Interview: Dr Chris Nunn ​(University of Birmingham) discusses his new documentary about 'The Wicker Man'

50 years on from the making of The Wicker Man (1973), director Robin Hardy’s lost papers for the years 1970-1974 come to filmmaker son Justin Hardy through the kindness of a stranger.

Justin has never agreed with the exalted claims made for the film: for him, The Wicker Man’s force as a creative endeavour is marred by poor lighting, poor cinematography, poor direction… and Robin Hardy’s subsequent films have done nothing to change Justin’s opinion. But then his view is coloured by the fact that the film robbed him of his father, his home and arguably his mother too. His brother Dominic has been more distanced, his experience of the film filtered through the story of its survival and subsequent status as a cult film. For him, The Wicker Man is not so much a film as a shattered vase, a set of fragments: the stories that make up the film’s legend, the benighted production, the brutal editing, the buried negative, the lost scenes, the disavowal by British Lion, the critical reception, financial failure and then – against all odds – the later revival. Now, for the first time, the newly uncovered sources complete the picture, taking us into the creativity channelled through the difficult birth of the film. Now, the sons can ask: what, if anything, was Robin Hardy’s creative contribution to The Wicker Man?

The story, according to screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, comes from the desire to make a horror film by renewing the genre: focusing on a sacrificial victim being tricked into assenting to his fate. Our reading says that the key to the story is that Shaffer parlayed his own relationship with his long-time partner Hardy into this project, as a trickster’s farewell. The Wicker Man is fundamentally about Summerisle and Howie (Shaffer saw their final confrontation has the apex of a love affair); it is thus the story of Shaffer and Hardy; the story of the privileged Lord and the uninitiated Outsider; of the Executioner and the Sacrificed.

This is the story of creativity as the wrestling between two men. Breaking rules, rejecting industry standards; taking risks despite difficult conditions, even among the makers: here are hallmarks of independent, adventurous, radical filmmaking. The Wicker Man story is an unparalleled guide to how independent film gets made. The creativity of this film is due to its unique status in time as an independent film: for one moment together in their careers, Shaffer and Hardy operated ‘outside the majors’ which Shaffer had already conquered and Hardy never would.

Our film tells the story of this ‘operation’ – a moment in time that can only make sense if we understand who each man was in terms of their relative importance to one another as friends and partners, in terms of their career arcs. Our film posits that the endurance of the film depends on a unique correlation that is at the heart of the story told by The Wicker Man. Without this correlation – which the Wicker Man audience will understand for the first time – there is no enduring power through the decades. Describing this dynamic between these two men takes us to the beating heart of whatever creativity shines out from the film.

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