Listen to England: Derek Jarman’s The Queen is Dead

Derek Jarman was an extraordinarily productive artist. Across his 30-year creative life he worked within a wide range of formats, practices and forms, always questioning and stretching the capacities of whatever projects and technologies he took on. His restless work moved between filmmaking, costume design, set design, painting, gardening, autobiographical prose and poetry. Along with his 11 feature films, he completed dozens of shorts and music videos for an eclectic range of artists including Marianne Faithfull, Wang Chung, Marc Almond, Carmel, Easterhouse, Orange Juice, Bryan Ferry, Bob Geldof and Suede. His most significant collaboration in this field was with Pet Shop Boys, creating iconic music videos for the songs “It’s a Sin” and “Rent” (in 1987), as well as projections and designs for their first tour in 1989.

A number of the music videos Jarman made in the 1980s contain material that resonates with his wider film work, drawing on some of the same imagery, social concerns, landscape preoccupations (particularly of urban decay) and queer identities. Moving fluidly between Super 8, video and 35mm, they forge key connections with his more experimental features Jubilee (1978), The Angelic Conversation (1985), The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989) and The Garden (1990).

That said, Jarman was relatively dismissive of his music video work, regarding it as an important opportunity to experiment with the latest video technology but also a pragmatically necessary means of earning a living. The budgets for these videos in the late 1980s were often substantial and allowed him to experiment with equipment he couldn’t easily access for his more “personal” low-budget work (even his features were generally made comparatively cheaply). Although he plainly had an affinity with some of the artists he worked with on these videos, he mostly saw it as a form of advertising or promotion (which they generally were), where the musicians’ music and image took priority. Jarman also enjoyed working with the low-budget materiality of Super 8 and then blowing it up and transforming it through the application of various video processes, allowing him to experiment with its painterly dimensions and possibilities. As a collaborative form, music video had an affinity with Jarman’s wider artistic practice. Being able to incorporate Super 8 film – in many ways his preferred mode of cinema and the gauge he brought to the centre of his practice – was also an attractive impetus for working in this hybrid form.

I have deliberately left one important musical artist off the list above. In mid-1986 Jarman was commissioned to make a triptych of videos for critically lauded Manchester band The Smiths. Although this may now sound like an obvious collaboration – both The Smiths and Jarman were highly critical of the Thatcher government ensconced at the time while also speaking to the disenfranchisement of queer and other marginalised communities – Jarman never met the band and was hired by their management to complete this “long-form” work. Unlike most of the other music videos completed by Jarman, images of the artist (The Smiths and its lead singer Morrissey) appear nowhere in the 13-minute The Queen is Dead. Its triptych form and length – including three distinct but sometimes overlapping parts “scored” by the songs “The Queen is Dead”, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” and “Panic” – make it a work (in its full form) not easily co-opted by music television, a forum which generally favours the flashy three-to-four-minute promo.

Also surprising was the choice of the three songs welded together for this film. The first two were never released as singles but were instead key tracks on The Smiths’ celebrated album The Queen is Dead, released in June 1986. Mirroring the intense productivity of Jarman, the final track, “Panic”, was released as a stand-alone 45 a mere month after the album hit the racks. It went on to become the most widely circulated video of the three interconnected tracks.

Jarman’s approach to this extended video fitted well with The Smiths’ wider aesthetic. Although a highly visual band, they had never really embraced the form of the music video, mostly relying on the circulation of “live” performances recorded on shows like Top of the Pops. But they were also incredibly particular about the cover designs that appeared on their albums and singles as well as the advertising used to promote them. These helped frame the perceived queerness of the band, and also paid homage to important touchstones or influences of one kind or another, particularly for Morrissey. Although their singles did include images of some singers like Billy Fury and Elvis Presley – though never portraits of themselves – they were overwhelmingly of figures from 1960s British film, television and theatre such as Yootha Joyce in Catch Us If You Can (John Boorman, 1965), Pat Phoenix from the TV soap opera Coronation Street (1960-), Terrence Stamp in The Collector (William Wyler, 1965), and playwright Shelagh Delaney; or that could (also) be considered queer or homoerotic icons: Jean-Marais and François Périer (a cover each) in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950), Joe Dallesandro, Alain Delon, Candy Darling, James Dean and Truman Capote. During this era, Morrissey was often coy or reticent about revealing his sexuality – often suggesting a less definitive asexuality – but the imagery circulated around the band clearly signified a particular affinity and point of connection for some of its fans.

The nostalgic reference to 1960s British culture and specifically cinema is further highlighted by the opening of “The Queen is Dead”, which includes a prominent sample of musical hall and revue star Cicely Courtneidge singing the World War I-era “Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty” in Bryan Forbes’ The L-Shaped Room (1962). Like Jarman, The Smiths expressed both a love and a critique of the legacy of British culture throughout their work. But whereas The Smiths could be somewhat opaque in their application of this critique, Jarman was much more forthright in expressing his dismay at the legacy and policies of Thatcherism and their heartless implications for gay men in particular (Jarman himself would test HIV+ in late December 1986). Jarman’s The Queen is Dead speaks to this legacy and anger, and also paved the way for the more anguished The Last of England that followed the next year.

I think it’s also fair to suggest that The Queen is Dead is more of a Jarman film than a conventional music video promoting The Smiths’ music. Its three parts create a distinct whole, with imagery moving between each and direct parallels existing between the aesthetic form of the first and third segments. The propulsive music of the first and third sections – built around Johnny Marr’s attacking guitar and Mike Joyce’s crisp, almost martial drums – is also contrasted with the jangly guitars, strings and ironic “romanticism” of the middle “movement”: “And if a double decker bus crashes into us / To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die”. Consisting mostly of Super 8 footage transferred to video and then blown up to 35mm, the film as a whole is a kaleidoscopic but highly selective portrait of London in the mid-1980s marked by images of urban decay, twirling figures (guitars, flowers, crowns, bodies), icons of British culture, and other recurring motifs. It uses Jarman’s patented combination of speeded up imagery (aided by a low frame rate), rapid, jittery editing and superimposition to create a densely layered visual experience that both illustrates (we briefly see that “double decker bus”, for instance) and transcends the lyrics and music. There is also significant variety across these three parts. The middle section – “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” – is much more intimate, often using a blue filter to both draw us into the image and emphasise the abstraction and gender fluidity of the couple we see onscreen. But even the beauty of this layered imagery is somewhat undercut by the solarised and silhouetted shots of what appears to be a car on fire.

This image, as well as the opening shots of sped up clouds scudding over the Albert Memorial, also make a clear connection (at least for me) to Humphrey Jennings’ wartime films Listen to Britain (co-directed by Stewart McAllister, 1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). The shared community embraced by these two films made at the height of World War II – including that between sound and music – is contrasted with the much harsher and discordant combination of images, sounds and environments that we see and hear in Jarman’s The Queen is Dead. In Jarman’s film we see a blighted industrial landscape about to be transformed by the insidious processes of neoliberalism. Looking back from almost 40 years later, The Smiths’ music and Jarman’s films might appear emblematic of one particular vision of 1980s Britain. But they also both sit in stark contrast to mainstream British popular music and cinema of the time (such as the “heritage cinema” of Hugh Hudson’s Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, 1981), as well as the authoritarian nationalism and heartless “free” market ideologies boosted by Thatcherism. Both Jarman and The Smiths do recognise a British heritage – as plainly reflected in The Queen is Dead – but it represents a much more conflicted set of experiences and legacies.

The Queen is Dead (1986 United Kingdom 13 mins)

Prod: Yvonne Little, James Mackay, Mayo Thompson, Peter Walmsley Dir: Derek Jarman Phot: Christopher Hughes Ed: Sally Yeadon Mus: The Smiths