Change Your Image
cuzjackincanuckland
Reviews
Harnessing Peacocks (1993)
English girl builds an unusual unconventional life; when it falls apart, luck helps her start rebuilding it more conventionally.
I saw this British TV movie in 1995 on A&E, and taped it the very next time was shown by A&E, with all the commercials left in so that when taping late at night I would not miss anything from having to restart the recording and possibly missing a cue. I watch my tape of it quite frequently, more than once a year since 1995. I soon found and bought a second-hand paperback copy of the novel (by Mary Wesley, an Englishwoman who started writing novels when she was 70 and her second husband's death had left her poor; she died at 90). I enjoy rereading the book.
The story is lively, about differences between snobbish ambitious confident public-school (private school to North Americans) upper-class types and the others, and shows many of the "nobs" as rude and inconsiderate in their behaviour to family members and friends. It follows a beautiful girl from a rich, land-owning, big-house country family; she opts out and disappears, keeps her whereabouts a secret from them, and supports her life by supplying very expensive services to selected rich mostly-upper-class people well able to afford them. When it suddenly all falls apart, luck helps her start putting her life together again in a different and more conventional way, and while she is a little reluctant to to give up some very enjoyable aspects of her life until the crisis, she accepts that she cannot go on as she was, and decides to make a go of the third phase of her life.
The filming is in big houses, in country districts, on country roads (some purporting to be the main road between Exeter and Cornwall), in places purporting to be in the Cornish town of Penzance, in the Scilly Isles, on a sailing yacht, in Exeter and Salisbury. The people look the parts they are playing, acting is quite good but not great, the dialogue is lively and amusing, and there are clear distinctions made between loving, liking, being in love, making love, and having sex, however enjoyable the last may be even without love. The story is hard-headed, realistic in its attitudes, and unsentimental. The lively conversation is liberated, but any lively action is mostly off-screen, and there is no violence.
The Story of Three Loves (1953)
Three people on a passenger ship recall love stories.
I thought the first story (Moira Shearer and James Mason, Ballet) was pretentious and dull. I wish the TCM commentator would not pronounce her name as Moria.
The second story (Leslie Caron) was done better by Big, even though I love watching Leslie Caron.
The third story (Kirk Douglas and Pier Angeli as trapeze artists) was well-written, well-acted, well-filmed and very moving, better than the other two put together. It was memorable, as a love story, while the other two were very forgettable. Having videotaped this movie, I would have recorded another over it, were it not for the third story. I would give it, the circus story, a 9, the ballet story a 4, and the governess story a 5. Also it was interesting to see the almost-forgotten Pier Angeli. She acts well here.
Moonfleet (1955)
This is a rubbishy plot little connected to the novel Moonfleet
I know the original novel, aimed at male children and adolescents, but this monstrosity of a screen-play has little connection to it, and the changes are not for the better. Why didn't they change the name of the film and have a completely new set of names for the characters? If it was to attract people who knew the original story, was that well-advised? They would only come away from a viewing disgusted and angry. The original story had its faults and weaknesses, but the story in the film is sheer nonsensical rubbish.
In the novel, the boy is older and a native of the village, he has a living mother, his helper is Elzevir Block who is the inn-keeper, there are no lords or aristocrats, only a miser-merchant who bought the manor-house; the boy is involved in the smuggling, led by Elzevir Block, there are no pirates or piracy; and he, the boy, returns to village when a man only through luck and the self-sacrifice of Elzevir Block, and there meets his childhood sweetheart. Other than the possibly-supernatural occurrences, the book plot is in many ways realistic.