Favourite Film

Where to begin with this blog subject? There are so many to almost make it to the final count. My mother let me miss an afternoon’s school to sit through an interminable,” Gone with the Wind,” with her, but I think I’d rather have been in class. I loved the kitchen sink type of film, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" with the marvellous Albert Finney , "A Taste of Honey" was quite shocking, dealing with homosexuality and unmarried motherhood. This was a breakthrough drama so different from the Hollywood kind.

My sister was an extra in "A Kind of Loving" which was filmed partly in Preston’s arcade. My friend dragged me to see anything starring Cliff Richard and Elvis and put me off both permanently. I remember the shock of seeing Olivier in "The Entertainer", such a jump from Shakespeare but it was brilliant.

Sitting here thinking, so many come to mind. "ET", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Alien" are all noteworthy. I’ve just remembered some more to cram in, Alan Sillitoe’s "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and Richard Harris in "This Sporting Life". I fall for the poetry of the titles sometimes - "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?", "Suddenly Last Summer". What strikes me is my favourites will always be overflowing with dialogue, the complex interactions of characters. I loved all Tennessee Williams dramas and who can forget Brando in "On the Waterfront"?

movie still from Rebecca

So I’ll quit my self indulgence and narrow it to two. The runner-up is "Rebecca," shot in black and white in 1940, based on the book by Daphne du Maurier and classed as an American romantic psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the young never-named woman who becomes his second wife. 

The plot revolves around the first wife’s reputation and others' recollections of her. It is a thoroughly good story with interesting twists. One scene that I can’t resist is, on asking her ( Joan Fontaine) to move to Manderley, his manor, she asks naively if he means as a secretary, he replies :-
“ I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” A priceless, hilarious proposal. The other character of influence is Mrs Danvers, played by a scary Judith Anderson. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her superb portrayal of the demented housekeeper so obsessed with the dead Rebecca.

So to number one and it has to be FANFARE 🎺 🥁 "ALL ABOUT EVE" starring the one and only Bette Davis who I was lucky to see in the flesh at Southport theatre. I could fill the blog with the marvellous dialogue, the most well known being “fasten your seatbelts it’s going to be a bumpy night,” George Saunders plays a masterly role in this film and in Rebecca also.

movie still from All About Eve

This film received a record fourteen nominations at the twenty third Academy awards, becoming the only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations. It won six awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time and I will stop talking and becoming a spoiler for those who haven’t seen it yet. Hope you love it like I do.

Thanks for reading, I can’t think of a suitable poem.

Cynthia