217 Films: Considering Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’ and America
“Civilisation has been a series of rebirths. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves.” ~Lord Kenneth Clark
In the latest in their series entitled, ‘Essays in Film,’ documentary film makers, Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton (217 Films) have once again shed light on a complex historical theme, placing it in the context of our vast American cultural narrative. After tackling topics like, Art in the Gilded Age, Arts of the Works Progress Administration, and the 1913 Armory Show, among others, this time their sights came to rest on British art historian and BBC star, Lord Kenneth Clark, and his much-touted 1970’s TV series, “Civilisation.” The video’s late-2020 release celebrates the 50th anniversary (1970-2020) of the American public television premiere of Lord Clark’s ground-breaking, thirteen-part BBC documentary series. Featuring archival footage from the original programs, as well as contemporaneous interviews with Sir David Attenborough and James Stourton (Clark’s definitive biographer), this documentary, entitled, “Civilisation and America,” focuses on the ways in which the series, airing in American homes in the midst of a time of great political and social upheaval, was received on this side of the Atlantic.
Drawing contrasts and comparisons with the chaotic American cultural and political scene during the Nixon presidency, this ‘217 Films’ documentary seeks to address the question raised by Clark in his broadcast series: ‘what is civilization?’ and how our understanding of society’s evolution over many centuries might be applied to our understanding of the modern age. For Maglaras and Templeton, the same question posed by Clark is astutely examined in their new documentary, in the context of a restive mid-twentieth century, strife-torn United States.
In Maglaras’s experienced hands (writer, director, narrator), Kenneth Clark’s original treatment of art and its foundational relationship to human striving is dramatically updated, by contrast, with powerful images of a mid-century America in profound societal disarray.
Clark was one of the early innovators in the 1960s broadcast industry, as he envisioned the potential of a rapidly evolving medium such as television—with color-image production in its nascent stage—to not merely entertain, but educate the British viewing audience regarding some of the greatest events in cultural history. Never had the time been as ripe as the moment Clark first conceived a show in which great paintings, architecture, artifacts, music and international locales could be used to frame a series of observations (he called his 13-part series, “A Personal View”) about great moments in our history. Brilliantly, Clark never presumes to concretely define civilization, but rather, draws implications from the behavior or intent of communal societies as they clash at borders, aggressively expand dominions, impose their own version of order (or disorder) on defeated nations, and inculcate subjugated cultures with norms of their own.
In terms of history’s evolution, Clark attributes much of the continuity we see in ‘civilization’ over the last two-thousand years to efforts by the Catholic Church to preserve and defend Christian values in the wake of alien incursions aimed at destroying culture and its tangible artifacts as we have come to know them (libraries, icons, rituals, structures, statuary, etc.). Inherent in Clark’s definition of civilization’s survivability is evidence of material prosperity: i.e. production values, and the re-affirmation afforded by discipline, laws and the perception of energy behind them. These, he contends, are the renewable forces that compel cultures toward survival and resurgence in the face of cyclical and sometimes devastating threats from distant enemies.
Given the socio-political climate of his day, Clark must be forgiven a mid-20th century, Anglo-centric world view, when he unapologetically describes this geographical alignment as a delicate interplay between the forces of destruction (“the Northern imagination: fear and darkness”) and those inspired by beauty, balance and higher reason (“the Southern imagination”). In spite of this distinction, he goes on to highlight a stunning artifact from late 1st millennium, Northern Europe—the intricately bejeweled golden Cross of Lothair—clear evidence of an aesthetic sensibility arising from a Franco-Germanic region otherwise known, historically, for its aggressive militarism.
He attributes the great transitions in culture to the vision of a few great men over the centuries—his “Great Man” theory. Among those dramatically effecting the course of history can be found Charlemagne, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Luther and Voltaire, J.M.W. Turner, to name a few. In addition to the far-reaching influence of these high profile figures, Clark also points out that, over the centuries, civilisation seemed timed for great leaps forward: ancient Egypt and the Middle Eastern Levant in 3500 B.C.; the expansion of the Holy Roman Empire after 500 A.D.; the proliferation of cathedral building, beginning in the 1100s, A.D; and a period of independent thinking found in the figures of the Reformation and Enlightenment period of the 1600-1700s.
In stark contrast to these high points in humankind’s history, a central premise of the Maglaras film is underscored here, as the ‘217’ documentary turns its focus, once again, to the streets of late-1960s America, with its widespread civil unrest, social decay (graffiti, abandoned buildings), reminders of the deadly war in Vietnam, and growing class disparities in American life, all viewed over an ominous musical track. The question is clearly laid out for a contemporary audience—at that tenuous point in our history, would civilization’s enduring promise save a nation from those who would crush its spirit?
In episode ten, The Smile of Reason (referring to the bust of a smiling Voltaire), Clark turns his attention to the newly-formed United States, with its “universal man of the 18th century” and proponent of cultural change, Thomas Jefferson. Clark extolls his role as a central figure in the conceptualization of an Enlightenment-inspired democratic model of reason and self-governance (further evidence of the “Southern imagination”). Jefferson’s emergence on the international scene roughly coincided with the emergence of the Romantic period in arts and letters.
Led by Wordsworth’s 1799 call for “quiet contemplation in nature,” the door was opened for a shift away from the harsher constriction of Enlightenment era science and reason, to matters of the heart. As a result, poetry flowed from the pen of poets into the unrestricted realm of the natural world. Painters like Monet (another ‘great man’) moved from the formal restrictions of the academies to paint their ‘impressions’ of the world, en plein air. Genius and civilization were once again reunited in an arena—the fine arts—that Clark so much adored.
Through his series of thirteen episodes, with enigmatic titles like The Great Thaw, The Hero as Artist, Grandeur and Obedience, and The Fallacies of Hope, Clark takes the viewer through some of the greatest moments in cultural history, and the creative geniuses responsible for many great leaps forward. He ascertains our greatest and most enduring achievements are rooted in the notion of rebirth; that the energy of creation, whether in art, architecture, literature or systems of laws and governance, resides in our belief in order over chaos, creation over destruction, and knowledge over ignorance.
“Maglaras takes the narrative to the next level, though, addressing a task not then available to Lord Clark (d. 1983)…to more fully explore that tumultuous period in American history when our cultural traditions appeared to be unraveling.”
In the last of his series, Heroic Materialism, Clark argues that civilization continues to evolve in all its fragile and exciting forms, even today. Calling on lessons learned from centuries past, however, he cautions that “we can destroy ourselves by disillusion and cynicism just as certainly as with a bomb.” Now fifty years later, Michael Maglaras echoes that sentiment in his narration, by adding, “[we can] be defeated by a lack of belief in ourselves, more than by any enemy.”
The fiftieth anniversary of this lauded series debut in Britain (1969) and America (1970), provides Maglaras/Templeton and their, ‘217 films,’ “‘Civilisation’ and America,” with the opportunity to celebrate the intelligence and depth of vision Lord Clark applied to his original effort (enough celluloid footage to comprise six feature-length films!).
Maglaras takes the narrative to the next level, though, addressing a task not then available to Lord Clark (d. 1983)—using the perspective time’s passage allows to more fully explore that tumultuous period in contemporary American history when our cultural traditions appeared to be unraveling. With a costly Vietnam War raging and a period of civil and racial unrest seeping into every element of American society, Maglaras’s incisive film treatment of our decade-long period of collective pain and dysfunction calls to mind Clark’s allusion to a “long rough road [as] victims of the fallacies of hope.”
This newly-released documentary focuses on the manner in which Civilisation—with its novel and immersive viewing experience for a`70s TV audience—changed the lives of millions of Americans at a time of great political and social upheaval. The lessons to be learned from this in-depth overview of Clark’s series, with its inherent promise of “rebirth,” begs the question of just how historians might view our own tumultuous times. Especially today, this timely, probative ‘217 Films’ release, “Civilisation and America,” with its evocative examination of recent events in our national dialogue, deserves thoughtful consideration. It calls to mind the well-know Twain-attributed admonition: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
By Richard J. Friswell, Managing Editor
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