He had a sort of shibboleth, which he would test people on to see their probity, and he would say to you, when Oscar time came around, "Philip, you don't take the Oscars seriously, do you?" and it's one of those questions demanding agreement from you, and if you took the alternative view it would put you beyond the pale.

PW: People like Lindsay Anderson - you say that they're the moral conscience, and the implication is that they're somehow more serious in their attitude. Growing up, my love of films came from mainstream Hollywood, and by that I mean An American in Paris, the sorts of films I saw through my parents, and those kind of British, very solid literary adaptations of the '60s. But I find it hard to take Anderson seriously. When I saw his films, they didn't really expand the possibilities of film, so much as push a particular political line. Particularly If now looks to my eyes immature and just destructive.

PF: Well, immature compared with what? On the other hand, he was bringing in to the cinema continental influences. Like Karel Reisz, his close associate in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and some later films, he was challenging the very crude kind of English realism, but he was also in fact challenging what had been the dominant middle class ethos of the British cinema. I think Anderson's influence is probably greater in terms of his moral conscience, in stirring people to think about the potential of the cinema, the responsibility of filmmakers, but he wasn't entirely against entertainment - though he did have this very strict notion of personal behaviour and a kind of moral seriousness, as opposed to what he criticised in others, a sort of moral pomposity.