BBC. The Ascent of Man. Extra Interview with Sir David Attenborough.

BBC 2 was the first television network in this country to go into color not because it was a hand of such a wonderful track record but because it was the last to be introduced in 1969 after BBC 1 and ITV and it was introduced on a new technical standard of 625 lines as against 405 lines I was controller BBC 2 at the time and it was my job to devise programs that were going to be seen in color and which were as it were sell color and one of the ideas I had was that we should put together all the loveliest things that Western civilization had created since the last 2,000 years and show them in color a ravishing eyed ravishing cavalcade of beautiful things was my idea very of this idea and putting it in chronological order was an obvious idea - I had no hesitation at all in recruiting Kenneth Clark to make the first series of these colored documentaries which we call civilization and that was a huge success beyond anybody's imagination certainly beyond mine 3 months 13 programs in which you took a great slab of human experience and and said implicitly to viewers now look here you are we're going to take it seriously we're going to start at the beginning we're going to go to the end it won't hurt but at the end of it you will have had you'll have been taken by the hand by someone who's a great expert and you will have a really good working knowledge of that great part of life well it was a huge success as I said so much so that the head of science or rather head of the whole section of factual programming called or Brasilia in which included science and orbits particular enthusiasm was science or Bri steamed into my office quite soon after civilization had started saying this is an absolute scandal I was supposed to be he said you are supposed to be a scientist you know specific on disagree ontology and you sit there in your controllers chair and you give this great budget and this wonderful out thing two thoughts what are you playing at we must do science well he was quite right of course we must do science though science to start with was not at all as obvious a subject for civilization it be I mean for a start did not didn't involve necessarily a whole lot of beautiful things and and secondly that it it didn't deal with with material objects in that sort of sense it dealt with theory and there were great slabs of theory how are you going to put those across I mean that not an obvious winner for the audience either in fact though the American bicentennial was coming up and this new format of 13 50-minute seconds was now the sort of flavor of the month so everybody was a keen that we the next one should actually be Alistair Cooke talking about the history of America because Alistair Cooke is a great great sound broadcaster and although people didn't know it at the time in Britain he also had an established persona in American television introducing British dramas period dramas costume dramas and he is a marvelous broadcaster so I was very happy that BBC 2 should do that we'll move on to into the 17 1973 I think and for number of reasons one it would bring in the Americans which were quite happy to do and two that it gave us more time to think about the ascent of man and how we can depart it and Aubry was quite clear there's there's Bruno he said now Bruno was the way that everybody I knew talked about dr. Jacob Bronowski and he was a big figure not on television but on radio there was a brains trust program which had the great brain so I mean they really qualified as great brains and and Bruno was one of the big stars of the brains trust I don't think anybody knew what he looked like and and indeed maybe that's as well because he would at first sight he was I mean he was very very short man but he had burning eyes and burning conviction and he talked with a burning passion and intensity which was really absolutely gripped you and I think it was probably him who decided that in order to bring some kind of coherence into science which is after all one way of looking at the world that he would look at it historically and saw how human beings and the human mind and human thought moved and to more and more approaching towards the the essentials of reality working out the laws of nature he saw that as a historical progress but there was another thing about Bruno and that is that not only was he a remarkable historian of science and taxing scientists he was also a pellet he was an expert on Blake he had written poetry himself he had written literary criticism to bread and he had a feeling for language and a feeling for narrative he told stories marvelously and he was also an actor I mean he he had a grasp of narrative timing which was comparable to that of a really great actor and if you're going to do this kind of program you have to be able to repeat some particular introduction over and over again and Bruno together with Adrian Malone and make Jackson who were the two directors Saul this thing's as a series of dramatic statements and Bruno wasn't one just to sit there and talk Bruno would decide that he really had to do rather complicated movements in which he would suddenly at one particular moment come up against a statue of some kind which would just at the moment in his speech that was irrelevant and then he had move on and maybe look in the mid distance and and then go on do it now he did that for two that again the game and above all he was a great master of the hesitation he had an ability to just pause and look up to the sort of mid listeners as though he was desperately trying to find this one word out of the whole complexity of the English language which is going to summarize what he really meant and it was like forcing it out and he's had you on the edge of your seat he had all those talents but he also had a modest ability of for visualization there is a sequence in which he talks about crystals dextro and levo rotatory crystals now I suppose if you started to think about that he would you would solve Custer wouldn't you of something that had that kind of symmetry left-handed and right-handed he started in Moorish tiles in I think the Alhambra and he speaks this and and and uses these wonderful tiles in an absolutely astonishing way which really holds you but having said one he was also capable of doing just one take and one take it was just was straight off the cuff he went to one of the concentration camps at the end of the war where so many of the Jewish people had been murdered his people and quite unprepared Lee he knelt down beside a pool which he realized contained the ashes of a thousand Jews and spoke well he didn't browser and he didn't repeat it these things inevitably take time there even an average documentary takes about three months to do from beginning to end I mean there are some that you can shoot above above one day at the cup file or something which obviously doesn't take that time but if you're going to take a considered subject three months is not unreasonable and if you're going to do a series of thirteen three years is pretty reasonable too and so we didn't have to hurry about getting a ascent of man off there which was on the air which was I think probably just as well because it was a very difficult concept to get hold of involved a lot of research even for Bruno who as he won't do everything and also was working together with Mick Jackson and Adrian Malone to work out where they were going to get the sort of sequences that they needed it took time when it was finished I think in many ways it was probably a greater achievement in that the problem of tackling theoretical concepts that the Bruno did throughout that was a with no immediately obvious visual material was a very difficult one two kappa well but but Brunner's burning personality I mean the intensity of his vision comes through so powerfully the when Hugh Weldon who was then a controller program directed television he was I think saw it he said that is an affirmation and I think what he meant was that it was an affirmation about mankind it was an affirmation of standards of scientific probity and scientific probing and scientific concentration which is paramount paramount quality in civilization oddly science is central and although it wasn't called civilization it's also about civilization I can't remember how old Bruno was when he took on this task but he was not a young man and I don't think he was a strong man but he desperately wanted to do it I mean he was really he didn't need a lot of persuasion because he knew I'm sure that he had it in him this was a vision of human progress and the progress of human knowledge which he had and which he wanted to share and it was quite soon after Sears was finished that he died he he lived long enough to know that it was a great series he lived long enough to know that it was a major milestone in television and I believe he was gratified and I am sure that he he saw it as one of the that they really wish to achieve with his life

Channel: mik99D

Views: 66,477

Keywords: Bronowski, BBC2, just humans.

Id: 22uUS8vq48c

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 10 2012