BOOTLEG FILES 848: “Dylan Thomas” (1962 Oscar-winning documentary short featuring Richard Burton).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: It doesn’t appear to have been released.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There could be a rights issue preventing its release.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
Here’s a question for Academy Award trivia buffs: What is the only Welsh film to win an Oscar? The answer is the subject of this week’s column: “Dylan Thomas,” which earned the 1962 Best Documentary Short Subject Award.
Viewed today, “Dylan Thomas” isn’t much of a documentary. Indeed, one comes away from the film with no great insight into the life and literary output of the great Welsh writer, who is barely seen in the film. However, the film is rich in Welsh atmosphere and offers excerpts of Thomas’ writing recited by another grand product of Wales, Richard Burton.
Having Burton in this film is somewhat surprising, as this was produced when Burton was engaged in the creation of “Cleopatra.” It is to filmmaker’s Jack Howell’s credit to snag Burton as an on-screen presence at a time when he was at the center of global attention during the various scandals that engulfed “Cleopatra.”
“Dylan Thomas” opens with Burton in a windy field looking at the camera and discussing Thomas’ death (he passed away at the age of 39 in 1953). “Wherever it is – and it can’t be Hades – you can bet that Dylan has his friends,” Burton declares. “Standing among them, brave and bold, talking with the best, occupying the only true position – as he said once – for an artist anywhere: upright.”
From there, the movie goes to the beginning of Thomas’ life with a montage of twilight photographs of Uplands, the town where Thomas was born. Burton reads from Thomas’ autobiographical writing about the “ugly, lovely town” of his origins. This gives way to footage of the Welsh shoreline while Burton reads more of Thomas’ writing and the soundtrack is punctuated with the sounds of seagulls, waves and wind.
The film detours from Wales to London pubs where Thomas found comfort as his literary career took off. Burton appears on camera again, sitting at a bar while smoking a cigarette and reading from a journal that contains Thomas’ writing of his appearance, which included artistic putdowns of being “a bombastic adolescent provincial Bohemian with a thick-knotted artist’s tie made out of his sister’s scarf, she never knew where it had gone, and a cricket-shirt dyed bottle-green; a gabbing, ambitious, mock-tough, pretentious young man; and mole-y, too.” The camera catches a framed drawing on the wall of a young Thomas, the first time the viewer gets to see what he looked like.
Burton is then seated in between a bored couple looking at the table in front of them while the actor addresses the camera with more quotes from Dylan’s work. From there, the film switches to views of the Welsh town of Laugharne, where Thomas resided. A framed photograph of Thomas in a pub gives the viewer a more accurate portrait of Thomas than the earlier drawing. Another photo of Thomas, sitting a table in a pub with an unidentified woman, is shown, as well as two brief shadowy views of Thomas that are barely on screen for a few seconds.
And herein lies the dilemma of “Dylan Thomas.” Yes, the writing is brilliant and Burton’s recitation gives it a rich aural dimension that resonates with wickedly poetic flair – sadly, we never hear Thomas’ voice, even though he made multiple recordings. The montages and footage of the Welsh landscape and residents offers a colorful consideration of the environment that fueled Thomas’ work.
But for those who expect a documentary to present something in the way of biographical content, “Dylan Thomas” is elusive with its subject. Even the most basic data of his death is opaque: “And far away in the west, across the sea he loved, he died.” No information on where or when or how.
One could assume that filmmaker Howell was aware that his primary audience didn’t need to have a regurgitation of data points. The film, originally titled “A Tribute to Dylan Thomas,” was produced by Television Wales and the West – a Welsh audience was already more than familiar with Thomas’ life and career, and the title makes it clear the film is a tribute and not an encyclopedia article.
However, the film obviously made an impression outside of Wales. In its Oscar competition, “Dylan Thomas” outpaced two intensely American productions – a profile of astronaut John Glenn and a recalling of the creation of the Berlin Wall – to win the top prize.
Over the years, “Dylan Thomas” became mostly forgotten. The Academy Film Archive restored the film in 2000, but to date there is no U.S. commercial home entertainment release – it is unclear why it was never made available, though perhaps there might be rights-related issues tied to Thomas’ writing. A truncated and none-too-pristine version of the film is on YouTube – this seems to have come from a 16mm print and not the Academy’s restoration.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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