Favourite Films: The Winslow Boy
Feb. 1st, 2006 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lesbiassparrowI love this film. It's a David Mamet film, which is why I saw it in the first place, but it's very different from his usual films. It's a quiet film adapted from a play by Terence Rattigan, which is based on a true story. Essentially the plot is this: a boy from a middle class family is expelled from a naval academy (they say he has stolen another boy's postal order). His father ends up taking the whole thing through a sequence of court cases, which saps most of the family's money. There is also a suffragete and socialist sister, a caddish fiancee, a conservative barrister (who is also an M.P.) and a repressed Edwardian love story. How can you resist?
Here's the family all happy before they know of the disgrace of the boy. They are toasting the engagement of the sister with the caddish fiancee (though no one knows he is caddish yet)
This is Sir Robert Morton, the barrister who takes up the case. He is interrogating the boy, which offends the sister (she hates Morton because he also prosecuted a union leader. Look, it's the perfect set up for repressed sexual tension!)
This is the sister, facing down the caddish boyfriend, who wants to dump her because his father doesn't approve of the court case. Morton offers her an out which will save her engagement but she insists on the case going ahead. And she fights for women's votes.
Oh, Sir Robert - you fight for the rights of the Winslow boy and you like his sister more than she does you, but you don't believe in votes for women. But you are good-looking. But you are impressively repressed. And the woman you (possibly) love claims you are not a very nice person and that you can be bought 'like a twopenny whistle' because you have much ambition. You also have a lot of money. And a title.
Things work out in the end. The Winslow Boy is saved. And Sir Robert and sister have a scene in the garden where she expresses hope for the women's movement and he expresses admiration (but in a very Edwardian fashion)
Oh, it's great and it has great actors and you should watch it.
Here's the family all happy before they know of the disgrace of the boy. They are toasting the engagement of the sister with the caddish fiancee (though no one knows he is caddish yet)
This is Sir Robert Morton, the barrister who takes up the case. He is interrogating the boy, which offends the sister (she hates Morton because he also prosecuted a union leader. Look, it's the perfect set up for repressed sexual tension!)
This is the sister, facing down the caddish boyfriend, who wants to dump her because his father doesn't approve of the court case. Morton offers her an out which will save her engagement but she insists on the case going ahead. And she fights for women's votes.
Oh, Sir Robert - you fight for the rights of the Winslow boy and you like his sister more than she does you, but you don't believe in votes for women. But you are good-looking. But you are impressively repressed. And the woman you (possibly) love claims you are not a very nice person and that you can be bought 'like a twopenny whistle' because you have much ambition. You also have a lot of money. And a title.
Things work out in the end. The Winslow Boy is saved. And Sir Robert and sister have a scene in the garden where she expresses hope for the women's movement and he expresses admiration (but in a very Edwardian fashion)
Oh, it's great and it has great actors and you should watch it.
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Date: 2006-02-02 07:40 am (UTC)And the last line in the movie? "How little you know of men." *swoon*
Funny thing: I saw this when it first came out in a college movie theater with a friend. When Jeremy Northam first appeared on screen, 30 or so minutes in, there was an audible gasp from the audience.
I don't think he ever looked better.
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Date: 2006-02-02 10:43 pm (UTC)