PETER WHITEHEAD: PERHAPS TOMORROW…? THE UNSEEN RUSHES OF SWINGING LONDON

This PhD thesis integrates archival research with a practice-based approach to explore British film and cultural history during the long, transatlantic 1960s. It extensively utilizes previously undiscovered materials from the Peter Whitehead Archive (De Montfort University Leicester), as well as other collections such as the BFI National Archive and Contemporary Films. The thesis provides a critical analysis of Peter Lorrimer Whitehead’s films, particularly focusing on Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967) and its voluminous unseen rushes. It also examines Whitehead’s constructed persona and its interaction with the broader 1960s socio-cultural and artistic milieu. The study, including a practical component - a new documentary interview featuring the previously unreleased footage - aims to scrutinize Whitehead’s thematic, aesthetic, and personal disruptions, reflecting his ongoing artistic struggle, driven by internal demons and narcissistic angst. Whitehead (1937-2019) was caught between his obsessions with Greek and Egyptian mythology, European cinema and literature (notably French writers/filmmakers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alain Resnais), and his marginal position within British cinema (see Chibnall 2011 and Flanagan 2011). A central objective of this thesis is to challenge the reductionist view of Whitehead as merely a 'documentarian' of the 1960s scene. Instead, it argues that Whitehead was an outsider filmmaker aspiring to the status of European auteurs such as Godard or Robbe-Grillet. Chapter 3, for the most part, explores Whitehead as an unreliable and disruptive storyteller, whose narrative and myth are moulded to his conviction that things are destined to unravel, a belief reflecting the existential atmosphere of post-war Europe and its influence and impact on Whitehead’s worldview, his specific perception of life.