Pressure

EN

Eamonn Kelly: You shot Pressure in 1973. Why did you make the film?

Horace Ové: I made Pressure because of what was going on in Britain at the time — the whole experience of black people in the country. I mean the rough, brutal experience that they were going through, and what was happening around me. There was the whole Black Power movement that started in the US that came here, with meetings and discussions — the activity and the demonstrations. There was discrimination in education, police harassment and racist attacks in the streets, from various racist movements including the National Front. […]

How important was it to represent black British people at the time?

Very important because they weren’t being represented. No one was dealing with what was going on in that world at that time. You got different things written in the papers, about situations, about clashes, demonstrations and things, but nobody dealt with it. What Pressure tried to do was to portray the experience of the Windrush generation, the kids who came with them and the kids born here.

Horace Ové in conversation with Eamonn Kelly1

“When I got to England I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t get into film school. I had to do various jobs like a cleaner, packer, stevedore and one of the best (smile) was at the National Temperance Hospital working in the morgue cleaning up dead bodies. Sending me down to the mortuary was punishment for flirting with all the foreign European girls. Well I made those bodies pretty for their families and as it turned out I used a scene like that in my first feature film Pressure. I also worked on a trawler with my cousin Stefan (the actor) catching fish in winter. We got hired because the darkies and foreigners were the only ones willing to work in the cold. Eventually I was able to earn enough to keep myself afloat. In between I was viewing films and eventually landed parts as an extra on films in Europe. My first real first job was in the film Cleopatra.

Elizabeth Taylor got tired of her lead Australian actor; fell in love with Richard Burton, gave him the lead and took the film to Italy. I got a part in the movie as a slave. Going to Italy proved to be a major turning point for me. I was lucky to be there at a time when the realist and surrealist cinema went beyond Hollywood. Plus I got all this experience in Europe observing how films were made so it really opened my mind. By the time I got accepted at the London School of Film Technique, I had wracked up a lot of knowledge about European cinema.”

Horace Ové2

“Aside from Pressure’s obvious aesthetic merit, what makes this film important is the bold way it deals with institutional racism and police brutality without ever falling into the trap of treating such matters simplistically. Based on a script co-written by director Horace Ové and novelist Samuel Selvon, the film is nevertheless partly improvised. Pressure’s plot centres on Tony, a young London born school-leaver whose parents and older brother come from Trinidad. Tony has good academic qualifications but can’t find a job. His brother Colin, a black power activist, derides Tony’s tastes in food and music as white and attempts to radicalise him.

[…]

Ové has repeatedly stated that the scenes in Pressure shot in a black church and at a black power benefit were filmed without all those attending what appeared to be ordinary public events realising some of those present were acting out scripted roles. The problems this produced at the church were purely ethical, since the actor introduced as a preacher delivers prepared lines designed to show the way in which Christian discourse can act (often unconsciously on the part of those engaged with it) as vehicle for racism. For example: ‘Drive all black thoughts from your head and replace them with good white holy thoughts.’ With a black actor playing the minister delivering the sermon against pride, of which these lines form a part, and a black congregation listening to it, Ové underscores the way in which using black as a metaphor for sin, and making white synonymous with holiness, is historically neither accidental nor innocent. I don’t know if anyone subsequently complained about having been duped and manipulated with regard to this, but Ové might well argue the stunning results justify the means by which they were achieved. Certainly, the sermon against pride was carefully drafted, and very consciously designed to contrast with another scene in which a political activist delivers a speech on the necessity of black pride. At which point I shall move on to the police raid on the black power benefit, since here Ové credits the realism of the sequence to some audience members not realising that the cameras present were there to record a drama rather than a documentary, and fought back as they would against genuine police oppression. The scene draws much of its tension from a combination of sound and tight shots. Given that it was staged on a shoe-string budget, it is a considerable achievement.”

Stewart Home3

“A scene which I found particularly striking, both visually and thematically, was during Tony’s decision to attend a nightclub with his white school friends as opposed to accepting his brother’s invitation to a Black Power meeting being held that same night. Pale reds, sordid pinks and oranges glow, lights flash, and the camera dizzyingly swings back and forth in motion with the throbbing crowd. The tone is one of ecstasy and escapism, with a hint of shame. The music swells and with it Tony’s realities melt and slip away, reverberating outwards through the speakers. The scene pulsates between the lively club and the more sobering speeches being given at the Black Power meeting, visually illuminating the psychological poles between which Tony is caught. During the course of the film, the audience, like Tony, feels these poles claustrophobically closing in, limiting space and freedom. Pressure, as the leitmotif of the reggae song reminds us, manifests in all forms: mental, physical, societal, economic, domestic… (the list goes on).

Where I believe Ové’s chef d’oeuvre is most commanding of such a title springs from its unique ability to so deftly illustrate the reality of living ‘Black’ in Britain, all whilst maintaining a childlike sensibility towards the cultural formation of identity in its chief protagonist. The political realism and the ‘coming-of-age’ quality of the film do not compete for space; rather, they beautifully coalesce, as Tony’s character progression is both a product of and shaped by the external forces surrounding him. Oscillating between moments of gravity, humour, pathos, and heart-warming togetherness, I believe that Ové captures the Black British experience with kaleidoscopic perspective. The air of the theatre was one of silent community; no one spoke, but through the air floated a feeling of unspoken acknowledgement as the screen held up a mirror to today’s Britain as much as it did the 20th century.”

Faith Owolabi4

• 1Eamonn Kelly, “Horace Ové discusses a film that shocked with politics and technique,” Socialist Worker, 26 November 2005.
• 2Josanne Leonard, “The boy from Belmont. An interview with Horace Ové, filmmaker,” https://josanneleonard.blogspot.com/, 22 March 2009.
• 3Stewart Home, “Pressure,” www.stewarthomesociety.org, 2005.
• 4Faith Owolabi, “‘What’s wrong with bacon and eggs, fish and chips, and Gary Glitter?’: Horace Ove’s Pressure (1976) and the dialectic of Black British identity,” Era Journal, 27 november 2023.