misc. notes

-My husband and I watched this tonight, not having seen it in a number of years, and we loved it all over again. It really gets the flavor of 18th Century English country life, and also a range of realities of life in London at the time.
-It's a joy to see the beautiful young Albert Finney and the radiant Susannah York. Dame Edith Evans and all the supporting characters are wonderful.
-I recall an interview with Albert Finney a few years after this, and he said it was a walk-through for him, it was the easiest role he ever played. He preferred more complex, meatier roles. (But he was never again so charming.)
-An interviewer commented to Susannah York that everyone in the movie seemed to be so natural in their 18th century costumes and settings. She said that was because the director, Tony Richardson, insisted they all be on the set all the time, in costume, so they were no longer self-conscious about it.
-Vanessa Redgrave said she got made up as a hideous old hag and appeared in one of the crowd scenes without her husband, Tony Richardson, knowing about it.

It is hard for people today to know what it was like to see this in 1963. There were several reasons it was such a huge success at the box office.
-It's a rousing good story
-It was a kind of "period piece" movie that had never been done before, showing a kind of English gentry, both rural and urban, that had never been portrayed so robustly and honestly before in a major film. We Americans were amazed and entranced.
-Its timing couldn't have been better. Months before, the whole country had been traumatized by the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. We had had the Beatles' arrival to distract us, which was nice. Then came this movie, full of life, and fun, and color--intelligent and rich in scope. It was like coming out of a dark room into the sun. We were so grateful. People saw it over and over, just for the therapeutic effect.