The one great bonus of that movie was working with Milo O'Shea and the lovely Billie Whitelaw. And there was also a strong technical challenge at the end of that movie, where there's a scene which takes place on a large beach. For various reasons the film had to be made entirely in the studio... well, almost entirely in the studio because it takes place in New York in... well, it has two locations.

The first location is New York 1923 and the second location is Heaven, or Paradise, or whatever. Because half way through the film the hero is executed, having murdered his boss. And you sort of think: well, where do we go now, you know, and then you go to heaven. So Heaven is... basically Heaven in that film is a large beach with a funfair attached. So we built all that in the studio and the large beach was built in the so-called silent stage at Shepperton, which is a bigger stage. And it was lit with something like 18 brutes. It was a huge set. By doing that in the studio... it's quite interesting. By doing that in the studio with just a few cut-ins in a few inter-cut scenes which were shot on a real beach in Cornwall, most of the scene takes place on that stage beach. And it suits the film very well because it has just a touch of artificiality. Like in the distance, you see the sea, which is actually silver paper being moved up and down, which is what they used to do in those kind of circumstances. And the degree of artificiality, which might have bothered one in other circumstances, in there it fitted perfectly. But it was quite a challenge for me because it's probably the biggest set that I've ever lit, except one documentary scene that I did in St. Paul's Cathedral, but as for studio sets, it's by far the biggest set that I've ever lit.

But I loved working with Billie and with Milo, and we did another picture... I did another picture with Milo subsequently. And, also I had another connection to Billie Whitelaw, because she's married to Robert Muller who is a writer and author, and he wrote a book called The World That Summer, which is more or less about the same situation that I was in as a refugee from Germany at that age and in that period of time. When I read that book it had a very strange effect on me. It liberated... all of a sudden I found myself in tears, and it liberated something in me that I'd kept in very tightly and very unconsciously, and when I read that book it all came out. Then in... during that period I saw them at... at infrequent intervals. I had lunch and dinner with them. They lived in Canonbury, but they were always very charming people, as was Milo.