Michael Apted, who died at age 79, was a director who moved easily between socially conscious documentaries and feature films with a special focus on women’s achievements.
In the last field was Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), for which Sissy Spacek won the Oscar for best actress for playing country and western singer Loretta Lynn, and Gorillas in the Mist (1988), starring Sigourney Weaver as the murdered conservationist Dian Fossey. He also had commercial success with the James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (1999) and CS Lewis’s adaptation, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
It had its deepest and longest lasting impact, however, with the television documentary series Up that chronicled the lives of 14 Britons in seven-year increments – “The union delegates and executives of the future”, as the program, Tim’s idea Hewat, originally placed.
Seven Up! left as part of Granada Television’s current and social issues, World In Action, in 1964, when Apted was still a researcher. It had been his job to help find a selection of seven-year-olds to be interviewed on subjects like love, money, race and opportunity. The selection was largely white, male, centered in London and with diametrically opposite ends of the social scale, a lamented Apted imbalance (“We really did not take enough care in choosing children”) and later corrected in 7Up 2000, presenting a new crop of young people. This was one of Up’s several branches (including foreign incarnations) in which he took on the role of producer.
Seven Up! it was conceived as a single; it was only later that Apted and his colleagues were to follow the children into adulthood. Paul Almond directed the initial program before Apted took over the reins of all subsequent installments, which he also presented. His final contribution was 63 Up (2019).
The most difficult edition to do, he said, was the second, Seven Plus Seven, in 1970. “The material was horrible – as teenagers, they didn’t say anything. Even so, we begin to realize the power of the idea; although the film is not very good, everyone was interested in it ”.
He became friends with many of his themes, which led him to reflect on the relationship between art and life. “You want dramatic things to happen to them to make the film exciting,” he said in 1986. “On the other hand, how can you wish for that? I’m not saying that I want one of them to fall dead, but I find myself thinking: ‘God, nobody has divorced yet, nobody has had a serious grief’, all of which, in a grotesque way, would make a wonderful film … so there’s that one terrible dilemma between the friendship part and the filming part. “
Although the Up films were internationally acclaimed, winning the coveted Peabody Apted award in 2012, he regretted the distorted portrait of women. “The change that has occurred with women in the workplace and in the place of women in society is the most significant socio-political event in contemporary culture,” he said in 1995. “I lost. I only had four women out of 14, and all four settled into domestic life very quickly. “
In his good-natured way, he encouraged and challenged the trio of working-class women on the show, who did their best. “I keep saying that there is a big world out there, besides going to dances and having babies and money for beer,” said Apted, “and they just tempt me in front of the camera.” A connection has emerged between this gender bias and the growing focus on women in their feature film work.
He was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and raised in Ilford, Essex; his mother, Frances (nee Thomas), stayed at home while his father, Ronald Apted, worked with insurance. He entered the City of London school on a scholarship before studying history and law at Downing College, Cambridge, where his contemporaries included John Cleese, Trevor Nunn and Stephen Frears.
He was accepted into a six-month training course at Granada Television in 1963, and remained with the company for the rest of the decade, directing various plays and programs.
He had a successful spell on Coronation Street when the popular soap opera was going through one of its golden periods, with many scripts written by the wonderful Jack Rosenthal. Apted had the distinction of directing the episode that brought down an overpass on the head of the fearsome Ena Sharples, who survived with the hair net intact. “Forget the damn movie stars!” he commented later. “Violet Carson [who played Ena] and Pat Phoenix [Elsie Tanner] were the greatest divas in Britain. It was a wonderful baptism, fantastic training. Everything I learned about actors, I learned on Coronation Street. “
Apted and Rosenthal had other successful collaborations, including the sitcom The Lovers (1970) and two wise and funny television films: Another Sunday and Sweet FA (1972) and P’Tang Yang Kipperbang (1982). Apted made his film debut with The Triple Echo (1972), starring Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, adapted from the HE Bates story about a defector soldier disguised as a woman.
With David Essex’s Stardust vehicle (1974), he tried to show the ugly side of glamor and fame. In 1975, he started making Trick Or Treat, but filming failed after clashes with his star, Bianca Jagger, and the film was never completed. Warner Bros. hated their brave and strangely tender London gang thriller The Squeeze (1977) and refused to release it in the United States.
Apted was unhappy with Agatha (1979), a drama about the disappearance of Agatha Christie (Vanessa Redgrave), who felt unbalanced when Dustin Hoffman was put on the project to improve his box office chances.
He was in the United States when Universal needed a director for Coal Miner’s Daughter after firing the original. Apted became familiar with the people of Appalachia and its surroundings, and brought some documentary authenticity to the film. “Michael was the key to everything,” said Spacek. “I shudder to think what the movie would have been like without it.”
His decision to cast the comic John Belushi for a direct role in the love story Continental Divide (1981) was “a classic error of judgment”, but he was right in choosing Dennis Potter to adapt Gorky Park (1983), a thriller designed for Russia Filmed in Helsinki and Stockholm with Lee Marvin and William Hurt.
The extent of his eclecticism can be measured by the smallest sample of his work: Bring on the Night (1985), a documentary about Sting; Richard Pryor’s comedy Critical Condition (1987); the legal drama Class Action (1991); Thunderheart, a thriller about the oppression of Native Americans that came out of his documentary Incident at Oglala (both in 1992); Nell (1994), starring Jodie Foster as a woman raised in the jungle; and the Enigma code cracking drama (2001).
Recent work has included episodes from the television series Ray Donovan (2013-16) and Bloodline (2017), the latter bringing him together with Spacek. “I’m more of a catch than a visionary,” he said. “Little of what I do is about myself. I tend not to make personal films, which allows me to have a huge variety in my work. “
He leaves his third wife, Paige Simpson, and three children: his son James, from his first marriage to Jo Proctor (his eldest son, Paul, passed away before him in 2014); John, his son with his second wife, Dana Stevens; and his daughter, Lily, from a relationship with Tania Mellis.
• Michael Apted, director, born February 10, 1941; died on January 7, 2021