Sydney Opera House turns 50 - Daryl Dellora's exclusive interview on The Edge of the Possible

DELLORA: I first saw the Sydney Opera House when I arrived in Sydney from Melbourne in the mid-1970s. I came across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and there before me was this extraordinary building, I had never seen anything like it before, and indeed no one had ever seen anything like it. So that revelation left a lasting impression on me and when I much later found out the tragic story of the design and construction of the building I knew that was a story I wanted to tell.

DELLORA: When I first began the research for the film I realised pretty quickly that the story of the design and construction of the building wasn’t really known very well. Much of the controversy surrounding the architect’s exit in 1966 tended to cloud any understanding of what he was trying to do and how that vision was thwarted ultimately by petty politics. So I decided the story I wanted to tell was about Jørn Utzon’s vision for the building and how he set about achieving that. With a complicated history like that of the Sydney Opera House, a filmmaker is always looking for ways to limit the scope of the story whilst doing justice to it. In this case, we decided the best way to tell Utzon’s story was to start at the beginning in 1956 when he won the competition and follow through every step of his design process to the day he left in 1966. The rest of the story is then a sort of coda at the end.

DELLORA: Not only is there credence to that, but Jørn Utzon himself told me it was one of his many inspirations - Kronborg Castle is very close to his home. He was an immensely eclectic architect, he took influences from Chinese and Japanese building codes from the 14th century, and he took inspiration from Arabic architecture and Mayan architecture.

DELLORA: We arrived in Denmark with our crew not knowing if Utzon would actually speak to us. He was very reclusive when it came to the media, especially so regarding Australian media after his experience here with the great disappointment over the manner of his departure. By the end of his time in Australia, he had gone from having an extremely positive reception here, revered as a brilliant, innovative, architect, to feeling hounded and indeed he was virtually hounded out of the country in 1966. Utzon had never replied to our letters and phone calls but he was very aware of what we were doing and following it closely. One of his close friends and colleagues on the project, Mogens Prip-Buus, whom we had spoken to, had told us he had put a good word in for us, but that was all. So even 30 years later Utzon was still very cautious about the media, he hadn’t spoken to Australian TV since 1975. So we were shocked when our hotel manager said there was a phone call for us - “It’s the Maestro”. Utzon told us to immediately come to a cafe on the edge of a forest near his home. So we went there and waited. Suddenly this very tall and charming man walked out of the forest and asked us where the film crew were (we had left them in Copenhagen not wanting to scare him off). It was a weird experience for me, having only seen archival footage of him, and mostly from the 1950s and '60s. But here he was with the same impish sense of humour and the same sparkle in his eyes. He invited us into his home and we set up the interview there and then. All through his house were giant boards with photos of the Opera House shells on them. He told me that not a day went by when he did not think of the building and not a day went by that he did not receive a letter from someone, usually an Australian, thanking him for it. He told me that appearing in our film was like answering those letters from Australia that had gone unanswered for too long.

DELLORA: Well, we tried to interview all the architects who worked with Utzon on the project and he had intentionally assembled a multicultural group. There were architects from Australia, Denmark, Finland, Japan and Turkey amongst others. One of them told me they worked like a jazz group, everyone just knew what to do, Utzon didn’t tell them, they just knew. The structural engineers were the firm of Arups. They were the best in the world for this kind of project, especially as initially envisaged as a low-profile reinforced concrete shell. Ove Arup himself, also a Dane, began working closely with Utzon in the beginning and they had a very productive relationship. As the years passed others also got involved and Ove Arup, who was by then unwell, withdrew. We interviewed one of the British engineers who worked on the project towards the end. There was real tension between the engineers and Utzon by the end of the project. Utzon eventually withdrew feeling betrayed by the engineers who had begun working directly for the client instead of the usual practice of taking instruction from the architect. By then the whole project had been heavily politicised in Australia where there had been a change of government.

DELLORA: I tried to speak with as many architects who were there at the time. Harry Seidler, the famous Sydney architect, was an obvious interviewee because he had been a close friend of Utzon’s and also a very strong advocate for the project and for Utzon to return to finish the job. He also had a large archive of materials, such as press clippings and documents from the time of the “Bring Utzon Back” movement. The other architects were all colleagues of Utzon’s. I would have dearly loved to have interviewed Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen who, as competition judge, was centrally important in awarding Utzon the first prize in the Opera House Competition but unfortunately, he died very young, in 1961, and only a few years after the Opera project was begun. Of all those involved at the time of the competition in 1956 only Harry Seidler and Eero Saarinen had seen Utzon’s early work or heard of him.

DELLORA: The story of the Sydney Opera House is an iconic Australian story. The famous architectural historian and scholar Professor Sigfried Giedion said that there was nowhere else in the world in 1956 that would have commissioned such an architectural project. We are a nation that can have brave and creative ideas but history shows us that those ideas are all too often destroyed, sometimes stillborn, because of the forces of reaction and ignorance.

DELLORA: Utzon was far too polite, diplomatic and generous to ever broach any of the criticisms of the way he had been treated. I also think it was too painful for him. At one point I asked him to return to the time and remember when he first met Davis Hughes, the new Country Party Minister responsible for the Opera House, who had come to office in 1965 on a platform of “cleaning up the Opera House mess”. Utzon thought back to that moment and described how he had gone into Hughes’s office and that there were large boards on easels, each a photo of the Opera House under construction. Utzon thought “Here is a man who understands!” But it was not to be and in remembering what happened next his face dropped and he could hardly proceed, the tears welled up. Utzon was always looking on the positive side. He said of the new architects who replaced him: “They were doing their best. Who am I to criticise?” Few people would have as generous a spirit as Jørn Utzon.

DELLORA: No. No regret but it was a very painful time and it left its mark on him. He felt that he had no other option. I think it would have killed him, at least artistically, to have remained in Australia and been forced to build the substandard building that Davis Hughes demanded. I can completely understand why he never returned. Sometimes there is a moment in history, in this case, he had generously asked the people of Australia to walk hand in hand with him through this joyous project and in the end they rejected him. There is no going back from that. Also, what was it that he would be returning to see? His extraordinary exterior, completed to his exacting specifications with another architect’s inferior concept of the interiors jammed inside. No artist could willingly want to see that.

DELLORA: Both are absolutely collaborations. Without your collaborators, there could be no resulting work. Utzon understood this well and it is unfortunately the key reason he left - he could no longer collaborate with his client.

DELLORA: The core of our crew was producer Sue Maslin, myself as director and Ian Wansbrough as my co-writer. We have been working together on projects since the mid-1980s and continue to do so to this day, our latest collaboration is the documentary The Search for the Palace Letters to be released on ABCTV early next year. Musicians David Bridie and John Phillips provided the beautiful score (John Phillips has scored The Search for the Palace Letters and many of my other films) and Mark Atkin ASE edited the film as he has done many others (again including The Search for the Palace Letters). Films are only as good as the collaborators who work on them.

DELLORA: The film has been screened all over the world and I continue to get often very moving responses. My hardest audience though was the Utzon family, they all sat down to watch the film soon after it was finished - they cried. Jørn’s daughter Lin Utzon told me about the response, she has been a big supporter of our film.

DELLORA: I learned to persevere. The most important trait an Australian filmmaker must have, without it you would never make a film here and I fear it is getting more difficult. We wrote the film and tried to fund it years earlier to no avail. It sat in a desk drawer at the ABC for more than two years, and then I got a phone call “Can you make this film by the 25th anniversary of the Opera House? And by the way, when is that?” The call came through in early 1998, if it had been a few months later the film would never have been made - the anniversary was in October of the year.

DELLORA: I hope you enjoy the film.