This programme contains some strong language
My father, who didn't like being called Dad, only Maurice,
photographed the beauty and might of post-war industrial Britain.
Maurice showed the triumphs of British industry
before it was destroyed and whole communities laid to waste.
At the time, my father had little idea of the significance of his
photographs, even though he was a pre-eminent industrial photographer.
That's me with him.
Maurice was an incurable romantic.
He had his first job at 15 with Rolls-Royce
making copper piping.
As a young kid, I worshipped Maurice. I loved his smell,
his laugh, everything about him.
Then, as a teenager, I became more rebellious and questioning.
I never really appreciated Maurice's photography, which I thought
glamorised industry in a romantic and unrealistic way.
Our relationship got somewhat better when Barney, my son, was born
and we had a family tradition
of doing our portraits on the same bench each year.
I do remember, though, Maurice being quite critical of my work
when I became a film-maker. We had such different styles.
Maurice's work was beautifully crafted. Mine was much more chaotic.
He thought me unappreciative of all he had done,
as well as thinking my work was too confrontational.
We were very different.
We went through a period of being very critical of each other.
It took time for us to enjoy our differences
and appreciate each other's work.
We were lucky that we had that opportunity.
My father died aged 94, and even though we'd become the best
of friends by then, there was still so much I didn't know about him,
so many questions I just hadn't asked.
Maurice made a decision very young to enjoy life as much as possible.
Even when we had no money, he took us on the most amazing holidays
though we'd be staying in a tent in the local campsite.
He shot this footage of us in the south of France.
Maurice never went on holidays as a kid
so he wanted to make sure we had what he didn't.
He carefully recorded it all on these home movies and gave us
instructions when we should perform our tricks.
This is my sister Ann, who was two and a half years younger.
My mother, Sonja, always managed to look like a movie star,
and my father loved filming her.
For me, Maurice was like Superman.
I was so proud of his wonderfully exaggerated stories,
and he was always up for a laugh.
THEY LAUGH
One of the things I learnt from him from the earliest age
was his love of the sun and being naked.
We're all, to a greater or lesser extent, a product of our parents,
and I still wonder how much of an influence he was on me.
Because of his success, I grew up in the south as a middle-class
kid, whereas Maurice grew up in a working class family in Derby
in the industrial north.
NEWSREEL: It's a proud claim that British railway passenger stock
is the finest in the world, and it's well merited,
as these pictures taken at Derby will show.
This is a frame-up, or rather frame-down, of a corridor coach
in the early stages of cutting, riveting and welding.
Maurice learned precision and technical excellence at Rolls-Royce,
which he applied to his photography.
CLANGING AND RUMBLING
RHYTHMIC HAMMERING
It's a nothing-looking picture when you pass it by, but pause
for a while and think, "How would it look if I could put light
"at the back of it? And how could I diffuse the light?"
And it was the reflections inside the tubes, actually,
which added to it.
I thought he was a very strong picture.
He looked quite evil in a way, and he wasn't very happy with me
because he was on piecework.
This ferocious look added to the picture,
although it didn't add to his pay packet!
For a photographer's photographer, he set the bar high.
He made factories look glamorous.
He made them look sexy,
he made them look really interesting.
And there is a romanticised notion of what that factory must be like.
He would set these things up.
They were just so beautifully constructed.
It was like a Hollywood brush had been put over them.
The lighting would be adjusted as well.
The factories, OK, you might think,
"Well, they're not realist. They don't look like that."
but I think what he was trying to achieve was the actual greatness
of factories and of British engineering at that time,
and the level of quality and excellence and everything
that we were doing in those places to promote them and to show people,
"Look at Great Britain."
Maurice was commissioned by the leading industrial companies
to promote their work.
His pictures were published regularly
in all the major newspapers.
After Maurice died, I realised there were just so many questions
I hadn't asked him about his life and how he'd grown up.
I hardly ever saw my grandparents, Daisy and Billy,
who lived in this street in Derby.
There had been some falling out
between my mother and Maurice's parents,
so I hardly ever got to see them.
Their lives had always remained a mystery to me.
There's a Broomfield signature, there.
I was born here, believe it or not! Ignore the accent.
I was born in Morley. It's about...between here
and Stanley Common, really. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, it's, er... My gran and great-gran, my mum,
everybody's all buried in Morley church. Are they?
You look at it there, you go to Morley church, it's like old
and the old pub's still there but the rest of it's all...
Because my father wrote about them not having enough money
for coal to keep warm and stuff. Yeah, you could pop up to Mapley.
I think they all stole it from Mapley off the top.
LAUGHS
Did they?
Maurice had never told me about the poverty and hardship
he'd grown up with, so when we came across these tape recordings
of Maurice it really surprised me.
I was born in the year of 1916, in February.
It was a very difficult time when my parents, who were very concerned
about money and virtually how to get
enough to provide heating and clothing and food.
It was a hard life, a very hard life.
My father was an artist.
He was a lace designer.
I think it was my father's influence that
influenced my work tremendously.
I visited Maurice's birthplace at Draycott for the very first time.
I had always imagined that my father had grown up on a farm,
but Draycott is an old milling town.
Now, though, all the mills have been converted into flats.
I discovered that Billy, Maurice's father, had worked in this mill
for many years as a lace designer.
This is one of Billy's designs.
It looks like lace, but is actually white ink on black card.
He even drew in the wrinkles to give it more realism.
BIRDSONG
While in Draycott, I realised that Maurice had created
a dream universe for himself.
He'd told me a lot about his grandparents' farm,
but never the harsh realities of growing up in a mill town.
When Maurice talked about industry,
it was always about the romance of creation.
He talked about it lovingly and the friendship and community.
In that period of time, I found that there was a lot of fun,
a lot of happiness, and pride in their work.
METALLIC CLANGING
People, they almost dressed up to go to work.
So they turned up to work in suits, very often. Jackets and trilby hats.
And this particular person, she's wearing very good shoes.
She takes them to work. And the head scarf,
I thought that was a lovely touch.
So, yeah, it was a smashing place to work.
It was one long social life. When I started there,
they had a small clubhouse.
Um, there were dances.
They had the ballroom, which was a sprung floor,
which was wonderful, a huge stage, grand piano,
a restaurant, a couple of bars,
and there was always something going on there.
And then in the summer they'd have an open day
where they'd have a funfair and races and all sorts of things.
It was, you know, it was a real family-orientated place to work.
They always took care of the families.
Maurice thought school a waste of time.
It interfered with his dreams and freedom.
I left school at 15.
I never really liked school.
I would spend my time, I think, looking out of windows and watching
the clouds go by, in a kind of dreamlike world.
I was thinking of a thousand things except the lesson.
I inherited his anti-school attitude. I failed my exams,
was expelled from my prep school,
and sent to a private boarding school in the country.
I think we all found boarding school very hard.
PLAYGROUND CHATTER
Here are some of my classmates.
We were 11 and stuck together, missing home so much.
I was bottom of the class.
This is my mother's father. I called him Gogo. He was left-wing
and intellectual, and he thought Maurice was a bad influence.
Your father is also late.
I'm not thinking you were difficult.
You were difficult. You know it.
I don't need to tell you.
Everybody knows how difficult
you were as a...as a child.
You still are, of course, but, er...
CHUCKLES
You have one funny, er...
..attitude to time.
You will say, "I come back in half an hour," and you won't come.
Maurice thought I'd learn more in the factories than at school,
so I started going on trips with him.
It was another world, both terrifying and exciting.
I also got to know Barbara,
who worked with my father for over 30 years.
Barbara was glamorous and fun,
and I developed my first real crush on her.
Maurice was a perfectionist, and the factories gave him the chance
to create whatever he wanted.
He'd close down the production line, repaint whole sections
of the factory, and take hours arranging his lights.
I could see how much he loved it.
I worked out that it would make a terrific picture if one could
take things through this.
The problem was not the subject but what you leave out,
and the background of this was a corrugated building
which absolutely overwhelmed the subject.
And, though I had a tremendous amount of lighting,
in no way could I combat this effect.
So I arranged for the management to come in at night.
It was an outrageous request, really.
So they turned up about 11 o'clock at night and we got to work.
We finished about three or four in the morning,
but I got this effect that I wanted.
ELECTRICITY BUZZES
HIGH-PITCHED CRACKLING
LOW RUMBLE
CLANGING
JETS OVERHEAD
This is an extraordinary high cooling tower,
and if one looks at the very bottom of it, you can see just a little
group of figures. And then halfway up, there's a platform sticking out
into the middle where there's two more figures.
Then near the top, there's one figure.
And the other figure you don't see, which is myself, which is
again jutting out over this completely mad idea that I had.
Though he was relaxed by nature,
that all changed when it came to photography.
This is my first camera Maurice gave me.
A 1936 Twin Reflex Voigtlander Superb.
It had no light meter,
and at first Maurice wouldn't give me one.
He would test me on the different ASA and F-stop settings
to get my eyes trained.
Maurice disapproved of holiday snaps and had strong views
about the photographs I took.
I remember a disagreement when I took a picture
of this donkey. My father thought it a waste because the donkey
was behind a fence and looked miserable,
while I thought that was the point of the picture.
My mother supported me
and proudly wrote "Photo: Nick" in the family album.
Maurice loved all things romantic, like this gypsy caravan.
He became great friends with these Romanies, who then sold it to him
because they were going motorised.
HORSE WHINNIES
Maurice shared his romanticism with us.
He survived the factories by creating this wonderful fantasy
world of make-believe and adventure.
Here we would barbecue sausages over an open fire, learn about trees
and plants, and spend some real time in nature.
We couldn't afford a house with a garden,
and this was my father's idea as an alternative.
This is Aunt Biddy and Uncle Charles.
I saw a lot of them, as I would visit them at school lunch break.
They had a bear called Benjamin
and lots of other animals to play with.
Uncle Charles worked with David Attenborough on the Zoo Quest
series. Benjamin had come to them just three weeks old, and my uncle
just fell in love with him immediately.
He brought Benjamin back to his teeny flat in London
and walked him on Hampstead Heath.
NEWSREEL: Good as gold, at least at this tender age of three months,
his daughter Caroline.
But the same can hardly be said for Benjamin, the beguiling
little Malayan honey bear.
Ben is the temperamental one of the family.
Mr Lagus, filming on location in Indonesia,
found Benjamin when the cub was only a few days old,
having been deserted by its mother.
But when these youngsters have been dealt with, it's time
for the oldest member of this delightful trio
meet a tame but nonetheless genuine flying squirrel.
This hungry youngster was found on the slopes of Everest when
Mr Lagus was with a party searching for the Abominable Snowman.
Today, it is a contented member
of England's most unusual and charming family.
Maurice had studied art and photography at night school,
which had enabled him to escape from actually working at the
factories and enter this magical world of bears and gypsy caravans.
I was offered a job with Rolls-Royce in Derby. This frightened me,
frightened me that, no matter how nice it was,
it wasn't under my control.
It made me feel that I must get away from it.
Otherwise, I'd be completely sucked into this burst of grey.
He didn't, definitely didn't want to be tied down to the life
that was here. He thought it was too constrictive.
He did kick against the traces.
You know, he did want something different.
He cut the apron strings once and for all of that.
He escaped to London.
He said, "No, it's not me. I'm free."
I learned on my trip back to Derby that Daisy, Maurice's mother,
had planned he would marry a girl living on their street. Practically
everyone living there worked for Rolls-Royce,
and the whole community was built around the factory.
But Maurice announced he would be marrying my mother,
a Jewish refugee and a foreigner.
The falling out between my mother and Maurice's parents meant
that we hardly ever saw them... Hello!
..but I never really quite understood what it was all about.
April and David lived on the same street as Daisy, my grandmother,
and they knew Daisy better than anyone.
She didn't like the Continent.
That brook of ours,
the Dover Straits, was a godsend to her.
Of course, that kept England English.
And you can safely say that she didn't like foreigners.
Period. Did she?
No, because it was out of her scope, wasn't it?
Yeah, it wasn't... Exactly.
If you... It wasn't her time.
Yeah. Her time was English.
Daisy had no idea how vulnerable my mother was as a 20-year-old Jewish
refugee who had just escaped from Czechoslovakia, and Maurice
mischievously made matters worse.
Maurice upset the situation when he told them her name was Lagus.
They thought she came from Lagos, that she was black.
I mean, whereas we might think it was funny, which it was,
it wasn't humorous, if you see what I mean.
They'd had some rather difficult experiences with the war.
The two families couldn't have been more different.
Working class English who didn't like foreigners
and Jewish foreigners who didn't like the biases of the English.
It's not surprising that the two families would never
really understand each other.
The Czechs never understood my father's humanitarian optimism,
which his work reflected so beautifully.
CLANGING
SAWING
My mother's family, who had lost half their relatives
in concentration camps, didn't share Maurice's pacifist outlook.
They had narrowly escaped themselves by fleeing across the mountains,
and like many Jewish refugees, felt they had to keep their Jewishness
secret. Because of this, I didn't learn about my own Jewishness
until I was in my 20s. I was raised as a Quaker.
When I came back from the First World War, I was an idealist
and we believed there will be a time
of real democracy where people... How should I say?
..simply like each other.
Through all my life, I came finally to the conclusion that this time
has not come and I am quite convinced it never will come.
I loved my father's romanticism and beliefs in the common good,
but was also very influenced by Gogo and the history
of my mother's Jewish family.
Gogo was with the British army when they liberated Belsen,
and I started making a film about him.
What was it like working in the camps?
Oh, God.
I tell you quite frankly, the first...
..the first two days, I was...
..so...out of my mind, I just couldn't grasp it
and I worked very badly.
Can you describe what it was like?
Simply, simply unbelievable.
I mean, there were thousands
of dead bodies lying about.
And...
..they were not so gruesome than those who survived,
who were just crawling about like, like, er...
..like beasts on...on the grass there.
And when we told them they can crawl out of the concentration camp,
you know, to get out of it, they were afraid.
They couldn't grasp it. They couldn't...
They thought it is all not true,
and it's only a German trick.
I have given up hope in mankind.
This time of general goodness
of people has not come and never will come.
It's just an idealism and will remain one. Nothing else.
Gogo wanted to teach me about the realities of war,
and he gave me a book, Scourge Of The Swastika,
detailing Nazi war crimes.
This led to a big disagreement with my father.
Maurice had been a conscientious objector during the war,
and worked with the Red Cross in Germany afterwards.
After the war, I went to Germany, great friends I had.
I discovered that people who had been fighting against each other,
in fact, got on very well together
because they were reduced to the basic things of life.
I thought that war was a breakdown of human intellect
when people were reduced to savages.
Maurice emerged from the war with his forward-looking attitude,
keen to put the horrors behind him. Growing up with Maurice, the two
things I remember he really concentrated on were photography
and the cannonball serve in tennis.
He played tennis at Lady Crossfield's,
the largest private estate in London,
where he had his first studio and darkroom.
NEWSREEL: In aid of the North Islington Infant Welfare Centre,
Lady Crossfield has held her annual garden party,
at which exhibition matches were played by several tennis stars.
Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone was present.
Lady Crossfield let Maurice set up shop in her stables.
It was a lucrative time to be an industrial photographer.
Millions were being poured into industry.
Maurice splashed out on this magnificent 3.5-litre MG,
which he would fill full of lights and take on jobs.
I remember he would take the seats out to sunbathe on his lunch break.
He'd say, "Just close your eyes. It's the best way to relax."
Yes, he was a good-looking man,
driving around in his MG, powerful MG.
Creating an impression
that was far more affluent than the truth!
CHUCKLES
A good actor.
My father took these self portraits around this time.
He quickly became the leading industrial photographer. He'd say
the secret is to charge more than everybody else.
In those days, it was looked down on to have a working class
accent, which my father did his best to lose.
Well, this is a challenge.
And it's a challenge which makes industry interesting, and I love it.
Take, for instance, this crucible of molten alloy.
Extremely hot, very difficult to photograph.
And at the same time, I had to register this movement
and then to capture some of the abstract quality
of glass-making with this bowl,
which I used in front of the camera.
Again, taken without stopping the worker in action.
Talking about the abstract quality
brings me to the matter of the sculptural forms
that one finds in industry. What are those?
Well, these are...this stalagmite-looking formation
actually rises of fat, which has dripped from filters,
and has built up this interesting pattern beneath the lathe.
I lay on my side to be able to get this picture.
I was proud of my father's success.
I'd take his photographic awards to boarding school with me
and proudly display them.
This was Grandma Daisy's favourite photograph of Maurice's,
which she showed to all her friends.
And this is the only photograph of Maurice with the Queen.
We continued to get on really well right through my teens,
even though I did get expelled from boarding school.
Then, after I came back home, we argued about small things.
After boarding school, I found it impossible
to readjust to family life.
I think he thought, how had he managed to raise
such a nincompoop who just didn't know how to do anything right?
He felt you didn't know anything about the physical world at all.
You couldn't fix anything.
And, of course, HE knew how to do everything right.
He was very precise, especially with, you know, his cameras.
I think he thought you didn't know what the hell you were doing
in terms of photography.
He was just very dismissive of you.
Maurice was a craftsman, great at building and fixing -
skills I didn't have, and I could feel his disappointment.
That was the start of many arguments, which also extended
to how we viewed each other's work.
I thought my father romanticised factory life,
and I had a very different view of the workers' lives.
At 15 years of age and they leave school, they discover
the outside world isn't what they were taught when they were in school
because they'll end up as factory fodder
in factories and in dead-end jobs.
If it was equal opportunities and equal job opportunities
like they're taught in school,
it would be Christ help the middle classes and the ruling
classes, because who the bloody hell would run their bloody factories
and produce the bloody wealth that they hold?
They're pushing out a myth to them kids
that you need not go into a factory.
LOUD BUSTLE
I left school at the age of 15 and a half.
Ruffwood Comprehensive School.
I went to work in a factory alongside many of my classmates.
We worked a few years in different factories.
And at the age of 19, 19 and a half, I got married.
I have two children, a boy and a girl,
and I'm now 25.
Joan Churchill knew my family better than anyone.
We met at the National Film School and made lots of films together.
And, of course, our son Barney.
Now, I wonder, knowing what Maurice's work is,
what on earth he must have thought of my photography, in particular.
Because everything I did was so...such the opposite of his.
You know, his was carefully lit and staged and...
..you know, very precise, and mine was exactly the opposite.
Hi, Oscar.
Is your mum in? No.
Where is she? At Christie's.
Here she is now.
What have you been up to? Huh?
What have you been up to, hmm?
Why has your mum had to send for me?
I, as you know, didn't think about lighting and was only thinking
about kind of following what was happening.
And I didn't think about framing, or... I mean,
it was just like the opposite of what Maurice had been doing.
Where did you belt your mother?
You ran like that as I was coming out
and I said, "Right, you've had it..." Look at... Look at me.
Look at me in the face. Look at me in the face.
Did you belt your mother?
I asked you a question.
Yes. Yes! Oscar, look at me.
Why did you belt your mother?
REPLIES INDISTINCTLY
Joan and I shot this film about the police in Blackburn,
an old mill town like where my father had grown up.
I think it brought back a lot of painful memories for him.
It was exactly what he had worked so hard to get away from.
Have you apologised to your mother since?
No, I bet you haven't, have you? Hm?
I want to hear it now.
"I'm sorry, Mother, and I won't do it again." Come on.
Sorry, Mum, and I won't do it again. Do you mean that?
God forbid you get around his dark room,
where everything had its place
and it was very organised and...
..smelly!
And his. Definitely his.
And he wasn't going to share the wealth.
He wasn't, you know... Well, his photography...
You weren't going to be able to use his cameras ever.
Yeah. It was very...he had a proprietaryness,
which I think came from his, you know, feeling that
we didn't know what the hell we were doing.
And you, especially.
Me, especially? Yeah.
But then, whose fault was that?
He should have raised you so he...
..so that he had confidence
in your knowing what to do with these tools.
And the story of his being really critical about your photograph
of the donkey behind the fence, that's a wonderful story.
He was telling you not to do it, not to do it.
No, you have to get the fence out of the way.
And then you did it anyway.
Out.
I think also Maurice and I had a very different
relationship to the moment in our work.
Maurice's moment was beautifully crafted.
My moment was born out of chaos and confusion, when forces collided
to produce a revealing scene. As with this one with Glen,
an eight-year-old who had stolen a toy pistol.
This is what they keep these places for. People who keep telling lies
and people who steal as well.
Because you have landed out
when you've not got your own way in school, haven't you, hm?
You've had tantrums, lost your temper.
Haven't you? Yes. Yes, so that's got to stop.
Otherwise, you finish up in here.
And the only person you can lose your temper with is you, isn't it?
Hm? Yes.
Have a good look round. Have a look round what it's like.
Not very nice.
Bars at the window outside there,
no television, no comics,
no mattress to sleep on.
When you go to sleep at night, do you have a light on sometimes? Hm?
Do you get a bit frightened in the dark? Yes.
Sometimes. Do you? Yes. Mm, well, it's very dark in here.
Joan and I had hoped the film
would lead to changes in police training.
Instead, the film was banned for 30 years and only made available
to specialist groups like criminologists and sociologists.
Juvenile Liaison was too real and unsparing for my father.
Maurice also believed, along with the prevailing view of the time,
that art needed to be meticulously planned and films needed
to be objective and scripted.
You told me one thing - you don't use a script.
Do you agree with this, that you don't use a script?
Well, I mean, I think that - especially with the kind
of films that I've been making -
if you are going to a group of people and go into an area
which you don't know very much about, then the film
has to emanate from the area which you're making the film.
Otherwise, if you go along with a script, you're, in a sense,
imposing your ideas on the situation.
I think the only way in which...
You're wrong, you'd surely do research.
Surely you'd go and live with them and get your research and hear
people talk and then write your script?
I've never sort of said, "Well, I think we'll have you walking
"through this door and then I'm going to ask you this question,
"and it'll be useful if you said what you said yesterday to me,"
because I think that's the best way of getting people to dry up.
I think now that new equipment has come along which is more mobile,
and in fact two-man crews can quite effectively work, it's no longer
necessary to impose a rigid structure on the situation.
Yes, I-I-I admire your optimism.
MEN SING
My grandfather Gogo had done the art direction on
the socialist film Hej Rup! about a building workers' strike.
SINGING CONTINUES
There was a love of political socialist films on the Czech side
of the family, from Charlie Chaplin to Ken Loach, and it was my mother
who was really encouraging when I was just starting out.
My very first film was about the industrial north,
the world my father had shown me on those trips to the factories.
The Britain Maurice had grown up in.
I had great neighbours.
It was a street fit to live in, I'll be truthful.
When I come to live here,
you could leave your doors open and you wouldn't miss a thing.
I'll tell you how good it was. At that time, I lived
in the basement. I used to open my basement window.
Well, it'd be my turn one day to make a pot of tea.
And buy cake, and pass it through the window.
We'd all sit around my window.
Well, then it would be someone else's day turn the next day
and that's the way it went on.
When we came under demolition, we were all under the impression
that it wouldn't have been too bad because we'd have all been together.
RUMBLE, CRASH
WAILING
SHOUTING
I said, "Well, we may not have the good times as we had,
"but at least we know that we're together."
But that thing didn't help.
I was somewhat naive, as someone who had grown up in the south
and rarely travelled to the north.
Ethel, my friend, tried to educate me politically.
Maybe it's just, Nick, that I'm so sceptical.
I'm so sceptical that the working class position will ever change.
I know it could change, in actual fact. The working class position
could change, but it won't change through the media.
And that's why I'm so sceptical about the media.
It won't change by films, television, papers.
It will not change because, as you've just said yourself,
it's middle class views.
It's controlled and owned by the middle class, who put
across what is in their best interest.
So, in actual fact, I'm very sceptical about them ever changing
the working class position. They just cannot.
The only people who can change the working class position
are the working class themselves.
Why do you think I'm making it, then?
I'm asking you that. Why are you making this?
It's only personal self-satisfaction,
that's all that it must be.
CLAMOURING
ALL SHOUTING
I realise now, looking back, that my father wasn't interested
in showing conflict. He was a pacifist through and through.
His work was about celebrating
the good and the possibilities of the future
in the world he had grown up in and loved.
Because of my middle class upbringing,
I realised I was like an outsider looking in,
whereas my father was part of that world.
My mother, on the other hand, coming from a more intellectual background,
had always wanted my father to show the tough side of industry.
She could be quite critical of his work
for glorifying the realities of working in a factory.
WHIRRING
I felt the same feeling of wanting to show things
in the best light towards industry.
There were times when I could have gone over on the other side.
There's always two sides to many things.
But I felt, in fairness to the employees,
not to downgrade it,
but to upgrade it.
Looking back, I think my father and I were competing for my mother's
approval, and I'm not sure that either of us
were really aware of it at the time.
My father used to always joke about the young lion coming
into the jungle who could roar louder than the old one.
Maybe it was that.
I think most of my friends were very intimidated by my mother,
but she and I always had a very special closeness.
I was a little bit wary of her.
I don't think I...maybe there was an anger in your mother.
I don't know what she'd experienced
in Czechoslovakia before they left.
And I always felt that she was slightly...
..slightly critical of Maurice, of his sort of casualness.
He had some of the same qualities as you, Nick. He sort of gives
the impression of being sort of almost lackadaisical, but actually
there's a fierce determination there, hidden.
Well, maybe my mother was sort of very ambitious in lots of ways.
Well, she was certainly ambitious for you -
I was very aware of that - and adored you.
Sitting in the room where I probably last saw her,
at the screening,
when you showed your mother and father and myself,
and I forget who else was there,
of Tattooed Tears - one of your first films.
Castro!
Joan and I made the film Tattooed Tears in the US,
and then screened it to family and friends back home.
Carabello! Come up for lunch. You go into 21.
Chino was a tough institution with a lot of gang reprisal killings.
Hardened gang members were mixed in with innocents like Brian.
He'd picked up more time than the original sentence
just defending himself.
The longer y'all keep me in this institution, you understand me,
the more angry and frustrated I'm going to get, you understand me?
Because I cannot stand this place, you understand me?
And know what I want to learn
and do what I want to achieve, you understand me?
As long as I stay in here, I just get more problems and more problems,
and deeper and deeper I'm getting into.
Right now I'm just ready, you understand me, to just get off
on somebody stabbed me, you understand me,
so y'all just lock me up in one of these prisons somewhere.
I can't handle this, you understand me?
Joan and I had been very proud of the film. It had led to sentencing
reforms. But at the end of the screening,
my father just got up and said nothing.
But did he ever express his opinion?
Did he ever say, "I'm proud of you," or, "You've done a marvellous job"?
I don't ever remember that happening.
Now, if you could only turn the camera on Nick Broomfield
at this moment, you would see that he's actually crying.
And I don't think we helped either, at that point.
So I think, you know, we - or I -
didn't appreciate Maurice's photographs in the '70s.
What little I saw, I didn't appreciate.
But I sure appreciate them now.
Now, this government wants the greatest possible cooperation
with both sides of industry and will go a long way to get it,
but we will NOT, repeat, NOT print money
to finance excessive pay settlements.
Maurice retired in the late '70s.
This coincided with the ongoing closure of masses of factories.
It really does sadden me to see our industries disappearing,
the dereliction of the steel mills.
NEWSREEL: Steel has been made on this site for two centuries.
The closure of the Bilston plant has meant the loss of 2,500 jobs.
And I mean, there were a lot of people who were made redundant.
And when they were made redundant, that was it.
They were asked to leave and their desk was cleared for them.
It sort of left a nasty taste.
But then they closed it down.
We had to strip all the machines down into sections
and that was the end of the building. Closed.
The majority of people did similar service to me, 44-odd years.
They were the cream of engineers, they really were.
Very highly trained, yeah.
And you've got to do a very accurate job, because of people's lives
depending on that engine being made perfectly.
We're in Derby tonight at the headquarters of Rolls-Royce
for a special programme on the day the company announced
it was to shed 4,600 jobs.
Well, that is a huge blow for Derby.
Let's just put this company into some context.
Rolls-Royce is the city's biggest private employer
with around 16,000 people working here.
Maurice's photographs were now historic record
of Britain's industrial achievements.
Maurice packed up his studio in Highgate, and my parents
realised their dream and moved down to the country
to this madly impractical property typical of my father.
It quickly became a paradise for Joan and our son Barney,
and there was much nude sunbathing.
CHILDREN PLAYING
We'd moved then into Sussex into Dean's Watermill,
and it was the most delightful place with the old mill,
which I'd restored, and the river and the gardens.
My parents were both now more vulnerable and softer.
My mother planted a market garden.
They dug a pond and filled it with precious fish.
And Gogo's laughter and love for life returned with the birth
of our son, Barney.
My father was now hardly working, and his mother, Daisy, would come
to stay after Pop died.
And then there was Daisy, who used to...
..come down and spend, like, a long time in Sussex.
I remember your mother just, like, rolling her eyes and like,
"Oh, my God, what are we going to do with her?"
You put her in the... They put her in this... The caravan -
the gypsy caravan - that was her home in the middle of the winter.
And she always put on a good face
with her clacking false teeth, big smile.
And, uh...
She was sort of up here for meals and I think... I don't know
what she would do the rest of the time.
She'd go back to her caravan.
Daisy was never really forgiven for not accepting my mother
all those years ago.
That's Daisy on the left with her sisters.
She was one of 13 children.
Born in 1886 on this farm,
Daisy grew up in the heart of white rural Britain - a world
that has long since vanished.
The furthest she would ever travel
was on a day trip to the seaside.
I have to confess to somewhat blaming my father
for not sticking up for Daisy a bit more.
Fortunately, I did stop doing industrial photography
in time for us to do travels together.
These were the lovely things which my wife and I enjoyed.
We had wonderful times.
She accompanied me on trips to Pakistan and all over the world -
wherever I could.
While my parents were enjoying their retirement, I started making
a film in the Nevada desert about a legalised brothel.
Ladies.
Ladies, would you like to introduce yourself?
I'd had real problems getting the women to appear in the film
and my mother had usefully suggested I pay them. The ethics of the time
were that you didn't ever pay anyone to be in a documentary.
"They're prostitutes," she said, "pay them!"
And by the next day, I had everyone in the film.
I used to call home from a phone booth in the middle of the desert,
then one night, just before Christmas, my father answered.
My mother had a spot on her arm. They'd seen a specialist
and it turned out to be cancerous.
At first, we couldn't believe it was anything too serious.
My father spent all his time looking for cures,
but by June - three days before her 60th birthday -
my mother died.
It was all so quick.
This is the last of the home movies my father shot.
How does it affect my life?
No words can express it - it's just a void.
You go around, think of her or don't think, you try to do other things,
and, of course, you are filled with remorse
but you're filled also with guilt...
..because you always feel that you could've done something.
It's the most horrific, horrific, terrible experience.
My father's darkroom went into decay.
He never took another industrial photograph again.
Very quickly, the whole place went to pieces.
I took these pictures shortly after Sonya died when my father
came to visit in California.
It hit him hard.
He let himself go.
Bottles all over the place.
He used to keep the distilleries in work. Oh, he did.
It was a very, very deep depression - very deep.
Well, you looked at him and possibly thought
he's never going to climb out.
I was in despair at one point.
It's no place to be alone right out in the country
after my wife died.
I think, you know, I think he just stopped
looking after anything after your mother died.
I think the life had gone out of the place.
It was kind of dead and overwhelming.
I remember those long winter nights just sitting huddled in front
of the fire, just as close as you could get.
You know, you'd be singeing your knees
just to keep the rest of your body from freezing.
And then you'd quickly sort of scamper off to bed
and everybody had hot water bottles
because it was impossible to put your feet down in that cold bed.
It was a barn.
I mean, imagine! A real barn and no insulation - just fucking freezing.
It was my mother who had done those unnoticed details to keep
us all happy.
I hadn't realised how much my mother had devoted herself to keeping
the family together until she was gone.
I had relied on her opinion for so many things.
She was the one I'd always talk to.
All those conversations I couldn't have any more.
I plunged myself into work.
I went to South Africa.
It was just before Mandela's release and the neo-Nazi party
were threatening war.
This is their leader, Eugene Terreblanche.
I decided to experiment by putting myself into the films.
Stop it now. Excuse me, Mr Terreblanche? Yes?
I'm sorry about, the, you know, mix up last night.
Listen, my good friend, this is the last time that one of your people -
I don't mind whether it's a woman or not -
be cheeky with me, you understand?
This is my country. This is my place.
This is my day.
And this man, I said in Ventersdorp,
I tell you people when he can take shots from us,
but he's like a bloody monkey.
He's hanging on that camera
like a monkey in a bloody tree. He is a monkey.
You are a monkey.
He definitely is. A monkey. Put off that.
After shooting the scene, the guy just behind me and his friends
tried to pick a fight.
I received a couple of death threats -
one to Maurice's answer machine.
Years later, he would say this when interviewed about me.
Always getting a bit worried because, in my opinion,
he put himself at quite a lot of risks.
He works very, very hard, but he's...
..always had a calling towards the type of film that he's doing.
Just as I probably had towards people in industry.
My father's negatives - which were stored in a damp garage -
all started to decompose.
They would remain untouched for 25 years, and, in that time,
Maurice no longer thought of himself as a photographer.
These are self portraits my father took around this time.
My father's romanticism was his protection and, without it,
after my mother died, he was lost and couldn't work.
It took a few years of hard drinking, some bad dates
and an aborted attempt to sail around the world
for him to get over it...
..and then he met Suzy.
The transformation in Maurice was so extraordinary.
He fell in love.
His joy for life and romanticism returned.
Maurice and Suzy both had this amazing ability to live life
to the full.
And he started painting, which is what he had always wanted
to do all his life - he wanted to be an artist - and I think
what happened is that he was not allowed to do it
because he had two children and he had to provide for his family,
and that was kind of the deal,
and then he got free of all that and he had a rebirth at the age
of God knows what.
How old was he?
He was 76.
MAURICE: A bit of luck on my part -
I met Suzy doing an art course.
I was painting and she was etching.
It's very fortunate because it gelled, they say.
It enriched my experience, I suppose, of life.
Maurice's courage, aged 76, to fall in love and start all over again
was an inspiration.
They were married when Maurice was 78.
Suzy was just as extraordinary - determined to live life to the full
and savour every moment.
Well, hm, I had a very strange phone call from my aunt Suzy
and she said,
"Frankie, I've been at a course at West Dean,"
which is a wonderful place you can do art courses,
"and I met this chap...
"..and he gave me a lift home..."
So, I thought, that's really nice.
"..in his rather fine Jaguar."
I thought it was even nicer,
"..and then it went wrong and the car wouldn't start
"and so he had to spend the evening with me and that's it, really."
And from then on, Maurice was a part of the family.
So that's when I first heard of Maurice.
And could you tell that it was likely
to be an enduring...?
Well, my aunt didn't usually, like, ring me up and tell me she'd met
a bloke whose car had broken down and stayed the night,
so I thought this was something really rather special.
They hit it off.
They went on holidays that were amazing - even up to the ages of 90,
going down the Orinoco River, wherever that is.
They didn't go on, like, cruises - they went on cargo ships.
Always Maurice with his camera, of course, and with their sketchbooks.
And always coming back with rich photographs, paintings, sketches,
memories, and they just went off together and disappeared for ages.
And it was an amazing relationship, in my view.
It was just one of those things
that they just really clicked.
And they had this love of art, this love of creativity,
but it wasn't just that -
it was something else, which I don't think I can describe.
After so many years of neglect, Maurice's negatives were decomposing
badly, giving off a toxic smell.
The V&A had taken his collection of 50,000 negatives as a record
of industrial Britain and the team sorting through
had to do so outside
so as not to become overwhelmed by the fumes.
I have to say,
working with Maurice
was one of the highlights of my career.
We'd spend our time going through his negatives,
which he used to joke about because the negatives at this point
were in... Some of which were not in a good state at all.
So he would joke... It was quite stinky. Exactly.
Exactly, so he'd joke about kind of me coming down to spend time
around his stinky old negatives.
And we'd talk through as we were kind of going through the work,
and I always remember him telling me about how when he first met Suzy
she was going off to Mexico.
He told me he'd kind of invited himself.
I think he'd actually just turned up at the airport and said,
"I'm coming with you,"
and then they went and had adventures in Mexico.
That always struck me as one of the most wonderful stories -
just true to Maurice's character in terms of this kind of romanticism.
It was Suzy who really liberated Maurice and freed his spirit.
She encouraged him to experiment with his painting
and everything else.
But he was having fun.
He was having great fun.
He was getting over his inhibitions.
He was getting... Literally getting over his inhibitions.
And some of these are so big, wild and...
Because he was...
Actually, you know, when I first met Maurice, he hadn't got over Sonya...
..which is why I held off for such a long time,
because he really hadn't.
These are lovely pictures.
'87 - that was when he was having
real fun, real fun.
I just said, "Splosh it, just splosh it." Mind you, it was very...
I so admired the idyllic life Maurice and Susie were living.
They came and stayed while I was making Kurt and Courtney -
a nightmare of a film.
I know Maurice worried I was going to alienate the Hollywood community
at this ACLU Awards dinner.
After Courtney's many attempts
to close the film down,
for me it became a story about freedom of the press
and free speech. Courtney, why have you personally,
like, threatened journalists in the past?
Have I threatened them?
Yeah. Well, because it's my right to do it. It's not against the law,
but it doesn't mean I'm going to take them to court
unless they lie. Don't lie.
But I mean... And when I was
really young, you know, I didn't know that, like, I was weird.
I grew up with hippies, so I never knew that, like, you know,
I was bugging anybody,
so when I kind of got crap for it, it freaked me out,
but I don't want to talk about it because I'm so happy.
But what about death threats?
We'd been on the shoot for 14 weeks
and I was desperate to finish.
I had no money to pay the crew, but I also had to get an ending,
even if it meant going up on stage unannounced.
Unfortunately, my cameraman started having a panic attack.
I don't want to appear to be a party pooper,
but in the interests of free speech
I wanted to ask a couple of questions.
I think Hollywood always has a problem distinguishing reality
from myth or image,
and unless it is considered appropriate behaviour to threaten
or cajole or manipulate journalists -
esteemed journalists who have written unflattering reviews -
I find it a strange decision on the part
of the ACLU to choose Courtney Love as a special guest here tonight,
and to Courtney Love, I would like to just ask what you feel...
Get off the fucking stage!
That's the president of the ACLU you can hear shouting.
Excuse me, sir, you're not invited here,
you're not part of the programme, get the fuck out.
He's a good friend of Courtney's. This clearly wasn't going to be
my entree into the world of after-dinner speakers.
Kurt and Courtney was Maurice's least favourite of my films.
He could never sit through the bit of me being kicked off stage.
Around this time, though, we began to accept each other's differences.
There was a reinvention of our love
and we started looking at what we really liked about each other.
Oddly, it was the ultimate success of Kurt and Courtney which brought
us all closer together. A friend with a gallery suggested
we did a joint exhibition with Barney as well - who by now
was 18 and also a photographer.
This gave me the opportunity to really celebrate Maurice's work
and set up other exhibitions - something Maurice would never do,
being far too modest.
I offered to make a selection of prints for the exhibition.
His prints were stored in the mill and untouched for 25 years.
It was while sorting through them I realised I'd never
really studied his pictures before -
the way he had positioned each person with such precision
to get the right glance, the angle of the face, the hand gesture -
which he brought out of the normal
by the intensity of his lighting.
Maurice had a wonder in how things are made and in the skills
of the workers in creating the final product.
When you started promoting his photography,
that was a really beautiful thing to do, and I think
that he took pride in it once again.
I remember spending hours going through his photographs
with him and suddenly his photographs were everywhere -
exhibitions, people were talking about them,
he was giving interviews.
It was just an incredible change in his persona.
Now, there were exhibitions and lectures all over the world -
the V&A, the Science Museum, Malta, Los Angeles.
It was one of the happiest periods in Maurice's life.
When Tony Benn opened the exhibition he had at the Science Museum,
Tony Benn commented that he wished that young people should come
and see those photographs to look at Britain's history.
He is recognised as being Britain's greatest applied photographer.
He brought his own sensibility into them, and I think that's why
they're so powerful - is that they have that really strong
humanitarian sort of ethos in them.
He really cares about showing people
as well as forms and light and colour.
My favourite picture.
She's assembling parts and she's testing these enormous cogs and
wheels, but what you really get is a very - actually very beautiful -
woman and very deep red lips surrounded by these sort of...
These arrays of parts that take on a sort of almost
Japanese Oriental repeating pattern with sort of a greenish tinge
to the room, which, clearly, I think, does come from his lights
and the shadows of the parts repeating,
so it's very elaborate.
Hello, I'm Jason Solomons. A boutique guide, if you will -
tonight sees the opening of a of an exhibition and it's called
The Broomfield Photographs.
I look at these photographs and they are beautiful pieces of work.
Turns out that Maurice is Nick's father,
and both Broomfields are here today to join us to talk about how one's
work has inspired the other.
Well, welcome to the Broomfields.
Well, hello. Thank you.
Who shall we begin with? Shall we begin with seniority?
I think we should start at the very beginning. It's a very good place
to start. So Maurice, Dad - if I may call you that -
so this was your job?
You were a professional chronicler of industry.
My work was really to crystallise things that were happening
in industry and make drama out of industry.
I must confess, I used industry like a stage - stage lighting,
lots of light, very dramatic, and it produced pictures which made
the industry, whatever it was, stand out, literally stand out
from the mundane pictures that you generally
get without lighting.
So, Maurice,
I mean, was it always the still camera for you?
Yes, I really centred on still cameras because I really wanted
to make a single statement - not a continuous investigation.
I left that for Nick to follow up later.
Did your dad's kind of eye, do you think,
get transferred, in any sense?
I mean, just the awareness of the visual and the way things look
and that you can record things through cameras and stealing light?
I think, almost in a subliminal way, I just sort of grew
up with these amazing photographs.
And then I discovered actually that film, in a way, you can tell
a more complicated story, and it's just an extension of that.
Yep.
Will you let me know what she is?
OK.
You don't have any secret cameras on your belt, Nick?
No, no, I just have this rather large one right here.
Maurice's favourite film of mine was Aileen Wuornos. Being very much
against the death penalty himself, Maurice felt the film showed
the humanity of Aileen and the futility of executing her.
Aileen had been the victim of a long history of abuse herself
from the age of seven.
Hello! Hey, how you doing? Good.
Good to see you.
It's good to see you.
Hi, Nick. Hi, how are you?
I'm doing all right. How are you doing?
Good. Check out the orange shirt!
Was it orange before?
No, they changed it. It was...
They got this new thing that to wear the orange shirt out for rack
or whenever you get out of your cell. Like, death row
is never escape!
Nobody on death row has ever escaped, right?
And they're acting like we're escape risks or something.
What's it like being in here all the time?
What's it like being in here?
Well, here, it's OK.
It's all right.
But, you know, you have your problems with some staff
don't like you.
"Oh, you're a serial killer!"
You know, biz and stuff, and so they, you know, some staff
won't treat you right because of who you are. Have you got any friends?
You can't be in control of everybody.
Have you got any friends here at all?
No, I stick to myself.
I just stick in the cell with myself.
I don't even care about going outdoors. There's nothing out there.
I don't smoke any more. So...
So what's your day like? How does it start?
I spend 24/7 in the cell watching TV, reading the Bible,
writing letters to Dawn. Um...
..sitting around doing a lot of thinking,
preparing, memory...
going back in time,
memory of everything I've been through in my life,
and then just preparing for my death, getting all the tears out
of me and stuff so I won't cry... So you won't cry?
..cos it is going to be a little bit tough when I go... Huh?
Getting all the tears out of you?
Yeah, because I don't want to be in the execution chamber,
crying my eyes out, and I'm not going to.
I'm going to tough it out as tough
as I can, just lay on the table, give everybody a little smile,
and close my eyes and go.
We three started to hang out a lot.
It helped seeing Maurice through Barney's eyes
and what a great relationship they had.
Suzy and her grandchildren would take our photos, sitting
on the same bench every year.
They created this beautiful world, they were the epicentre of,
you know, the entire family. The whole house
was this furnace of love.
People just came and got drunk and warm and cosy.
That was my memory of when I really knew Maurice. He was with Suzy,
and that house was this beacon.
Barney, who was just starting as a cinematographer, would practise
shooting hours of footage, hanging out with Maurice.
Hi. I can hear someone moving around.
Oh, my God!
HE TALKS QUIETLY
Maurice now transferred all his love and fascination for industry
and mechanical things to his ancient Jaguar sports car.
And it's never worked since?
Never...never let me down, you mean.
BARNEY CHUCKLES
It's got really beautiful curves, though.
That's it.
Maurice had a habit of puffing out his cheeks when stressed - a habit
I was recently surprised to find myself doing too.
You have to go through this ceremony.
It's the equivalent to praying to her.
ENGINE STARTS AND STOPS
ENGINE STARTS
He just made old age look fucking cool.
He made, like, that is the kind of dude that I want to be
when I'm 94.
BANG
What was that? She really warms up, you see.
Too much juice on the carburettor.
CAR HORN BEEPS
I thought Barney would be driving. Who? Barney would be driving!
Yes. And what will the insurance say?
Come on, Barney, get him out!
Shall we go driving it? You coming in?
You drive. No, no, you two.
Oh, you should come in, Susie.
I'll sit it in the back.
No, no, I'm as happy as Larry. I'm doing my thing.
Oh, come on! Have a lovely time, boys.
I really admired the relationship he had with Suzy, and I think
that kept him really young.
I think what I learned from Maurice was his ability
to really relax.
BANG
Splutter, splutter!
It seems to have died.
Yep, it did.
I'll have to leave it for a bit.
He was so particular about his photography and so meticulous
and I don't think took a lot of short cuts.
But with everything else, it was all a little bit of glue
there, a little bit of tape here, like, it was a miracle it didn't explode.
Tinkering with mechanical things was part of Maurice's industrial
heritage from Derby, and he loved it.
I went with Maurice on his last visit to Derby for an exhibition
of his work.
He found it hard to deal with how drastically
the city had changed.
The carriageworks, where he was briefly employed,
had been the pride and joy of the community. Maurice's father,
Billy, had worked at the railways for over 30 years.
Billy hand-drew the moving parts of each locomotive
so they could be referred to when ordering parts.
Every year, there was a flower show, a bring and buy store, and tours
around the factory for the workers' families.
After 180 years, the works were closed. All Billy's drawings
were thrown into a skip and lost. Maurice found it heartbreaking
that the skills and expertise of generations of the most highly
trained craftsmen in the world were being allowed to die out.
The pride of the working class community that Maurice had
grown up in no longer existed.
Maurice could still drive to the mill from his and Suzy's house.
But this was to be one of his very last visits.
We had learnt to reinvent our relationship and now very much
enjoyed each other's company, often having conversations
about nothing in particular.
You know, we're having gas put in. Are you going ahead with that?
Yeah, I think so.
This must be one of the most boring takes one could possibly make -
two old fuddy-duddies talking, "Oh, how's the tractor?" "We're having the gas put in."
"Oh, when are the cows coming back?"
But, you know, we like having these kind of conversations
cos they're normalcy, aren't they?
Absolutely.
It's a continuity...
Fundamental. ..isn't it?
But Maurice has a very metaphysical take on how people should take
care of things cos they just kind of pass on, don't they?
Whatever we have on this Earth is... Very temporary.
We never own it.
We temporarily keep it. We temporarily keep it.
Everything is on a kind of leasehold, really.
Keeper one and keeper two. Absolutely. We've got the same hands, the same keepers.
That's right. The lock keepers.
Farmer hands.
Yeah. This one is a bent finger.
Really? You can't straighten it?
No, it's abduction. Is that from tennis?
Abduction? Mm.
It's the...
So it's swinging your handbag too much,
and it contracted there.
I knew you had a handbag!
No, I didn't, I gave it up when I saw what was happening.
A couple of years later,
I was alarmed to notice I was getting the same
bent finger myself.
Maurice's legacy was to celebrate the craftsmanship of the working man
whose skills are so rarely appreciated.
Maurice lived very happily to the grand old age of 94.
From his bed, he drew a picture of two doves canoodling
in a drainpipe outside his hospital window.
FACTORY ACTIVITY
AEROPLANE HUMS
CHILDREN PLAY