Big Brother Is Watching You

Thought Crime and Punishment

- Photographs by BBC and Getty Images

GEORGE ORWELL’S PRESCIENT political satire Nineteen Eighty-Four is widely regarded as one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Winston Smith’s struggle for freedom continues to make a cultural impact: even those who haven’t read the book are familiar with the name of its paternal figurehead Big Brother, and the word “Orwellian” has long since become a catch-all description for any dystopian nightmare.

BBC producer Rudolph Cartier had first-hand experience of the type of totalitarian state depicted in Orwell’s book. Cartier was born in Vienna in 1904, and studied with Max Reinhardt at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He moved to Berlin in 1929, but interrupted a promising career as a scriptwriter when Hitler seized power. Along with colleagues such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, Cartier left Germany in 1933. He returned to Vienna, but the rise of fascism compelled him to move to England, which he made his home in 1936. His career languished until a chance meeting with a literary agent led to an appointment with Michael Barry, BBC Television’s Head of Drama. “Arrow To The Heart”, Cartier’s adaptation of a German novel, was transmitted in July 1952, and marked the beginning of 23 years of continuous employment for the Corporation.

In 1953 Cartier produced and directed the original television version of The Quatermass Experiment. This was his first collaboration with BBC staff writer Nigel Kneale. Born on the Isle of Man in 1922, Kneale attended RADA before the Somerset Maugham Award for his 1949 short story collection Tomato Cain secured his future as a writer. He joined the BBC in 1951.