Steve McQueen will tell you the toughest part of making his new WW II period drama wasn’t the set pieces. It wasn’t the visual effects. It was finding “the love.” For the two-time Oscar winner, the most important part of “Blitz” was capturing the relationship between a young boy (Elliott Heffernan) and the mother (Saoirse Ronan) who sends him to the British countryside for his safety when the Nazis bombed London relentlessly during eight months beginning in 1940. That shouldn’t be a surprise considering the delicate hand McQueen has demonstrated in films such as “12 Years A Slave,” “Shame” and, most recently, “Lovers Rock.”
READ MORE: Saoirse Ronan sings in ‘Blitz’ but wants Greta Gerwig to direct her in a musical
During our conversation last month, the auteur filmmaker explained why he intertwined real but little-known historical figures with fictional ones, the fun of flooding a London Underground station, the difficulty in finding a young actor as talented as Heffernan, how Ronan unconventionally wiggled her way into contention for her role and much, much more.
The Breakdown: Sign up for Gregory Ellwood’s new newsletter column and get Oscar Predictions before they are posted online. You don’t want to miss this.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
_____
The Playlist: What was the biggest challenge for this production from you?
Steve McQueen: Finding the love. That was the biggest challenge in some ways or things I was anxious about because I knew this movie was based on love. Once you have the foundation within, then everything is fine. Big set pieces, whatever. That’s not anything for me. That’s not anything for me to fear. If I have the love between George and Rita and as well as Gerald [Paul Weller], that family, if I could get that foundation right, then I’m good. And thank goodness we did, and Saoirse and Elliot were just, it was incredible that they found themselves, that chemistry was there, and it was real affection and appreciation. So again, once we had that, I knew we were off to the races.
How hard was it to find Elliot? How many young actors did you see before you got him?
Again, you write this script, you write this script, and you think, okay, not bad. We’ll see what, and you stop yourself. “Oh my goodness, does George exist?” And then so we did a big wide sort of search for George, a lot of children, I can’t even remember how many, and I remember the tape came in, and there was this a stillness in him. It was almost like a sort of movie star where you’re so interested in him and what he’s thinking, or you think you know what he’s thinking, or you want to find out what he’s thinking, and that’s the kind of star quality that he could hold your gaze. And I thought, “Can we develop this? Can we sort of anchor this? Can we develop this?” And thank goodness we could. And we worked with Simon, his acting coach, and we went through the paces, and then finally this thing blossomed. He wasn’t even all the way there, but I thought, “You know what, let’s, let’s give this guy a go. Let’s give him a break.” And because, again, children, there’s a sense of fantasy within children anyway. They could make things up, they could play. Interestingly enough, Saoirse started to act when she was nine years old. So she immediately took it under her wing, and there was this bond, and I’m grateful for it, really.
I wanted to ask about Saoirse as well. Were you thinking about her when you wrote the script or was she a name that popped when you began casting?
No, not really. But what happened was, I think she had a very good agent, and we got a phone call that she’s interested in the movie, And then the first thing I thought, “O.K., interesting, but can she sing?” I had a conversation with her. I think she was in Australia doing a movie, and she told me she could hold a tune, so I didn’t know what that actually meant, that she could hold a tune. And then we got her a singing coach, and I will never forget the day I got that call for the singing coach to tell me not only can she sing, but it’s only got to get better. I thought, “Oh my God, that’s so amazing.” And I offered the role immediately. That was it.
I think there are standards of the era in the film, but you have three original new songs in the movie too. What made you go down that road as opposed to just using classic songs?
Well, I think myself and Nick Brittel concluded that there’s something stagnant when you are using songs that are known, there’s something kind of stagnant about it. It’s kind of dust. What I wanted to do was create something in the now, about the then. So to have sort of songs of that period that you didn’t actually know, but you felt it was very important. So, that’s when we started to write. Now you had this idea in my head anyway about writing a song called “Winter Coat” because the scene was Saoirse sings in front of the ammunition factory in the Forks Watch radio show. That song was based on me because my father, when he died, I was left his winter’s coat, and the whole idea of this absence, but this presence, whole idea of putting your arms in the coat and it being this hug, this warmth, the feel of that person around you will the idea to start off this kind of emotional journey. And I think anyone can understand that, that physicality, that tactility of putting something on of someone who’s passed and having that embrace of them.
I also wanted to ask you about Benjamin Clemente’s character, Ife, I think he’s the only real person in the entire film. Am I correct or are there other characters?
No, no. There are a few. There’s Mickey Davies, the small gentleman. He’s real. And also not just people, there’s events. I mean, look, Rita, for example, is based on the women who were the emotional, physical, and emotional backbone of the country. They were looking after their elderly parents. They were evacuating their children as well as working in munitions factory, basically in aircraft hangers propping up the wall. They were on the front lines just as much as the men. They weren’t in the field fighting the Nazis and seeing how many they could kill. But look what they were doing. They were looking after the elderly. They were evacuating their kids. They were working in the ammunition factories. I mean, it’s incredible.
What about Ife made you want to put him in the film?
What was interesting about him as well as Mickey Davis was that Ife was an air warden who patrolled the Marylebone area. What I liked about him was the fact that this guy came to London from Nigeria, and he wanted to be a law student, but the Blitz came about and he volunteered to be an air warden. I mean, for me, it was an authority [figure] for George. All along what he’s been told about being black is bad. So for the first time, here is an adult black male person, and he is enchanted with him. And that speech that happened in the shelter about people who were divided the shelter because they didn’t want to be next to certain kind of people, that’s all true. That speech, everything is true. That’s what he said. So, to put it in his mouth, this gentleman’s mouth and George is a witness was very important for his development as a black child at that time.
When I walked out of the screening I was surprised to hear someone remark that the Cafe Paris explosion, which, by the way, was wonderfully shot and executed, couldn’t have happened. Obviously, it did, but can you talk about shooting that and what you wanted to accomplish by putting that scene in the film?
It was life and death. It was the perversity of the war. When you’ve got people on rations, and you got people, the hoity-toity, “live the life of Riley” and the character, the band leader was called Snakehips Johnson, who he based himself on Cab Calloway, was an openly gay black who was living with a sort of white well to do gentlemen who again, sexuality and he’s open. And again, it was sexuality. There was an openness at that time because people thought they were going to die, so let us go for it. I mean, Quentin Crisp, that’s just one example of what was going on in London at that time. People didn’t care if you were gay or not. Didn’t give a damn. It was about surviving. So, to have that environment of that decadent environment where the champagne is flowing and the oysters are being eaten was vital. But also the aftermath of that decadence. And in George being with the images of death that hadn’t been seen before. [Cutting people’s] fingers to take jewelry and stuff. All that was true, all that happened.
You’ve staged all sorts of action scenes in your career so far, but I don’t know if you’ve done anything as big as the flooding of the Balham Tube station. What was the biggest challenge with that set piece?
I had fun. No, I think my anxiety was the base of this story. Like I said, the love.
If you don’t get the love, if you don’t get the heart and soul of this well, what am I doing? So, during the flood thing, it was fun and exciting because building that tube stage with Adam Stockham, who did an amazing job, to the engineering situation with the water, the extras who extraordinarily gave me so much more than I could imagine. My DP, Yorick Le Saux moving the camera, and me being very sort of nimble. And, of course, I had frames in my head, images in my head, and it was there. And having George, again, I knew that was my chance. And, don’t forget from the beginning of the movie, up until that point, I’ve been saying, I’ve been putting in your brain as far as the audience is concerned, the underground is the safest place you could be when it hit, it’s the last thing you think will happen.
You could have premiered this movie anywhere, but you wanted it to be at the London Film Festival. How much did having that premiere there mean to you?
It was like, I mean, kind of emotional in a way, just because I’ve been very fortunate in my life. I’ve debuted, in fact, most film festivals in the world, from Cannes to Venice, Toronto, and Telluride. All of it. So, I’ve been very fortunate and very blessed. But to do this in London was a wish. And I’m so grateful that my wish came true because also, don’t forget, in the Royal Festival Hall where we debuted a picture just out front of that facility, that building wasn’t built then. That building was built after the war as a sort of great resurrection of celebrating the arts. After the war, a bomb exploded right in front of that space. I think it’s the Queen’s Bridge there and dotted around that area. So, to project that there on the 9th of October, which was my birthday, I mean, the atmosphere, you could slice it with a knife. And also the urgency right now where they are in the world. And again, this is two days, unfortunately, after October 7th. So what can I say? I mean, I felt very, as an artist, very, very useful and and urgent.
“Blitz” is now playing in limited release. It will debut on Apple TV+ on Nov. 22
