In England in the early 1930s, twenty-year-old Flora Poste, recently orphaned, and left with only one hundred pounds a year, goes to stay with distant relatives on Cold Comfort Farm. ...
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Young Flora Poste leaves the funeral of her parents and finds herself alone with insubstantial means ("barely enough to keep her in stockings and furs") in mid-1930's London. The young 20-... See full summary »
When Marie-Louise goes to meet her lover Jean-Paul, who is arriving in Paris on his military leave, she goes to the wrong train station. Marie-Louise and Jean-Paul spend the next 24 hours running around the city looking for each other.
While restoring an old painting showing a woman and two men playing chess, Julia discovers the text "Who killed the knight" underneath the paint. The owner of the painting tells her that ... See full summary »
This Masterpiece Theatre production, set at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, chronicles the life, loves, foibles and politics of the fictional English town of Middlemarch. Adapted ... See full summary »
An art director in the 1930s falls in love and attempts to make a young woman an actress despite Hollywood who wants nothing to do with her because of her problems with an estranged man and her alcoholic father.
Director:
John Schlesinger
Stars:
Donald Sutherland,
Karen Black,
Burgess Meredith
In England in the early 1930s, twenty-year-old Flora Poste, recently orphaned, and left with only one hundred pounds a year, goes to stay with distant relatives on Cold Comfort Farm. Everyone on the gloomy farm is completely around the twist, but Flora tries to sort everything out.Written by
John Oswalt <jao@jao.com>
Though made for television, the film was released to theaters. See more »
Goofs
Flora and Amos walk out of the farmstead to go to church. There are buildings and trees all around. Their conversation is continuous, but the next scene shows them walking straight up through a wide open field of grass with grain fields in the background. There's not a building in sight, and the only trees are in the far distance. See more »
Absolutely terrific movie is an interesting take on the popular theme of people who come into a mess of unhappiness and create joy. Often these movies rely on a central character who is magical, or has great charm and a love for life, but Flora achieves her ends through pure English practicality, and it is very amusing to see someone approaching misery as a mess to be cleaned up. Flora, excellently portrayed by Beckinsale, is pretentious and rather smug but also well-meaning and likable. In a way she seems to be the personification of British imperialism, although that's probably a bit of a stretch.
Much of the fun of the movie is the ridiculous level of misery and squalor represented by Cold Comfort Farm, which is a parody of the sort of grim worlds one can find from writers like Dickens. Eileen Atkins does a great job, but then they all do. The only real weak point in the movie is Mybug, who seems completely unnecessary. Perhaps he was a significant character who served some purpose in the novel, but here he is just this annoying peripheral character, and had he been cut entirely out of the movie it would have been all the better for it (although I generally like Stephen Fry). In spite of that, an excellent film.
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Absolutely terrific movie is an interesting take on the popular theme of people who come into a mess of unhappiness and create joy. Often these movies rely on a central character who is magical, or has great charm and a love for life, but Flora achieves her ends through pure English practicality, and it is very amusing to see someone approaching misery as a mess to be cleaned up. Flora, excellently portrayed by Beckinsale, is pretentious and rather smug but also well-meaning and likable. In a way she seems to be the personification of British imperialism, although that's probably a bit of a stretch.
Much of the fun of the movie is the ridiculous level of misery and squalor represented by Cold Comfort Farm, which is a parody of the sort of grim worlds one can find from writers like Dickens. Eileen Atkins does a great job, but then they all do. The only real weak point in the movie is Mybug, who seems completely unnecessary. Perhaps he was a significant character who served some purpose in the novel, but here he is just this annoying peripheral character, and had he been cut entirely out of the movie it would have been all the better for it (although I generally like Stephen Fry). In spite of that, an excellent film.