BEFORE: Miranda Richardson carries over from "The Prince & Me" and this enables another Birthday SHOUT-out since she was born on March 3, 1958. There haven't been as many SHOUT-outs this year as usual, I think mainly this is due to more films with smaller casts - fewer actors, less chance of landing a film on someone's birthday, it's just math. I could have dropped in "The Evening Star" here and made a Miranda Richardson triple-play, but I think I need that film to make my links next time around, so again I'm holding one back, and I'll follow a different link tomorrow.
But considering that one of the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" themes today is "Oscar Goes on a Trip", I think my film choice today is in sync with that. This film covers much the same ground as "A Passage to India" or "The Wings of the Dove", in that it's just a simple, classic story about British people going on vacation.
Tomorrow is Day 19, and the themes for Wednesday, March 4 are "Oscar Goes South of the Border" and "Oscar Goes Home". Here are the films:
6:30 am "Juarez" (1939)
8:45 am "Fiesta" (1947)
10:30 am "The Champ" (1931)
12:00 pm "The Brave One" (1956)
2:00 pm "Cowboy" (1958)
3:45 pm "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)
6:00 pm "The Night of the Iguana" (1964)
8:00 pm "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1948)
11:00 pm "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962)
1:15 am "Volver" (2006)
3:30 am "Some Came Running" (1958)
That's another five that I've seen: "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", "The Night of the Iguana", "The Best Years of Our Lives", "Volver" and "Some Came Running", which brings me up to 94 seen out of 223. Just over 42% overall, which I think is a decent score.
THE PLOT: After World War I, four English women who are unhappy with their lives spend some time away on vacation in a beautiful Italian villa.
AFTER: It sure seems like Italy is the hot destination this time around, at least in the "classics" division - "The Wings of the Dove", "Much Ado About Nothing" and now this one are all set there, while the French Riviera and Monaco have been visited too, in "The Love Punch" and "The House of Mirth". One thing is clear, that the citizens of the U.K. definitely want to go on vacation when they're in a romantic mood. Who can blame them, when London is so rainy in March, why wouldn't they want to head off to Italy for the month of April? Yes, yes, of course I know it's March and I've placed this in the "wrong" month, but this is where the linking clearly wants the film to be. Let's assume that it's March when our characters start planning their Italian holiday, OK? They've got to plan the trip, back around World War I this would have meant taking a train to the coast and then boarding a small ship across the English channel, right? And then some kind of train on the other side to get to Italy.
Back then it was a long journey - two of the four women staying at the San Salvatore got their first, the older woman, Mrs. Fisher, and the wealthy and beautiful Caroline Dester. Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot must have left later, well in addition to packing they had to run the trip by their husbands first. For Rose this wasn't too difficult, because her husband had just written a new erotic novel (under a pseudonym) and wanted to go on a book tour to promote it. One gets the feeling that he probably was getting a little something on the side after the book signings at ladies clubs, another reason to not use his real name, this way he could keep his affairs off of his wife's radar. Lotty had a bigger problem, breaking the news to her husband, Mellersh, that she wanted to spend a month in Italy. Mellersh had been keeping Lotty on a tight leash, making her write down all of her expenses, yet still she found a way to divert 15 pounds to rent 1/4 of the Italian villa. However, Mellersh surprised her with the idea of an Italian holiday for them both, just before she was going to break the news that she wanted to go there by herself.
This film maybe shows the beginning of the AirBnB concept, Londoner and oboe player George Briggs owns the Italian villa, and since he was going out on tour he decided to post an advert in the newspaper, offering up San Salvatore for April for 60 pounds. (shillings? was that the same thing? Then what were "quid"?). Anyway Lotty and Rose got the idea to take the month off, and then found two other women willing to help with the expenses. Once they all arrived in Italy, they had to decide who should get which bedroom, and what to do with the extra beds - the single ladies didn't need them, and so they ended up in the rooms of the married women. This plot point could be important later, especially if their husbands should turn up unexpectedly.
Three of the four women just want to sit in lounge chairs and relax, or lie down on the beach or on some nearby rocks and just clear their minds. Sure, that's what a vacation is for, but that doesn't exactly lend itself to the most exciting movies. Do I want to watch British women just remaining still for 95 minutes? Of course not, it seems incredibly boring, even if that's how they want to spend the month of April. So this situation needed to be shaken up. After a few days of being bossed around by Mrs. Fisher, Lotty decides to invite her husband, Mellersh, by letter and encourages Rose to invite hers. Perhaps they could both repair their marriages if they could just get their husbands on vacation and get them to relax, too. Sure, it's not like married people fight while they're on vacation...
Mellersh shows up first, because he couldn't wait to network with Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline, as they both have a lot of money, and he views them as prospective clients. Mellersh promptly causes some kind of explosion of the hot water heater in the bathroom, and is therefore wearing only a towel and a lot of soot when he meets the other ladies. Rose's husband shows up a few days later, but he never got the letter from Rose, it seems he came there to hook up with Lady Caroline, who is a fan of his erotic stories. Well, I guess somebody had to be - but the trip apparently took a lot out of him, because he falls asleep before he can sleep with Lady Caroline and instead is found dozing in the hallway by his own wife, Rose, who assumes that he came in response to her letter. Well, once in a while in these bedroom farces I suppose somebody does actually screw up and end up sleeping with their own wife, purely by accident.
Meanwhile, the owner of the villa, George Briggs, turns up and is surprised to find four (no, wait, six) people enjoying the accommodations, when he rented it to only TWO. All is forgiven when he becomes attracted to Rose, who he assumed was a war widow, you know, because there were so many of those after WWI ended. What an opportune time it must have been to be a man in London with so many lonely widows around... Caroline wonders why Briggs didn't focus more on her, but it turns out he's got very bad eyesight due to a war injury. But when he learns that Rose has a living husband, who is also THERE, he switches over to Caroline, and she knows that it's true love because it's not based on her looks, Briggs enjoys talking to her. OK, whatever, everybody kind of gets paired up, except for Mrs. Fisher, but it's OK, she's old. But at least she made some new friends by traveling to Italy.
This film did get three Oscar nominations (Supporting Actress, Costume Design and Adapted Screenplay) but did not win in any category. It did win a couple Golden Globes and a NY Film Critics Award, I guess that's something. There's just one love quadrangle that totally gets resolved rather quickly, so overall that's not very complicated. It was originally made for TV and shot on 16mm, but the result was so good that it was transferred to 35mm and released theatrically. It's based on a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, and they shot much of the film on location in Portofino, Italy, in the same castle where the author stayed when she wrote the book. That's pretty cool...
Directed by Mike Newell (director of "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" and "Mona Lisa Smile")
Also starring Josie Lawrence, Alfred Molina (last seen in "Not Without My Daughter"), Neville Phillips (last seen in "Carrington"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Michael Kitchen (last seen in "Proof of Life"), Joan Plowright (last seen in "The Spiderwick Chronicles"), Polly Walker (last seen in "Emma"), Stephen Beckett, Matthew Radford, Davide Manuli, Vittorio Duse, Adriana Facchetti, Anna Longhi (last seen in "The Talented Mr. Ripley")
RATING: 5 out of 10 famous authors Mrs. Fisher once met
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