The White Bus
| The White Bus | |
|---|---|
| File:The White Bus (1967 film).jpg | |
| Directed by | Lindsay Anderson |
| Screenplay by | Shelagh Delaney |
| Based on | a short story by Shelagh Delaney |
| Produced by | Lindsay Anderson |
| Starring | Patricia Healey |
| Cinematography | Miroslav Ondrícek |
| Edited by | Kevin Brownlow |
| Music by | Misha Donat |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | United Artists Corporation (UK) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 46 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
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The White Bus is a 1967 short film directed by Lindsay Anderson. The screenplay was jointly adapted[1] with Shelagh Delaney from a short story in her collection Sweetly Sings the Donkey (1963).[2] The White Bus was also the film debut of Anthony Hopkins.[3]
Plot
The main character, only referred to as 'the girl' (Patricia Healey) leaves London, goes north on a train full of football fans and takes a trip in a white double-decker bus around an unnamed city she is visiting, although it is clearly based on Manchester; Delaney was born and grew up in nearby Salford. The Mayor (Arthur Lowe), a local businessman, and the council's ceremonial macebearer (John Sharp) happen also to be taking the trip while they show the city to visiting foreigners.
Locations include Albert Square and its landmark, the Town Hall and the nearby Central Library. The 'model estate' of high-rise flats was shot on the Kersal Flats estate, while the factory sequences were shot in Trafford Park, including the Metropolitan-Vickers works. It also featured scenes on Cheetham Hill Road and inside Cheetham College (now demolished).
Both the exterior and interior shots of the school were taken in the former Pendleton High School for Girls – now mainly demolished, but with the original Victorian building converted to a retirement home. Using local people, Anderson also staged parodies of paintings by Manet (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), Fragonard and Goya in Buile Hill Park in Salford. It was Anthony Hopkins film debut in a small role, while Stephen Moore is a young bowler-hatted, possibly upper-class, man who pesters the heroine with nonsense[4] on the station in London. She may know him, as she says "I'll write" from the train.
Cast
- Patricia Healey – The Girl
- Arthur Lowe – The Mayor
- John Sharp – The Macebearer
- Julie Perry – Conductress
- Stephen Moore – Young Man
- Victor Henry – Transistorite
- John Savident, Fanny Carby, Malcolm Taylor, Alan O'Keeffe – Supporters
- Anthony Hopkins – Brechtian
- Jeanne Watts, Eddie King – Fish Shop Couple
- Barry Evans – Boy
- Penny Ryder – Girl
- Dennis Alaba Peters – Mr Wombe
History and production
The film was originally commissioned by producer Oscar Lewenstein, then a director of Woodfall, as one third of a 'portmanteau' feature entitled Red White and Zero, with the other sections supplied by Anderson's Free Cinema collaborators Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz[5] from the other short stories by Shelagh Delaney.
The "first real day's shooting" was on 19 October 1965, and took about a month to complete.[6]
The two other planned sections of the film developed into what became Richardson's Red and Blue and Peter Brook's Ride of the Valkyrie (1967), Reisz having dropped out, both of which are unrelated to Delaney's work. Of these, only The White Bus received a theatrical release in the UK.[7]
Notes
- ^ Hedling, E: "Lindsay Anderson: Maverick Film-Maker", Cassell, 1998, p.62
- ^ Shelagh Delaney "Sweetly Sings the Donkey", New York: GP Putnam, 1963; London: Methuen, 1964
- ^ "Sir Anthony Hopkins – Welsh actor".
- ^ Paul Sutton (ed.) The Diaries: Lindsay Anderson, London: Methuen, 2004, p.141n.
- ^ Lindsay Anderson, Paul Ryan (ed) "Never Apologise: The Collected Writings", Plexus, 2004, p.105
- ^ Sutton, p.140-41
- ^ Sutton, p.146