Was LS Lowry to art what Morrissey was to music? Both are Mancunian observers of ordinary lives and each has “a gleeful truculence” to them. Being compared to Morrissey? If Lowry were alive, heaven knows he might be miserable now.
This diverting parallel — a perfect pub conversation starter for pseuds — came courtesy of Stuart Maconie in LS Lowry: The Unheard Tapes, BBC2’s terrific insight into the painter of matchstick men, cats and dogs. In some ways, this film followed the recent Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks in seeking to understand the psychology of an artist — although this was quite different stylistically, and what a clever way to tell his story.
Having Ian McKellen play Lowry — in scenes depicting the eightysomething artist’s interview with a young admirer, Angela Barratt, in his living room — was a coup in itself. But having him lip-sync the audio of Lowry’s voice made you lean forward in a way that is rare for an arts documentary. These were their actual voices: hers high and curious; his rough, gradually letting light in on his soul.
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The lip-syncing may have taken a touch of getting used to — we know McKellen’s tones so well, yet here was an “eh-up” accent emerging from his mouth. Initially I found myself just listening, trying to imagine how the pair really looked. But soon it was impossible to look away. Without these ingenious scenes — it must have taken some skill to match the lines and inflections exactly — we would have missed the glances, the seat-shifting between the dialogue and so on. The approach helped to elevate this far above a straight biography.
Annabel Smith, right, plays Angela Barratt, a young admirer of Lowry
BBC/WALL TO WALL MEDIA/CONNOR HARRIS
The story of the interview itself is unusual enough. Lowry, described in the programme as a complex, secretive man, was a reluctant celebrity. Yet when the 27-year-old fan Angela (played with real charm by Annabel Smith) turned up at the artist’s door in 1972 with a reel-to-reel recorder, a single interview turned into a four-year project.
It became, it was suggested, “the last words of an artist, setting the record straight” to an enthusiast with no journalistic experience, yet whose questions, couched in ingenuousness, pressed him with gentle tenacity.
We heard/saw her probe him, for example, on his lifelong bachelorhood until Lowry suddenly declared, “I might have married a girl, but she died in an epidemic.” “Pardon?” she reacted, a touch shocked. In a future world of media scoops, that alone would be a headline.
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Lowry came across as blunt (“The south of England is… harmless, no guts in it… dull”), often wry (“Are you really a socialist…? Well, I’ll forgive you!”) and something of a chatterbox once he got started. We learnt so much about him, from his closeness to his parents (his folks thought “he was a wee bit batty”) and why he never moved out of home to how he found his niche painting Pendlebury’s townscapes after his family were forced to downsize from their middle-class neighbourhood.
His explanation of how the “best time of his life” ended in 1932, when his father died, was moving. Yet also touching was his deepening friendship with his young inquisitor. And out of all this, a sense of epitaph grew, like a shadow, for the world with which his name has become synonymous: an industrial Manchester obliterated by the slum clearances; of terraced houses and cotton mills; of hurrying crowds and tightly bonded communities. A vanished North.
After this wholly engrossing hour, an undeniable itch to seek out his paintings, to once again take in those visions of matchstick men, was undeniable.
★★★★★
Available on iPlayer
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