Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[GUT]

Rob Roy

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff

Another two : Tunes of Glory (John Mills and Alec Guinness)
The Wicker Man (Christopher Lee)

Again I forgot two that I really liked. Thanks Robert.

By the way, "The Wicker Man" was remade in the last couple of years.

My original intention was to do a series of lists for each of the four or five nation states that make up the British Isles. I said four or five depending on how one handles the issue of Ireland as one state or two.

It is not always easy. Here's my attempt at Wales.

1) How Green Was My Valley
2) The Corn is Green (two versions)
3) The Man Who Walked Up a Hill and Down a Mountain
4) A Run For The Money (I believe this is the name of a 1949 early Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness. It takes place in London, but the main characters (including Hugh Griffith) are Welsh (Griffith being a lyre player).
5) Another film I can't recall the name of - about the destruction of a village in Wale due to flooding by a major government project. Edith Evans is the local village matriarch, and the villain was Emlyn Williams.
6) The Stars Look Down.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

OK Lynn, I'll try to watch it when I can.

BTW, there was an extremely short Yiddish version of Cartesianism. Its sole proposition was 'Cogito ergo schtum' and the philosophy wasn't developed further.

Hm, "I think therefore I keep my mouth shut!" It does have a smidge of sense to it.

Jeff

[Robert]

Hi Jeff

There was also a Japanese version which went "Cogito ergo sumo."

[Robert]

Hi Jeff

It's 'A Run For Your Money.' A couple of Welshmen go to London. I seem to remember it as a kind of Welsh version of 'The Bridal Path' with misunderstandings etc.

The other film was apparently this :

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/films/The-Last-Days-of-Dolwyn_1949

[Robert]

I think the film "The Halfway House" may have been set in Wales. The hotel in it was owned by Mervyn and Glynis Johns, anyway.

Also "Only Two Can Play" with Peter Sellers.

[DJA]

5) Another film I can't recall the name of - about the destruction of a village in Wale due to flooding by a major government project. Edith Evans is the local village matriarch, and the villain was Emlyn Williams.

Jeff

"The Last Days of Dolwyn".

Some Welsh guy named Richard Burton in his first movie.

[DJA]

Films set in Scotland in whole or part.

Jeff

Brigadoon.

Magical movie.

Not filmed in Scotland due to budget and weather.

[Mayerling]

"The Last Days of Dolwyn".

Some Welsh guy named Richard Burton in his first movie.

Thanks Robert and DJA for "The Last Days of Dolwyn" and "A Run For Your Money".

Whatever did happen to that Burton character?

The film about the hotel I haven't seen. "Any Number Can Play" was unique among early Seller films - he did not wear make-up as in the others. Cast included Raymond Hunley and Richard Attenborough.

Stretching the scene a bit, one can include "Zulu" because the soldiers at Rorke's Drift (I think) were Welsh, and during the concluding attack sing "Men of Harlech".

I forgot about "Brigadoon" DJA. Thanks again.

Jeff

[DJA]

[QUOTE=Mayerling;348026]

"Whatever did happen to that Burton character?"


He did the voice over for "Zulu".

Stanley Baker,a close friend of Burton's,played Lt. John Chard VC of the Royal Engineers.

Charles Warren had joined RE 22 years earlier.

Might have been where BS man got those shoulders.

[DJA]

"The Greed of William Hart" starred Tod Slaughter

Jeff

He used to perform "Jack the Ripper" on stage.

[Rosella]

Tod Slaughter was the definition of a ham wasn't he? He'd practically chew the scenery. Great fun, though! I've never seen the version of 'The Corn is Green' with Bette Davis, only the Hepburn version. How was Bette with accents?

A lot of Welsh films seem to have been set in mining villages in remote valleys before the war. 'Tiger Bay (1959) was set in Cardiff, though. Burton did a version of Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood' in 1972, with Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O'Toole. 'House of the Long Shadows' (1983) starring Vincent Price, was also set in Wales.

By the way, thank you for mentioning 'The Halfway House'. I saw it on a Saturday morning matinee, (the session specially for kids only in British cinemas in the 1950's and '60's) when I was about ten. It must have stuck in my memory as over the decades I could remember brief details of parts of the plot. I tried to trace it a few times but it's difficult when you can't remember the title. Now I know!

[Mayerling]

Hi DJA and Rosella,

Pity that in his film career, wherein he was the first "definitive" Sweeny Todd, and "Squire" William Corder in "Murder in the Red Barn" Slaughter never did "Jack the Ripper". He probably was quite good at it. He also, except in a short that still exists, never filmed his relatively sedate villain, "Sir Francis Leveson" from "East Lynne". If you catch that short on You Tube it is astounding how restrained an actor Slaughter could be when he wanted to be.

He's worth watching, because he is hamming it up but enjoying every moment of it. William Everson in a book about movie villains said Slaughter could be planning some wholesale act of murder but stop a little bit to make a dishonest pound or two along the way. Furthermore, he actually is doing a favor to modern audiences catching his performances. Slaughter was the last of the "barnstormers", putting on these old and wheezy Victorian melodramas way into the 1950s. And they were still popular! Except for one other actor whose name escapes me (who played Dr. Grimesby Roylatt in "The Speckled Band" and "Professor Moriarty" in two of the Arthur Wontner film - his name is Lyn Harding) Slaughter was the only actor of note who left a film record of these dramas, which (unfortunately for serious British drama) really dominated the 19th Century.

I only wish Tod had made more of them.

Jeff

[DJA]

https://archive.org/search.php?query=tod%20slaughter

Four of his movies which are legal downloads.

[Robert]

I'm waiting to see what Jeff chooses first for a film set in Northern Ireland.