The Day Of Ragnarok
Dir John McGrath/GB 1965/38 min/BBC
Elizabeth Maclennan, Tamara Hinchco, Pauline Boty, Nicol Williamson
John McGrath’s remarkable short film, made for the BBC2 series Six, is about impending nuclear war. Almost dialogue-free, with an atmospheric Dudley Moore soundtrack, the film has been specially reconstructed from material surviving in the BBC Archive. Please note there are seven minutes of sound missing.
The Logic Game
Dir Philip Saville/GB 1965/60 min/BBC
David de Keyser, Jane Arden, Peter Henry, R.D. Laing
Also shown in the BBC2 series Six, Philip Saville’s The Logic Game features two characters playing out a complex guessing game. Informed by ideas of existential psychoanalysis (it includes an interview with psychiatrist R.D. Laing) the film aroused violent controversy when it was shown at the London Film Festival in 1964.