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John Boorman

William Blake and the Visionary Company

William Blake, Preface to Milton: A Poem (1810)

“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.”

William Blake, Preface to Milton: A Poem (1810)

Blake's Romantic Rhetoric

     As the chief exemplar and avatar of the visionary Romantic tradition in England, William Blake (1757-1827) [1] looms large in the imagination of many of Britain’s most adventurous filmmakers. John Boorman’s treatment of Arthurian archetypes in Excalibur builds upon Blake’s rooting of mystical quests and sacred metaphors in England (“And was Jerusalem builded here”).
     Boorman’s generation was shaped by the experience of the Second World War (as memorably depicted in Hope and Glory, 1987), and Blake’s rhetoric was given additional resonance at Britain’s most intense moment of national crisis. In his wartime propaganda film Words for Battle (1941), poetic documentarian Humphrey Jennings vividly drew out the rhetorical force of Blake’s language to rally support from English-speaking compatriots (especially Americans) during the Blitz.

John Boorman on Blake (See Chapter 2)
William Blake
Words for Battle (Humphrey Jennings, 1941)

Blake and Wartime Propaganda

In Words for Battle, Blake's words are read out by Laurence Olivier. The “green & pleasant Land” of the British countryside was powerfully evoked both in wartime narrative films like Michael Powell’s A Canterbury Tale (1944) and in Jennings’s Listen to Britain (1942).

William Blake
Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, 1942)
William Blake
Head of Job (William Blake, 1823)

Blake's Graphic Work

Powell, like Boorman, was equally influenced by Blake’s graphic work. With their elongated forms, ghostly figures, and evocative visualizations of figures and experiences that exceed the boundaries of conventional understanding, these works provided a stylistic vocabulary that would make it possible to suggest transitions between worlds and psychological states.

Design for the Head of Zardoz (1974), flying in the Wicklow Hills, Ireland (Courtesy John Boorman and the Lilly Library, University of Indiana)
Design for the Head of Zardoz (1974), flying in the Wicklow Hills, Ireland (Courtesy John Boorman and the Lilly Library, University of Indiana)
William Blake
Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974)
Jacob's Ladder (William Blake, 1805, The British Museum, London)
Jacob's Ladder (William Blake, 1805, The British Museum, London)
William Blake
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)

"Dark Satanic Mills"

Blake’s “dark Satanic Mills” imagery was equally influential on a later generation of American filmmakers deeply informed by British Romanticism. In an astonishing coincidence, this is most vividly expressed in the opening scenes of two iconic American films released in 1978.

William Blake
Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
William Blake
The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
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