Lorenza Mazzetti-Together (1956)

Against the background of the bombsites, warehouses, riversides and street markets of late 1950’s East End London, Together offers a compelling exploration of the isolated lives of two deaf-mute dockworkers. Despite its emotive fictional structure, the film is not a typical romanticisation of working-class life, but offers a complex, open-ended presentation that refuses to condemn or celebrate. The film is also notable for its extraordinary cast, with great performances from local people and the curious, but very successful casting of the artist Michael Andrews and the internationally known sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. BFI




Italian-born Lorenza Mazzetti's Together was the longest film in the first Free Cinema programme, and the only fiction. Experimental, semi-documentary film, showing London's East End through the lives of two deaf-mutes. The East-End of London in the mid-1950s. A group of children are play in a bombsite and in the streets around it, while workers leave the docks at the end of their shift. Two men walk along the narrow streets of the Docklands; one is tall and thin while the other is short and chubby. They communicate only in signs. Screenonline




Together is set in London's East End, with its bombsites, narrow streets, riversides, warehouses, markets and pubs. It follows two deaf-mute dockers who are completely cut-off from the outside world and are constantly pursued by groups of jeering children. Its modern depiction of everyday working-class life and its new approach to realism were inspired by Italian neo-realism and by the techniques used by Mazzetti's Free Cinema friends. Screenonline




Mazzetti, then a student at the Slade School of Art, was persuaded to apply for a grant by bfi Director Denis Forman after he saw her first short K (aka Metamorphosis, 1954), produced by the Slade. Screenonline




The Experimental Film Committee authorised a mute version of the film - then called The Glass Marble - with the rest of the money to come if it was good enough. Mazetti began shooting in Summer 1954 with the help of a few friends - including sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi and painter Michael Andrews, who played the two deaf-mutes. Screenonline




At the end of the year Mazzetti returned to Italy, but the Committee urged her to come back to complete the film after Basil Wright, then a member of the Committee, made a very positive report on the rough-cut of the film. Screenonline




Back in London she met Lindsay Anderson, who agreed to help edit the film and add the soundtrack. He asked John Fletcher and Walter Lassally to shoot a few additional scenes. Together was completed in January 1956, just in time to be part of the Free Cinema programme. It was such a sensation that Mazzetti appeared on BBC's Panorama twice in a fortnight. In April, Together was selected as one of two British short film entries for the Cannes Film Festival, where it won acclaim. It was later given a remarkable - for a documentary - five-week run at the Academy cinema in London. Screenonline