Winstanley

Last night we watched the film, 'Winstanley'. Set during Cromwell's reign in the 17th century, it is the true story of 'The Levellers' - the first example of communes and squatters in England.

Gerard Winstanley was the leader of a group of impoverished men and women who set up a smallholding on the common land of St. George's Hill at Weybridge, Surrey. The locals did not like them, but that is Surrey for you.

The commoners were visited by General Fairfax who was sent to evict them, but found himself in sympathy with their honesty and simplicity. In the end they were brutally evicted anyway.

I saw this film in the 1960s when it first came to arthouse cinemas and I was a stroppy left-wing student. It never made it onto the main circuit but was adopted by the BFI and still has a niche following.

General Fairfax was played by the only professional actor in the film. Everyone else were amateurs and locals who had faces which appealed to the directors, Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo. It became noted for being shot entirely in natural light, but I learned last night that this was simply because their lighting rig kept blowing the fuse of the local sub-station, much to the local residents' anger and frustration. 

There were quite a few serendipitous circumstances which added to the film's reputation for being a little more considered than it truly deserved. The Sealed Knot refused to get involved with the battle scenes, so all the battles were played by a group of six men in genuine costumes and armour lent by the British Museum.  I thought they looked authentic. It cost £24,000 to make (less than the credit sequence to a James Bond picture) and nobody but the professional were paid, and even he accepted Equity's minimum daily rate.

Today, St. George's Hill is a gated community for billionaires. The Beatles lived there, for instance. I was brought up very near to the action and recognised the acid-soil flora and white sand of a typical Surrey common.