether it’s Hitchcock, with his dark desire and
misogyny, or Howard Hawks, or John Ford.
They create a world just like great writers.
I can see you’re surrounded by film archives.
What have you kept? Apart from around
4,000 films on VHS tapes or DVD, I also have
a substantial library of books on film, including
some now historical key works from the 1960s,
such as The Contemporary Cinema by Penelope
Houston, A Dictionary of the Cinema, the very
first reference book on actors and directors,
and Hitchcock’s Films by Robin Wood, the first
serious study of Hitchcock’s work in the English
language (the French got there first!). Also, I’ve
kept meticulous records of every film I’ve ever
watched: when, where, and what did I think?
Interview by Charlotte Gann
The Voigt Film Club is on the third Wednesday of
each month at the Depot
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