This appropriately stylish programme was made about Francis Bacon when he was 57 and recognised as the UK's greatest living painter. Director Michael Gill was a BBC hack, now mostly forgotten, who did many other documentaries for the Corporation, often about artists or royalty. (He's writer A.A. Gill's father). The interviewer, David Sylvester, was an early advocate of Bacon's work and asks pertinent questions. Bacon appears to be choosing his words carefully. But the subject of his private life doesn't come up. This is understandable. Homosexuality was at the time illegal in the UK. The truth was to come out nearly 20 years later in Melvyn Bragg's famously alcoholic interview for The South Bank Show. "We got very drunk," Bragg said later. "It showed." Gill's film is confined almost entirely to Bacon's squalid studio, which after the artist's death was recreated in a gallery in Dublin. Gill and cameraman Peter Suschitzky manage to make much of this location; at one point the two men are on the artist's bed and it's possible that this inspired David Bailey to do something similar with Andy Warhol in 1973. Most of Bacon's greatest work is seen but suffers from being reproduced in black and white. Bacon plays along to a degree with what was required of him. He gives a kind of performance at the beginning. But clearly he could not be persuaded to be captured at his easel. He mixes paint and that's all we get. Fans familiar with Bacon behaving badly in Bragg's film and in "Love Is the Devil" will be very interested in this serious, informative portrait. It completes the picture. (NB scenes in a slaughterhouse are very graphic). It's available on several platforms including YouTube and BBC iPlayer.
Francis Bacon Fragments of a Portrait
(1966 TV Movie)
1st important TV interview with Bacon, done by someone who really understood his work
24 December 2020