An Inspector Calls, The Go-Between, Cider with Rosie and other BBC "autumn classics"

[Nick Armstrong]

she is a "real" individual - which rather weakens the possibility that ... oh, I'll wait for Cali

Tarnation, ferney - I begin to guess at it, from that... Something not all it seems about Thewlis's mesmerising "Inspector" and his tale of the unhappy "Eva"... (And it's J.B. Priestley after all....)

Big mouth !!



Rather like you with you butler gag manqué, I was about to post words to the effect of the following

How can any other version compare with Pinter, Losey, Alan Bates, Julie Christie and Margaret Leighton?

until I realised Conchis had written out my thoughts

PS: my post on another thread refers!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You do??

You sound like the vicar at my first marriage!


(I did say "hopes"!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Big mouth !!

!

Believe me - that was merely a kitten from the bag of cats!

[Stanley Stewart]

Surprised that the 1954 film version of An Inspector Calls with Alastair Sim superbly enigmatic in the title role, although he was aware of reservations about his casting, as it was felt that the sight of his angular features could induce a fit of the giggles in the audience. Sheer nonsense as his presence could bring silence by a mere turn of the head. I've written earlier about working with him in a play in 1972 and remember his extraordinary skill in honing a role. The film's producer, Norman Collins, responded, 'In this film, picturegoers will see the Sim who made his reputation long ago on the stage as a very controlled, severe actor.' Spot on. Alastair probed every thought and line reading in rehearsal, a continual search for emotional truth. I was glad to see the film listed on the More4 TV channel a few months ago and did a HD transfer.

The film differed from the play mainly in its involvment of Eva. In the play the leading characters constantly refer to Eva although she is never seen. Priestley himself provided the extra dialogue. He was an extraordinary dramatist who could juggle 'time' so cleverly, viz Dangerous Corner, Johnson over Jordan, They Came to a City, etc, which still fascinate.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Cali: Don't read the last post from Stanley Stewart until you've watched the programme!!!!!

[aeolium]

Or next week's The Go Between, by the looks of it.

Nothing can possibly better the 1971 original with Christie and Bates, one of the best things Pinter ever did in capturing the past as a different country, imo, so why on earth all the wasted money and effort of a remake?

Yes, that Losey film is a wonderful achievement in which everything - screenplay, photography, musical accompaniment and excellent acting right through to the minor roles - came together in an almost flawless adaptation. The closest Pinter came to the quality of screenplay he provided there was in the screenplay for another Losey film, The Servant.

It's presumably deliberate that the first three in the Beeb's Sunday literary classics are all - at least in part - about class divisions and relationships across class.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, that Losey film is a wonderful achievement in which everything - screenplay, photography, musical accompaniment and excellent acting right through to the minor roles - came together in an almost flawless adaptation. The closest Pinter came to the quality of screenplay he provided there was in the screenplay for another Losey film, The Servant.

It's presumably deliberate that the first three in the Beeb's Sunday literary classics are all - at least in part - about class divisions and relationships across class.

That's probably a basis for a very interesting and timely but sadly non-permissible political discussion on this forum, aeolium.

I hadn't realised the screenplay for The Servant was Pinter's. I must get the DVD of that film sometime.

[Conchis]

Yes, that Losey film is a wonderful achievement in which everything - screenplay, photography, musical accompaniment and excellent acting right through to the minor roles - came together in an almost flawless adaptation. The closest Pinter came to the quality of screenplay he provided there was in the screenplay for another Losey film, The Servant.

It's presumably deliberate that the first three in the Beeb's Sunday literary classics are all - at least in part - about class divisions and relationships across class.

Pinter adapted Prousts A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu for a proposed Losey film, which was never made.

The screenplay has been published and I have read it. It is, without a doubt, the finest adaptation of a literary classic ever written for the screen - better than The Go-Between, I'd say, because the challenge was greater.

It was 'adapted' for radio a few years back but that was only a pale shadow of what could have been: it's a truly cinematic adaptation.

If you get the chance, read it - and marvel at what might have been.

[Richard Tarleton]

Googling Dominic Guard, who played Leo in the Losey film (and went on to feature in Picnic at Hanging Rock, amongst other things) I see he is now an accredited child psycotherapist

Has Cali seen AIC yet? Daren't say anything about that.

[Nick Armstrong]

Has Cali seen AIC yet? Daren't say anything about that.

Thank you Richard! And no I haven't seen it yet - can you wait till Monday... I will have seen it by then, promise!

Dominic Guard

I think it would be hard for any young actor to rival the intense, confused watchfulness of his performance as Leo

[clive heath]

Losey and Pinter also collaborated on a film adapted from a Nicholas Mosley novel "The Accident" which I found very powerful, robbing me of speech for quite a while after we left the cinema.

[Conchis]

Losey and Pinter also collaborated on a film adapted from a Nicholas Mosley novel "The Accident" which I found very powerful, robbing me of speech for quite a while after we left the cinema.

Another brilliant film. A less showy role for Bogarde after the The Servant, but equally good.

[Flay]

Accident is available on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/IeQLI3kQoRk

[Serial_Apologist]

Accident is available on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/IeQLI3kQoRk

Oh wow - thanks for finding that, Flay, because I haven's seen that film since the '60s and have forgotten what it was about.

[Nick Armstrong]

Has Cali seen AIC yet? Daren't say anything about that.

Have now watched, thanks!

Have just read Stanley's post about Sim's performance, thanks for that (and for the warning ferns!).

Apart from the ambiguity at the end (the nature of the "Inspector" and Priestleian 'time slip'), the thrust of the play, the messages about thoughtless / callous capitalists &c. &c., aren't exactly subtle are they...

But I can't imagine the thing being better acted than by that troupe - all fleshing out the characters in a completely convincing way (Ken Stott particularly superb - and Thewlis too).

Started on the BBC Go-Between - can't quite see the point of it yet, lots of 'Silvikrin-advert' style drifty soft-focus summer closeups, generic 'Anglo-Arvo-Pärt' soundtrack, the odd banal dialogue cliché ('good things come in small packages'). So far, key moments of menace (e.g. the first time Mrs M / Marian trap Leo into lying) seem to have gone almost for naught, and the little lad playing Leo is understandably not a patch on Dominic Guard...