Monitor

Season 5

Fortnightly arts show from the BBC, covering the worlds of theatre, film, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture and music.

Where to Watch Monitor • Season 5

20 Episodes

  • Gian-Carlo Menotti
    E1
    Gian-Carlo MenottiGian-Carlo Menotti Composer of 'Amahl and the Night Visitors' and 'The Consul', filmed at his Festival of Two Worlds at Spoleto in Italy. 'I never really finish a libretto and then set it to music, I let it burst into flame as I go along'. Max Ernst The first Surrealist painter, interviewed by Roland Penrose. 'The most magnificently haunted mind of today' (Andre Breton) 'If painting is the mirror of time it must be mad to have the true image of what the time is' (Max Ernst)
  • The Private World of George Williams
    E2
    The Private World of George WilliamsThe Private World of George Williams Michael Ayrton with Paintings, Sculpture, and Words on The Myth of Icarus ...Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, whose wings melted, and who fell to his death...
  • Ninette de Valois
    E3
    Ninette de ValoisNinette de Valois D.B.E., creator of The Royal Ballet with film taken during rehearsals for next week's BBC Television production of her ballet The Rake's Progress.
  • Style in the Theatre and Portrait of an Experience
    E4
    Style in the Theatre and Portrait of an ExperienceStyle in the Theatre and Portrait of an Experience Michel Saint-Denis now directing rehearsals of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with the Royal Shakespeare Company talking with Peter Newington. Poems, prose, and photographs from Flanders and The Somme
  • In Cork
    E5
    In CorkFrank O'Connor, novelist, essayist, and short-story writer, revisits the provincial city where he lived for twenty-eight years and which provides the setting for many of his stories. 'I think all great literature begins in the provinces. If I hadn't left Cork, I'm quite certain I wouldn't have been the writer I am; but I think that if I hadn't been brought up in a city like this, I wouldn't have been a writer at all...'
  • Big Soft Nellie
    E6
    Big Soft NellieWith Henry Livings the author and scenes from the production of his new play now running at the Theatre Royal, Stratford.
  • Paul Tortelier
    E7
    Paul TortelierPaul Tortelier Portrait of a complete musician. Filmed in Paris at the Salle du Vieux Conservatoire, the Ecole Normale de Musique, and his studio. In rue Leon Cogniet with John Amis and L'Orchestre des Gardiens de la Paix de Paris, La Chorale des Jeunesses Musicales de France, The Tortelier Cello Orchestra.
  • The Lonely Shore
    E8
    The Lonely ShoreThe Lonely Shore A fantasy. No one is left alive in England. All that remain are the fragments of our civilisation.
  • Episode 9
    E9
    Episode 9H.M.S. Pinafore Revisited Sir Tyrone Guthrie gives his views on Gilbert and Sullivan.
  • Do My Ears Deceive Me?
    E10
    Do My Ears Deceive Me?An enquiry into the music of our day from Jazz to Schoenberg. Musicians taking part include: Colin Davis with the London Symphony Orchestra (Leader, Hugh Maguire), Aaron Copland, Michael Tippett, Deryck Cooke, Hans Keller.
  • Episode 11
    E11
    Episode 11Friso Ten Holt The Dutch painter whose first British exhibition opened at the New London Gallery last week talking with John Berger. 'Suddenly the painting begins to talk, to ask its own questions. And you have to respond to that question, otherwise you are never a painter'.
  • Episode 12
    E12
    Episode 12A fortnightly magazine of the arts. Introduced and edited by Huw Wheldon.
  • Pop Goes the Easel
    E13
    Pop Goes the EaselA fortnightly magazine of the arts. A group of four young artists, who between them have won critical acclaim, exhibition prizes, and Arts Council awards, are among those who have turned for subject-matter to the world of pop singers, pin-ups, space-men, wrestling, and the Twist. Monitor cameras spent an ordinary Saturday with them, from dawn to midnight. The artists and their pictures: Peter Blake, Siriol, she-devil of naked madness Derek Boshier, I wonder what my Heroes think of the Space-race Pauline Boty, Goodbye, cruel world Peter Phillips, For Men Only starring MM and BB Introduced and edited by Huw Wheldon.
  • What Makes a Tenor?
    E14
    What Makes a Tenor?What Makes a Tenor? Last week the National Federation of Music Societies held a Tenor Competition in London to find promising young singers. Bernard Keeffe of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden discusses the qualities of a great tenor and the reasons why this country has produced so few of them.
  • Episode 15
    E15
    Episode 15Commercial Art A sidelong glance at the world of advertising. Peter Ustinov in the studio.
  • Vincent Van Gogh
    E16
    Vincent Van GoghThe Preservation Man, with Professor Bruce Lacey, A.R.C.A. actor, theatrical property-maker, and collector of the past, from stuffed camels to Victorian families, from Victrola voices to rejected vacuum cleaners. In the studio: Michael Tippett on Music in the Theatre. His new opera "King Priam" has its world premiere at the Coventry Festival on May 29 Vincent Van Gogh Featuring a short film narrated by Cecil Day-Lewis. Using the text of Vincent Van Gogh's own letters, the programme explores the artist's life.
  • Julian Bream
    E17
    Julian BreamJulian Bream A film profile with George Malcolm and the Julian Bream Consort. The Death of Patroclus Christopher Logue talks about his new adaptation of Book XVI of Homer's Iliad and reads scenes from it with Patrick Allen and Gary Watson.
  • Dial for Plato
    E18
    Dial for PlatoIn America, as in this country, education is suffering from a shortage of text-books, classroom space, and, above all, of teachers. Sol Cornberg talks to Huw Wheldon about his current projects to tackle this problem in America by applying radio and television techniques to education. My mission is to create the tool which will permit the educator to multiply himself I am concerned with efficient means for the passing of information. Books are extremely inefficient Plato's thoughts have not been used up: he can be made available on a channel A Monitor production
  • Marcel Duchamp
    E19
    Marcel DuchampA fortnightly magazine of the arts. Introduced by Huw Wheldon. Marcel Duchamp The legendary French artist whose paintings and theories have radically affected modern art - he might be said to have murdered art with irony and then sat down by the corpse to play chess. Interviewed by Richard Hamilton, and discussed also by Reyner Banham and Eduardo Paolozzi.
  • Stratford-on-the-Subway
    E20
    Stratford-on-the-SubwayA Monitor film made in New York's Central Park, where every summer there is a season of free open-air Shakespeare performances with Joe Papp, the director and members of the New York Shakespeare Company in rehearsal.

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