I'm greatly enjoying this thread (and I said I never watched movies!  I seem to have seen rather a lot!) and am fascinated by the reponse to A Canterbury Tale, which I have never seen.  So today I found a brand new dvd of it on Amazon for just £1.99 which has been ordered.  Really looking foward to it.

Me too Stanley!!  You see, you will have sold three copies before putting pen to paper!

Five! (But I'm sure I've already told you that, Stanley?)

Thank you, kind folks!   I'll keep practicing although the royalties from 'all good bookshops' would have been welcome as I'm about to be mesmerised by major repair renovations, next month.   The driveway is due for 'canalisation' - is this painful?    Fortunately, I have the services of a first class chippie; even has his business address printed on his white van; and I'm gathering a series of estimates from all and sundry which he will monitor for price and quality when he returns from holiday.   Bathroom renovations include a modern, step-in shower facility.  I'm already practising, 'I'm goin' to wash that man right out my hair'!

  However, my annual post-Proms visit to relatives in Ross-shire may have to wait until October, although George Garnett has done-it-again by mentioning the island of Foula (much further north in The Shetlands) in connection with Michael Powell's 1937 film, "Edge of the World".    It's a real beauty and MP saw it as the start of his career after several years of quota quickies throughout the 30s.   He dedicates a chapter to the pre-production process, particularly difficult due to the remote location.   The story was set on St Kilda, in the Hebrides, but Lord Dumfries, owner of the island, refused permission for the film company to land on St Kilda as it was a bird sanctuary.     Eventually, the chief reporter of The Scotsman provided a contact 'who could have been a lay-brother in a monastery'.   He had been briefed that access to steep cliffs was crucial to the plot - and how! - and he confirmed that Foula almost matched St Kilda with similar cliffs, a sheer drop of 1,300 feet to the sea.

           "The great cliffs were terryfying, and it was a dizzy sight to see fulmars dropping
           away from us as we lay on the edge of the Kame, down, down, a quarter of a
           mile to where the Atlantic surges creamed on the ledges.   The sea is never still there.
           The next land westward is North America and the depth of the sea a few yards out from
           the cliffs is 500 fathoms."

Living accommodation would be a problem as the island housing consisted of isolated crofts and Powell and a few colleagues were welcomed for a recce; the islanders were delighted when told that five barrack huts would be built for cast and crew and bequeathed to the island at the end of the shoot.   Only one actor rejected these spartan conditions.   Five zinc baths were ordered from the Mainland and water was heated in buckets over primus stoves.   The ultimate luxury.

Powell was renowned for his short fuse but he had a great affection for his cast and crew; fees were minimal but he built an ensemble he could rely on for the next 20 years and an unsolicited cheque would always be sent to those who fell on hard times.   John Laurie told me this, although he was never short of bawbees.    "Ach, I did rubbish like Old Mother Riley films to keep body and soul together."  He was very funny about the skirmishes between Arthur Lucan (Old M Riley) and his wife, Kitty McShane, who played his daughter.    "O, m'daughter, m' daughter", arms and fists flaying.      John was also aware that he was playing an OTT stereotype in "Dad's Army" but he was always highly professional; on time and on top of his lines.   His early classical career was shrewdly assessed by Powell:

           "John Laurie had become a name since The Thirty-Nine Steps and he had worked
           with me on a couple of quickies.    I admired his sharp quickness, his active brain,
           his outspokeness, and I knew of his career (he had played a very young Hamlet
           at Stratford) to realise that he had the potential of a great actor."

Yes, the 'sharp quickness' still prevailed in his old age.    I told him that I'd met Andrew Cruickshank 'in town' and he was thrilled that he was about to play Clarence Darrow in the stage version of "Compulsion" which was to be tried-out at the Theatre-in-the-Round at Croydon.   I explained the plot of the notorious 20s Leopold-Loeb case when two students murder another for the act itself.   Patrick Hamilton had also had a success with his own version "ROPE" which Hitchcock filmed in 1948.  Instantly, John said, "Has the role got lots of lang words?    Aye, Andrew will like that, lots of lang words"    I laughed, uproariously, because a few years earlier, I had returned from a lunchbreak, at a pub, in Bayswater, to the dingy church hall where we were rehearsing "Dr Finlay's Casebook"  and there was Andrew spouting Corinthians...'and the greatest of these is love', from memory.   Such a fine orator and he relished every word.  He was an Elder at St Peter's, Belgravia, and I can see him mounting the pulpit as if ready to tackle Lear.

I now must retrieve my off-air video of "Edge of the World" from the garage vaults as it was shown in the mid 90s, along with "Return to Foula".   But, instead of gathering estimates, I've been steeped in transferring the Ingmar Bergman season to DVD with the commercials removed but that is a matter for another day.

Michael Powell concluded:

          "In the days I am writing about, talkies were pouring out of America at the rate of
          12 expertly manufactured pieces of of entertainment a week, 600 a year.   For film-makers
          in Europe it was like painting a watercolour in a millrace.   It was a question of survival.
          I had no illusions about the value of the potboilers I had made, nor did I make the
          slightest attempt to preserve them, or to record their success or failure.   They were not
          what I was in films for.   I was a sorcerer's apprentice, and I was going to follow and put
          on record my master's teaching or bust.   It was not a thirst for glory, but the love
          of the art which I served.   And when I showed little Edge of the World at the Santa Fe
          Film Festival in 1980, forty-five years later, and it received a standing ovation for the
          film, not for me, I felt that my love had been justified."

The 39 Steps, saw it a couple of years back on BBC2 I think, terrific film, remember John Laurie very clearly.  This thead could get expensive!!

Hi, Anty.      Yes, John Laurie played the Highlands farmer, mean of spirit, in 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' who could only resort to physical abuse when bemused by his wife's (a young Peggy Ashcroft) attraction to Richard Hannay (Robert Donat).

BBM  Thank you.    Your mention a DVD of "Rebecca".   Which version?    I hope it is the 1940 version, directed by Alfred Hitchcock with Laurence Olivier (Maxim de Winter), Joan Fontaine (the second Mrs de Winter) and Judith Anderson as the sinister Mrs Danvers.  I recorded it on DVD, off BBC 2,a few weeks ago.       I think the acceptable TV versions had Diana Rigg or was it Anna Massey as Mrs Danvers?

Here's a good question topic for your thread.    What's the opening line of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca"?      Off the top of my head.     "Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Or who played the leading roles in the 1940 original cast at London's Globe Theatre?

     Owen Nares (Maxim)     Celia Johnston (second Mrs de W) wish I'd seen her - and - huge surprise -
     Margaret Rutherford was Mrs Danvers.   

Oh Dear, Germaine Greer is not impressed with the Hitchcock

When Alfred Hitchcock takes over Du Maurier's narrative to make a movie, we can expect that what is suggested in the novel will be made blatant. By casting Joan Fontaine, he made sure that the second Mrs De Winter was a breastless, almost pre-adolescent figure; in shot after shot, she is made to appear tiny and super-fragile next to the brooding hulk of De Winter, played by Laurence Olivier as if he were Heathcliff. In two shots, her head is always below or under his. She often wears a version of school uniform: shapeless skirt and shirt, and sensible shoes. Under stress, she twists her hands in front of her empty shirt like a schoolgirl, and when she is happy (briefly) she skips. The only time we suspect she has breasts is when she chooses the wrong costume for the fancy dress ball, which, of course, incurs the wrath of her father-husband because it makes her look like an adult woman