ok, so I was totally confused by the scene where Anne brings Gilbert over to the Keye's London home and they found all those random young women sleeping on the floor. maybe i just missed something, but who the hell were those girls? and what was their significance?
shareThat wasn't the Keye's home, it was another house where Ralph and Celia has attended a party which had gone on all night. Anne and Gilbert were picking them up on their way home.
sharehaha, of course it was just me not paying attention :P. still, a pretty random episode nonetheless, no? with that girl just standing there and then walking to the room. idk, unless there was some foreshadowing or ~deeper meaning~ that was just beyond me, which is very likely.
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Yeah...that part was weird. The movie never explains it. Maybe they were hookers for all the ambassadors that were coming to attend the party??
"You make your life what it is but there's always a point where fate steps in"
It was actually filmed at Blenheim Palace, not sure whose house it was meant to be, perhaps it wasn't important whose house it was.
The significance (or how I read it) was the general apathy, ignorance and lethargy of certain classes to worldwide events, and their implications.
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I was one of them! We were told by Poliakoff himself that our scene was metaphoric; we basically represented the aristocracy of the "glorious summer of 39". We, the final debutantes before the war, were meant to be trying to keep our hedonistic lifestyle by sleeping into war.
Also, our scene was actually filmed in Claydon House in Buckinghamshire, but we were originally told it was to be in Holkham Hall. It was beautiful but absolutely freezing (filmed in December with no central heating) and we weren't wearing much. Just trying not to shiver while the camera was rolling.
so, in short, google "debutantes" and that will explain it. whores forsooth!
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I don't doubt he said that but the debutante explanation really doesn't hold water to me. Everyone involved with that family were part of highly organized covert political faction trying to keep Britain out of the war. I had the impression that there were activities depicted in this movie that are historically accurate yet still cannot be explicitly spelled out for the audience since the extent of these activities has never been officially acknowledged. If they, like everyone else connected to the family, were involved in this same activity, then most likely they were in fact a regiment of prostitutes whose assignment was to compromise important men targeted by the group - to take them out of the fight, so to speak. Maybe another part of the story that also can't be acknowledged is that much of this so-called appeasement movement were in reality secretly supportive of Hitler's goals and operated as a "fifth column". After all, Britain would have rightly anticipated having a favored position in Hitler's fledgling New World Order, being of the same racial stock as mustachioed one himself pointed out. I feel the movie was hinting at this interpretation.
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Interesting interpretation.
I'm pretty sure he didn't mean us to be a "regiment of prostitutes", but, as you say, the scene is certainly meant to be open to interpretation. There's definately a seedy vibe throughout that scene though, plus there's the whole "Hugh Bonneville perving on us" thing.
When he (Poliakoff) was talking to us he seemed to be much more interested in the fact that we, as debutantes of '39 were the very final remnant of hedonism before an extremely sober period. He was really interesting and had obviously researched that particular deb season loads; he described the whole process we would have gone through leading up to the party, and how we would have met the king etc, and now we were just conked out.
Tuning in late, but I only just saw Glorious 39 and I need to watch it again, as it's very layered. Anyway I assumed the sleeping girls were debs who had partied hard and were recovering -- I couldn't help but remember the girls in Gone with the Wind who were resting up after the barbecue, anticipating the ball that evening at Twelve Oaks!
share"A regiment of prostitutes whose assignment was to compromise important men"...
I disagree.
1. The house in which we see those girls is a house where Anne is picking up Celia and Ralph from a party. Not a Foreign Office party or anything like that - just a debutante-type party of which we see the aftermath. They reminded me exactly of coming down the stairs for breakfast and having to step over the dregs of a younger sister's sleepover.
2. If you were in charge of a "regiment" of prostitutes you were sending out to do nefarious deeds, might you not keep them somewhere a bit more discreet than the living room floor of some toff who is having a party, with guests and servants milling around nearby?
3. We have just heard from one of those very actresses who has told us what the director himself has said. Her explanation makes perfect sense. I see no reason to read things into the scene which clearly were not intended to be there. Why could it not be explicitly spelled out? The war ended 66 year ago (and, er, we won). Do you think Ralph Keyes is going to come after Poliakoff? What would be the point of the director dropping incredibly subtle hints about something which according to you nobody knows about and may or may not have happened, and then covering them up with an entirely plausible explanation?
Even if they were understood by the audience to be prostitutes, from where are we supposed to leap to the conclusion that some British people wanted a favoured place in Hitler's empire and this "regiment" was a way to get it? We do not even see a single male guest of this party except for Ralph. There is no hint whatsoever that prostitutes are targeting pro-war men, or indeed any men in this film. It is no secret that some Britons were pro-Hitler, and that there were British fascists - anyone who has heard of the Mitford sisters knows that. How this is shown by a group of sleepy debs is beyond me.
I don't remember the movie well enough to argue the point. Maybe I'll watch it again and give a better reply. The Germans had extremely effective intelligence operations and might have penetrated deeply into British society, more deeply than some may care to admit even at this late date. It could prove embarrassing, at least, for the descendants of some prominent families. It has been argued the reason France fell like a house of cards was due to massive prewar German infiltration and Britain probably would have been targeted for the same kind of treatment.
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That's certainly a valid interpretation as well, however 2 points of order:
1. Britain didn't want a right-hand position to Hitler, she still considered herself the pre-eminent imperial world power at that time.
2. Hitler was probably only a pawn in the plan for a "New World Order", if you believe in that kind of thing.
I believe that the plan was always to lure the major imperialist powers of that time into a World War. Hitler's masters (if they existed/exist [go with me on this one]) would have known that Britain would not be able to accept a second-best position. Of course we had to after the war anyway, because the nation was literally and financially crippled...
Poliakoff obviously comes out against the idea of appeasement, being of Polish origins.
Oh yes, I believe in that NWO "kind of thing". Anyone who isn't in thrall to the mass media matrix would have to employ some major cognitive dissonance to disbelieve it. However, it's possible that the Anglo-American empire nearly lost control of, and got eaten by, it's own Frankenstein monster. I guess only the capstone of that one-eyed pyramid will ever know for sure. True, Poliakoff would have most likely never been squeezed out onto this mortal coil under a thousand year Reich (nor myself, for that matter).
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I thought I recognized Claydon!! Thanks for the heads-up, much appreciated!
shareI recognised it was after the party, but seeing people sleeping on mattresses like that reminded me of refugee camps and makeshift field hospitals - all images of war - and the glamorous girls were a deliberate disconnect, to suggest the oncoming horror. They were all soon going to be caught up in the war effort - perhaps a more 'moral' reason to be sleeping rough, but certainly a more disciplined one.
shareI guess it could also be seen as a forshadowing of the uses that these 'great houses' would be put to. Matresses on the morning room floor might be for dozing debs in the summer of '39 but they would most likely be for troops, Operations HQ for some aspect of the war effort, field hospitals, make-do orphanages etc. etc. etc. in the coming years, and there would be a lot more of them crammed in there.
shareAha! I thought I recognized Claydon House; I played a concert there many years ago.
It was an odd scene, and I didn't think it really worked as it stood in the final cut. The film gives other, more comprehensible, examples of that aristocratic head-in-the-sand mentality of the time, and the injection of this sort of dreamy metaphorical scene was rather jarring. It certainly had a visual and artistic sense when seen in context, but I just thought it seemed out of place with the rest of the film.
Well at least he let you wear those absolutely beautiful satin nightdresses for the scene!!
shareIt used to be very commonplace for young women to sleep in the home of the host(s) of a ball or party that was to run late (or all night) to assure that the young ladies had a safe place to sleep and recover - often late into the day to prepare for yet another party or ball as were commonplace during "the season." There were many times when people drifted from party to party all season long returning to their own homes to refresh, change and go out again day after day - oh the rich in the days of old, and this dates back centuries.
The reason they're all wearing negligees or slips, btw, is because it would ruin their expensive dresses and gowns to sleep in them, so they slept in their slips, etc. They were assured to be kept quite safe in the homes of the hosts, therefor the idea of being seen wasn't too unseemly - plus, it was the end of the flapper era and many morals were looser (ie being seen in your slip).
In more modest eras, the women would have been sleeping in more secluded areas or rooms - but a large party in 1939, as this seemed to have been, required debutantes to be housed in probably more areas than just the one we saw.
It is a strange scene and I'll admit that my "simplest explanation is usually right" methodology doesn't quite explain it. I mean, it's easy to dismiss it as a bunch of partiers crashed on the floor - which has been known to happen. This is further bolstered by Aunt Elizabeth stating that she had yet to go to bed.
On the other hand, I didn't notice any men lying with the women. That could be the socially acceptable thing to do in 1939 - even after a party, but I was struck by the fact that all the faces I could see were those of stunningly beautiful women.
So, I can believe that it was devised to be a metaphor to describe Britain in that moment (perhaps a tired maiden in a position to be ravaged), but for the time being I'm sticking with the sleeping partiers explanation.
The Aunt had a big society party to which Anne was pointedly not invited. The girls were sleeping off an excess of partying.
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