Customer Rating: 
Summary: A MOVING DOCU - IF A LITTLE DATED NOW
Comment: It would be easy to dismiss this film, made within a few years of Britten's death, as a piece of uncritical hagiography. It starts with a memorable piece from Leonard Bernstein where he expands in his usual articulate way on the ever-present dark side in Britten's music - the `gears constantly clashing' as he describes it. But the film itself touches relatively little on that side of the composer. There's nothing here about his reprehensible tendency to cut close colleagues and friends out of his life the moment they expressed the least criticism or even just became superfluous to his needs (Britten's `corpses' as he himself called them): there's also nothing here about his always controlled but undeniable paedophilia, movingly explored in John Bridcut's much more recent documentary: nor anything of his intolerance of performances of his own music that strayed too far from the way that he (and Peter Pears) saw it - e.g. the Vickers Grimes - or of new music that strayed too far from his own style - e.g. the walkout from Punch and Judy at his Aldeburgh Festival. All these less than attractive aspects of his personality are avoided.
Nevertheless, Tony Palmer conjures his familiar magic in constructing what is still a vivid and enlightening film study of his subject (cf. his musical biographies of Wagner, Walton, Arnold, etc.). As in much of his work, Palmer demonstrates the deftest of hands in combining archive footage plus his own original material with lengthy, illuminating interviews with family, friends and contemporaries. There is much delightful stuff from the archives - seeing the wonderful and humorous rapport between two keyboard masters as he plays 2-piano Schubert with Richter at Aldeburgh for example - as well as elucidating looks at Britten's rehearsal techniques for a performance (the premiere?) of The Building of the House - he was, it would seem, strict and workmanlike but friendly as a conductor, always concentrating on practical musical matters.
Among the interviews there is much that must now, nearly thirty years on, count as primary biographical material. Brother, sister and cousin are all interesting on his precocious childhood, egged on by an ambitious mother. His housekeeper on his dining tastes, the nurse from his final illness on his fears and acceptance of death, Imo Holst on the incredible speed of his writing, are all fascinating. But Pears, of course, is the primary source having been the composer's musical and personal partner for most of his adult life. Here, for the first time, he comes `clean' about the nature of their personal relationship - `gay' was apparently a word Britten didn't approve of in this context - and is deeply moving about his lover's death in his arms.
Musically, there is much to intrigue, too. Clips from BBC productions of Grimes and Billy Budd are reminders that these are notable historic performances that deserve to be issued on DVD. Janet Baker is riveting in the cantata (really a super-concentrated opera), Phaedra: the climax of Curlew River with Dickerson as the Madwoman, too, shows a master dramatic composer at the top of his form. The familiar, but still relevant, thread of `innocence outraged' is followed through the whole canon of works. The fascinating corollary - Britten as a Peter Pan who never wanted to leave his childhood (A time there was...) behind - is left hanging as a thought, one that others have subsequently pursued more fully.
Palmer can also be deeply moving in his use of cameras roaming round Britten's homes and especially his work areas. This is particularly so at very the end of his film where we pull slowly back from the desk and chair in Britten's last composing cottage in Sussex (bought to escape the noise of planes from the military airfields in his beloved Suffolk) to the desolate, lonely sound of his final orchestral work, the folksong arrangements he called A Time There Was... which Palmer adopted as the title for this film. The phrase itself, of course, is taken from the Hardy poem that Britten had previously set so memorably as the final song of Winter Words.
Inevitably there is much biographical material that has come to light since the making of this film. But Tony Palmer's piece still remains a moving tribute to one of the great composers of the last Century and is much recommended to anyone with an interest in its subject.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Enthralling
Comment: With the exception of the first quarter of an hour (too much footage of Britten's elderly cousin), this is a a very rewarding piece of film making, documenting Britten's life with lots of footage of live performances and interviews with those who had been important in his life - ranging from those who had been personally close to him (his nurse in his last illness) through to musical colleagues and friendss - with interviews with Pears having rightful pride of place. Some wonderful footage of Pears as Peter grimes and captain vere - and a young joan baker.
Plenty about his major works - though surprisingly nothing about the War Requiem. (Nevertheless I found very interesting the insights into his and Pears's pacifism and its effect on his music. From this distance, it is easy to forget that Britten's work did not immediately command the standing that it has now.
I found Pears modest and profoundly moving about his own contribution to Britten's life - and open about his relationship with him. I rented it from Amazon but bought it the following day - a DVD that i will want to watch again. A must for any Britten lover.
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![Benjamin Britten - A Time There Was [2006]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xz6ppYg6L._SL160_.jpg)
