By Fred Blosser
A naive but principled young guy from the sticks gets embroiled with outnumbered and outgunned rebels in an uprising against a tyrannical empire, has his life saved more than once by a roguish outlaw, is menaced by an older relative, and goes on the run with a spirited young woman of royal lineage, all in a 1970s movie featuring a talented cast of fresh newcomers and distinguished veteran British actors. What, “Star Wars”? Well . . . yeah, I suppose so . . . but actually I was thinking of a substantially more obscure picture, Delbert Mann’s 1971 production “Kidnapped,” now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Mann’s movie was based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, once widely read by teenage boys but now supplanted, I guess, by “Minecraft” and Japanese Manga. I saw the film in a nearly empty theater during its U.S. release in early 1972, a rare, intelligent...
A naive but principled young guy from the sticks gets embroiled with outnumbered and outgunned rebels in an uprising against a tyrannical empire, has his life saved more than once by a roguish outlaw, is menaced by an older relative, and goes on the run with a spirited young woman of royal lineage, all in a 1970s movie featuring a talented cast of fresh newcomers and distinguished veteran British actors. What, “Star Wars”? Well . . . yeah, I suppose so . . . but actually I was thinking of a substantially more obscure picture, Delbert Mann’s 1971 production “Kidnapped,” now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Mann’s movie was based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, once widely read by teenage boys but now supplanted, I guess, by “Minecraft” and Japanese Manga. I saw the film in a nearly empty theater during its U.S. release in early 1972, a rare, intelligent...
- 1/10/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Moira Armstrong suggests in her letter about Sunset Song (2 December) that publicity for the film has implied that there had been no earlier attempt to dramatise my grandfather’s novel, citing the BBC’s wonderful 1970 TV version. She should rest assured that the director Terence Davies has consistently and generously credited Vivien Heilbron’s portrayal of Chris Guthrie as his inspiration for his 15-year labour of love. She and James Naughtie (Loons and queans and orramen, G2, 25 November) were concerned about Terence’s capturing of the landscape and language. But the film’s potentially toughest critics, the current residents of “Kinraddie”, the fictional setting of the novel, gave it a resounding Doric cheer when it was shown in Arbuthnott village hall, two miles from where Lewis Grassic Gibbon was brought up, on St Andrew’s Day.
Alister Martin
Welwyn Garden City
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Alister Martin
Welwyn Garden City
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Continue reading.
- 12/2/2015
- by Letters
- The Guardian - Film News
Versatile actor and writer often called upon to play toffs and bumbling clerics
The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".
I...
The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".
I...
- 9/25/2011
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
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