Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we are discussing Ladies in Lavender.
Ladies in Lavender stars Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It was released in 2004 and was written and directed by Charles Dance, who is also a well-known British actor (Game of Thrones). It was his directorial debut. The screenplay that Dance wrote, according to information online, is based on a short story by the same name written by William Locke in 1908. I also thought it was interesting to find out that a play based on the movie was later developed.
I watched it on Amazon Prime for free (with a membership) but it is also free on Peacock, Tubi, the Roku Channel, and PlutoTV.
Janet (Maggie Smith) and Ursula Widdington (Judi Dench) are spinster sisters living in a small coastal English town. Their life is pretty slow and mundane from what we can tell at first. They clean and knit and have tea but not much else.
One morning Ursula is looking out her upstairs window when she sees a man on the beach. She and her sister run to him and with the help of the local doctor bring him inside. They believe he’s been washed up from a shipwreck of some sort.
As they nurse him back to health they realize he doesn’t speak English. After some effort they discover he speaks Polish and his name is Andrea (Daniel César Martín Brühl González – A German/Spanish actor who is known to comic book fans as Helmut Zemo/Baron Zemo).
Since this is right before World War II this makes the people in the small town a bit anxious when they learn of where he’s from later on. It doesn’t help that there is also a woman living in the area who speaks German. This puts everyone on edge but at the same time, people begin to like Andrea when he is able to move around.
First, he is nursed back to health by Janet and Ursula and Ursula teaches him some English.
At one point Janet is playing piano downstairs. Andrea has been upstairs recovering and when he hears the music he covers his ears and asks for it to stop. Janet has a book of German and knows a few words so she finds a way to communicate with him and learns he loves music but prefers the violin. So the ladies find the local fiddler player who plays a few tunes for the recovering Andrea. We can tell that Andrea is trying to be polite but that he’s not excited by the man’s inferior performance. He asks if he can play the fiddle and ends up kicking a much more polished and classical version of the folk song out, which tells us he is an accomplished violinist.
I won’t lie – I did worry that this movie was going to go a bit weird at one point because Andrea had to stay with the sisters while he recovered and Ursula became very infatuated with him but it didn’t go where I worried it would.
To explain a bit without giving too much away – Judi Dench’s character becomes enamored with Andrea and though she knows she’s too old for him she sort of imagines what it would like to be younger and be able to fall in love with him.
Both she and her sister really become attached to him but more in a matronly way for Maggie Smith’s character. They both want to take care of him. He brings such happiness and love into their lonely lives. He brightens their otherwise mundane existence and reveals to them experiences they never had – being wives and mothers.
They are afraid he will leave them when they see his talent and they see the German woman, who is also an artist, speaking to him and becoming friends with him.
This is a very artistic movie with beautiful scenery, superb acting, and a sweet story. I wouldn’t say it is the best movie I’ve ever seen as if feels like there was more that could have been done with some of the characters – especially Andrea who I would have liked to know more about in regards to his background and upbringing.
Still, I enjoyed this one and find it a very comfy, cozy watch since the characters are so endearing. The sisters are caring and sweet in their own ways and the housekeeper is very funny. She’s a bit rough on the edges but even she becomes attached to Andrea.
The short story that the movie was based on was first published in Collier’s magazine and later included in a book of other short stories by Locke called Faraway Stories in 1916.
Dance said Smith and Dench were the only ones considered for the roles and if he had not been able to get them, he wouldn’t have made the movie. He asked them when they were in a play together and accepted the offer without even seeing the script.
This was González’s first English-speaking movie. I also thought it was very interesting that he did not play the violin in the movie. Instead, it was the famous violinist Joshua Bell.
I thought it was interesting that we chose this as a comfy, cozy movie for this year and a New York Times critic said of the movie “[Dench and Smith] sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats burrowing into a down quilt on a windswept, rainy night… This amiably far-fetched film… heralds the return of the Comfy Movie…”
Next up on our Comfy, Cozy Cinema is Kiki’s Delivery Service.
And here is a list of the rest of the movies we are watching through November.
Feel free to link up your own impressions of the movies at our link-ups. The links close at the end of the week but feel free to leave your blog post on future link-ups, even if it is for another movie.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we are discussing Somewhere in Time.
I am going to warn you that I know this movie is sacred to many, but that I am going to pick a bit here. If you are a fan, take my teasing as affectionate teasing. There were aspects I liked and aspects I just didn’t get.
Somewhere in Time was released in 1980 and stars Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer. It is based on the book Bid Time Return by science fiction/horror author Richard Matheson who also wrote a few other well known books I Am Legend (1954), What Dreams May Come (1978), Hell House (2008), and The Omega Man (1975). Many of his books were made into movies. He also wrote the screenplay for Somewhere In Time.
The story is about a playwright who travels back in time by merely wishing he can be there.
That’s pretty much the plot of the movie, but I’ll explain further.
Richard Collier is approached by an elderly woman after one of his plays and she hands him a watch and says, “Come back to me,” and then leaves.
It’s a creepy moment, if you ask me, and in real life Richard would have said, “Who was that old lady?” and then thrown the watch out. But this is Hollywood so he holds on to the watch and eight years later when he hits a slump in his career he decides to head to Michigan to take a break from life – because that’s the first place I think to go when I need a break from life. Not Hawaii or the Bahamas but Michigan.
This is a joke Michiganers! Honestly, I’m so jealous when Erin tells me of all the lovely places Michigan has. Sometimes she even sends pictures to rub it in more! *wink* Plus a ton of cozies I read all take place in Michigan. So it is either very lovely or there are a lot of murders there. Either way – much more exciting than Pennsylvania.
Okay, back to Richard. He travels to Michigan and Mackinac Island where he decides to visit The Grand Hotel because as a student at a nearby college he’d always heard about the hotel but had never visited it.
We, the viewer, have already heard of the hotel because this is where the old lady in the beginning of the movie returned to after she gave Richard the watch.
While staying at the hotel Richard becomes enamored with a photo of Elise McKenna (Seymour) who was an actress from the early 1900s. She performed at the hotel in 1912. He begins to research everything he can about her and finds an up to date photo of her in a library book and realizes she’s the woman who gave him the watch.
After visiting a former caretaker/friend of Elise’s, Richard learns Elise died the night she gave him the watch. While visiting the woman he also finds a book on time travel and for some unexplained reason, Richard decides he must find a way to go back in time to meet Elise.
Conveniently, the man who wrote the book about time travel is also in Michigan and tells Richard that to go back in time he must lock himself in a room and remove all distractions that would make him think he was still in modern times. He must instead focus solely on what time period he wants to go to and say over and over he is actually in that time period.
Sigh. Yes. As if the movie already wasn’t a bit cheesy – this is where it turns the ridiculous corner.
There were so many moments in this movie that I am sure were meant to be romantic or moving or suspenseful but all I could do was giggle.
The way the light hits her photo in the beginning of the film like a spotlight from heaven and the cheesy music starts playing – super, super loud? That was one of them.
Then when he’s trying to go back in time he looks like he ate too much shrimp at dinner so he’s having major cramps.
I should add that before he tries to go back in time he buys a suit he thinks fits the time period and then uses a pair of scissors and the hotel room mirror to cut his hair perfectly to fit the time period. Yeah. Okay. Like he could do that all by himself. Ha. But it’s a movie so we will go with it.
Since you already know the movie is called Somewhere in Time you know that he arrives in the past. I won’t say much beyond this other than there was so much more I wanted them to do with the time the couple had together. Like Erin said to me, the pacing of this movie felt off – things were so rushed and squished and sort of discombobulated.
Despite that, I somehow sort of liked the movie. Reeve, Seymour, and Plummer (who plays Elise’s manager/guardian since she was 16. Let us not focus too much on what that means. Ahem. I believe he really was just her guardian) acted well giving great – or at least commendable – performances. I think this was only Reeve’s second movie with his first being Superman.
The concept of the movie was very interesting and it was a lovely location for a movie as well. Much better than San Diego, where the book was set.
You can read Erin’s post to learn more about the location because I’m sure she mentions that she has visited the location a few times since she lives near there.
The book, by the way, had Richard visiting the Hotel del Coronado because he had an inoperable brain tumor and wanted to spend his last days there. It’s while there he sees Elise’s photos and things proceed like the movie in most ways. The only thing is the ending of the book makes more sense than the ending of the movie, in my opinion. I won’t share either ending here but I will say I didn’t like the ending of the movie so I wish Matheson had not changed it for the movie. Not sure why he did.
Incidentally, the book was inspired by a true story – sort of.
According to information I read and watched online, Matheson was traveling with his family when he was entranced by the portrait of American Actress Maude Adams that was hanging in the Piper’s Opera House in Nevada.
“It was such a great photograph,” Matheson said, “that creatively I fell in love with her. What if some guy did the same thing and could go back in time?”
Matheson proceeded to research her life and became fascinated with her being a recluse. To write the novel he stayed at the Hotel Del Coronado for several weeks and dictated what he saw and learned into a tape recorder, personally experiencing himself in the role of Richard Collier. He based most of the biographical information about Elise on Adam’s life and said the books original title came from a line in William Shakespeare’s Richard II: “O call back yesterday, bid time return.”
I am personally glad the name was changed for the movie. It made it much more marketable, even though from what I read about this movie, Universal Pictures did very little to promote it, which may be one reason it wasn’t a huge commercial success.m at the time. It did, however, become a huge cult classic.
Of the book Matheson said: “, “Somewhere in Time is the story of a love which transcends time, What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death…. I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form.”
There you go – now you can keep that in mind if you ever choose to read the books, or if you have read them.
If you would like to know more about Maude Adams, by the way, you can visit this Wikipedia page (which can easily be changed and manipulated as we have learned over the years, so also look at legit sources for your facts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Adams
While looking for reviews and trivia about this movie I found a hilarious review by movie critic Roger Ebert.
I do not recommend reading this review if Somewhere in Time is a favorite of yours or holds some kind of sentimental value. While the review made me giggle, it is quite harsh. You can find it here: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/somewhere-in-time-1980
Erin told me about a Somewhere in Time package you can book at The Grand Hotel and I’ll include that link here without the jokes she and I made about what the package would include since sharing the jokes would include spoilers.
While reading about the package I learned that Jane Seymour still visits the hotel often for personal and professional reasons. Sadly, both Plummer and Reeve are no longer with us and can’t visit.
This movie was not a box office success, as I mentioned above, but over the years it has developed a cult following, hence the hotel offering a package in its name and hosting events related to it.
The theme song of Somewhere in Time, in case you are wondering, was not written for the movie like some might think. It is “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, written in 1934.
A few more trivia tidbits I found online included:
Score creator John Barry’s parents both died shortly before he began to work on the film, making the music that much more emotional. (source TVTropes.com)
Christopher Reeve took the role even though it didn’t pay as much as others because he was very touched by the story and script. (source TVTropes.com)
The first time Richard sees Elise is also the first time Christopher Reeve saw the picture because the director Jeannot Szwarc wanted his authentic reaction. (source TVTropes.com) (Thank God he looked enamored because otherwise they might have had to edit out his reaction. Not that I can imagine anyone making a disgusted expression when looking at Jane Seymour.)
According to Seymour, she and Reeve really did fall in love while filming and they hid the relationship from the cast and crew but that the relationship ended when Reeve found out his ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his child. The two remained close friends and Seymour even named her son after him. (source TVTropes.com)
While Christopher Reeve was filming this movie, the local theater decided to show his latest hit Superman (1978). Many of the “Somewhere” cast joined the locals for the event. Early into the screening, the sound went out. Reeve, who was seated next to Jane Seymour, stood up in the audience and delivered all the lines. (source imbd.com)
As of 2008, the numbers of Elise McKenna and Richard Collier’s rooms do not exist at the Grand Hotel. However, there is a Somewhere in Time suite. (source imbd.com)
Here is a trailer of Somewhere in Time if you’ve never seen it and think you might want to:
I will add that Roger Ebert suggested another movie that he felt better represented a time travel movie with romance included.
It sounds quite a bit darker to me but here is a preview for Time After Time:
I watched this movie on Amazon but it can be rented from a variety of streaming services, purchased on DVD, and probably found at local libraries.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, and I are continuing our Comfy Cozy Cinema this week with our impressions of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a movie based on the book These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach. It was released in 2011 and directed by John Madden and includes an all star line up.
“We have a saying in India – ‘Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright, it is not the end’,”
Sonny Kapoor in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
We are watching movies each week and then writing about them on Thursdays on our blogs from September to the end of October. If you want to join in with us, we will have link ups at the end of the posts each week that will be open several days after the posts are published. In other words, you don’t have to post your impressions on the day we do.
To summarize a bit first, this movie is about a couple and five other people who all see an ad online about a hotel in India where they can move to for a different experience and to save money. The ad boasts that the hotel is exotic and beautiful and recently remodeled.
Sadly, once the residents arrive, they find out the ad was very misleading. Less sadly, the manager is a wonderful young man who means well.
Sonny (Dev Patel) is trying to run the hotel and build it up so he can stand on his own, without the support of his rich mother and brothers who think he’s a screw up like their father apparently was.
Sonny is also dating a young woman (Tina Desai) but wants to have something to show that he is successful before he proposes to her. He is also afraid to tell her he loves her because he feels like he doesn’t have to say it. He has to show it.
I watched this movie several years ago and enjoyed watching it again – this time with a different set of eyes, so to speak.
Confession time – I love Judi Dench in pretty much anything I see her in, honestly. I did not plan on suggesting two movies with her and Maggie Smith together but, well, that’s happened because I love the two together. I actually forgot Maggie was in this one when I picked it, but I love that she was. I wish they had had more time together on screen since they are best friends in real life (hello Tea With The Dames.)
Each character in this movie is facing their own challenge.
We have Judi’s character, Evelyn, who is dealing with the aftermath of the death of her husband who she realizes did everything for her over the years and has left her with nothing and nowhere to go.
There is Jean (Penelope Wilton) and Doug Ainslie (Bill Nighy) who have come to the harsh realization that all the money they thought they had to use in their retirement is gone. They are now being forced to buy a smaller home and travel less, but they hope moving to the hotel will give them the opportunity to do something new and exciting and experience life fresh again. Jean is hoping for more prestige and riches, if we’re honest, and she’s in for a rude awakening.
Celia Imrie is a woman who moves from man to man but feels like because she is getting older that ship has sailed so she decides to head to India to see if she can hook one more rich man.
Norm (Ronald Pickup….that’s his real name) wants to – ahem – sow his seeds, so to speak, one or several more times with a pretty woman and looks at the trip to India as a chance to do that.
Graham (Tom Wilkinson) is a judge who has burnt out and returns to India to look up an old lover – a man whose life he’s sure he ruined when they had an affair when they were younger. That affair went against the Indian man’s faith and he is certain it ruined the man’s life over the next 40 years. He wants to find him to tell him he still loves him but also apologize.
Muriel (Maggie Smith) needs hip surgery but will have to wait a long time if she stays in England so a doctor offers her the opportunity to travel to India to have the surgery done quicker. One big problem? She’s a raging racist/bigot. Eek. Of course there is more to her story and we never do exactly understand why she is racist but we do see some redemption.
I believe it is absolutely possible to fall in love with every single character in this film with exception to one but even in that case I could actually understand her.
Jean is a difficult character. She’s nasty, stuck up, and selfish. It might be an unpopular opinion but I feel that she’s also scared. She is absolutely terrified of what her life is going to be like now that she’s older. She thought life would turn out differently than it has and now she is lost and she is frightened and though that isn’t an excuse of how she acts, it is probably why she is so snotty and negative.
She not only makes her husband’s life miserable but ruins the experiences of everyone around her. She sucks the fun out of everything and toward the end of the movie it is clear that she is desperately trying to hang on to the control she has had her entire life, partially thanks to her weak husband. Doug is sweet and excited to experience India, don’t get me wrong, but he should have stood up to his wife long ago.
According to information online, “most of the filming took place in the Indian state of Rajasthan, including the cities of Jaipur and Udaipur. Ravla Khempur, an equestrian hotel which was originally the palace of a tribal chieftain in the village of Khempur, was chosen as the site for the film hotel.”
I always like sharing some trivia about the movies I watch so here are a few from this one:
Tom Wilkinson, who plays Graham, is actually married to Diana Hardcastle, who is the woman Norman hits on in the movie.
The hotel is actually the Ravla Khempur; a hotel with stables that is located in Khempur in the state of Rajasthan. Built in 1620, it served for centuries as the residence of a series of village chieftains, eventually being converted into a hotel. Due to the success of this film, the place was renamed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Jean Ainslie (Dame Penelope Wilton) reads “Tulip Fever” by Deborah Moggach, on whose novel, “These Foolish Things”, this movie was based. Tulip Fever (2017) was filmed a few years later.
The cast includes two Oscar winners: Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith; and three Oscar nominees: Tom Wilkinson and Dev Patel and Bill Nighy.
Bill Nighy and Hugh Dickson previously worked together in the BBC Radio drama The Lord of the Rings, as Sam and Elrond, respectively. The roles of Bilbo and Aragorn were played by Ian Holm and Robert Stephens, who were formerly married to Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith.
(trivia sources Imbd.com.)
This is a movie that drew me in from the beginning. I truly wanted to know what happened to each character. I laughed and cried – you know – all the cliché things but I think I understood the movie even more now that I am also getting older.
There is a lot of fear and uncertainty for these “pensioners” as they are called in the UK. They are over the age of 60 and in some cases they’ve never even really experienced life. They have a lot to teach and a lot to learn and we learn right along with them.
My favorite characters are Evelyn and Sonny. We see changes in all of the characters but these two truly transform and connect throughout the movie.
I just saw that there is a sequel to this film that was released in 2015 and I hope to watch that this weekend.
Have you seen this one? What did you think of it?
Here is a copy of our schedule for the next few weeks:
I hope you will join in or at least follow along as we discuss these movies.
Last year Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I watched comfy cozy movies during the fall and we are doing it again this year.
This week we watched What We Did On Our Holiday (2014).
I wasn’t sure what to expect of this one but chose it based on the trailer I saw of it. I thought it would be cozy and fun. I should have read the descriptions better since it is called a “black-comedy.” Oops.
So, it wasn’t exactly what I had hoped it would be, but it was a pretty okay movie, with humor mixed in with …. well…. some disturbing elements. Not like deep, deep dark disturbing – just a bit depressing disturbing. Yet also uplifting. It is hard to explain unless you see the movie. I’m handling this post with care because while I want to share one of the biggest plot twists in the movie, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
So let’s keep it simple for now – David Tennant (Doug) and Rosamund Pike’s (Abi) character are getting a divorce but they are also going to visit Doug’s family and don’t want them to know about the divorce. Doug and Abi live in England. Doug’s family is Scottish (David is actually Scottish too so he got to use his normal accent this time). They instruct their young children to keep it on the down-low that Mum and Dad are living in separate houses and have lawyers.
Well, we, of course, know that this is going to go off the rails pretty fast with these precocious, bright children the couple has.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, Doug’s brother, Gavin (Ben Miller), is planning a huge party for their father. He’s inviting all kinds of bigwigs and other family members that no one but him wants there. His wife is inching toward menopause or is just stressed from dealing with him, and is having a hard time controlling her emotions so she’s crying in the kitchen some nights.
Their son seems to be a bit awkward but also might be autistic and he wants to play the music he loves on his violin but his father wants him to study classical music for college.
Oh and Gavin is rich. Very rich. Because he is a financial something or other which sounded like he’s a conman to me.
The kids in this film are – as the British might say – brilliant. They are hilarious and bright and quick witted. Great actors for being so young.
There are two girls and a boy. The youngest (between 4 and 5) reminds me of a mix of my daughter and one of my nieces – mouthy and sharp in the best way.
The oldest daughter (about 10) records all her thoughts in a little journal to try to organize them and deal with the chaos happening around her.
The boy (around 7) lives in fantasy worlds in a way, but he’s also a kid so it’s okay for him to do that.
There is a lot of serious subject matter in this movie but the humor that is woven throughout helps to alleviate that some.
I have to admit there were times I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the scenes in this movie. I think there was a healthy mix of both, to the point the kids had to check if I was okay.
It isn’t much of a spoiler to say that Grandpa (Billy Connelly) is sick and one reason Doug and Abi don’t want anyone to know they are getting a divorce is that they don’t want to upset Gordie/Grandpa.
There is a huge plot twist in the middle of this one that had me gasping, saying, “oh no. No way,” crying, and then laughing.
I wouldn’t say this is a movie I will watch over and over again because it was tough in a lot of ways – especially since I have parents who are older and dealing with health issues themselves. I would probably watch it again with a family member (not alone like this time) while holding on to my Teddy bear and a box of tissues, though.
When I say a box of tissues, don’t jump to the conclusion that this movie doesn’t offer some hope. It does and that hope is for all of us with dysfunctional families who are trying to figure out what being a “normal” family is.
The kids really make this film – overshadowing Tennant and Pike for me. In fact, they overshadowed all the “big name” actors in the film. I found the adult actors’ performances to be pretty blah in many ways.
This movie sat with me a few days after I watched it and I found myself thinking about some of the scenes and tearing up again.
I definitely felt this film had to have been filmed in Scotland and a quick look online showed that it was actually filmed in – Detroit?!
Ha! Just kidding. It was filmed in Glasgow and the Scottish Highlands in 2013.
‘WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS’
According to Wikipedia, “The beach scenes were filmed at Gairloch. The family home of Gavin McLeod is in Drymen near Loch Lomond. The ostriches farmed by Gordie’s friend Doreen are actually located at Blair Drummond Safari Park.
Have you ever seen this one before? What did you think?
Continuing with my Summer Movie Marathon today I am focusing on the movie Summertime, released in 1955 and starring Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi and directed by David Lean.
First, a little description of the movie:
Middle-aged Ohio secretary Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn) has never found love and has nearly resigned herself to spending the rest of her life alone. But before she does, she uses her savings to finance a summer in romantic Venice, where she finally meets the man of her dreams, the elegant Renato Di Rossi (Rossano Brazzi). But when she learns that her new paramour is leading a double life, she must decide whether her happiness can come at the expense of others.
Summertime isn’t exactly a summer movie in my opinion, other than the fact that Katherine Hepburn travels to Venice in the summer. It could really take place anytime, but it’s called Summertime because Katherine has her first big international adventure and her first big romance on this trip that is in the summer.
Okay, fine, maybe it is a summer movie, but I guess I think of summer movies being on the beach and being a bit silly. This movie is not silly. It is, in fact, quite serious at times. There are funny moments but there are also some big life issues that hit Katherine’s character, Jane.
Jane is a lonely woman who can’t seem to fit in. She’s a little odd by some standards, though I love her character – except when she flies off the handle at this one small thing in the movie and is all over dramatic at other times.
She likes to read and take photos and film little movies on her reel-to-reel camera and doesn’t believe she could ever be loved. (She sort of sounds like me.)
At first I found Katherine’s way of acting in this part grating. I wondered why they picked her for this role, but the more I watched, the more I got it. Yes, she is a bit grating in the way she talks and handles herself but that is how the character is. She’s abrasive and bold and overly excited and also suspicious of others who seem interested in her romantically.
In this case she ends up being correct to suspect Renato De Rossi and here is where spoilers will come in so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to, you might want to stay clear of the following paragraphs.
Jane meets Renato in one of the sexiest scenes I have ever seen in a movie. No, there is no sex or nudity or crude language. The actor who plays Renato simply looks at Katherine Hepburn in a way I could only dream of being looked at. The resolution on this clip is not great but this is the look:
Brazzi absolutely oozes sex appeal throughout this whole movie – from the first moment he checks her out, his gaze gliding down her legs and back up to the back of her neck while she films the scenes around her.
Jane is embarrassed by his attention and decides to leave the restaurant but a couple of days later she’s face to face with him when she wants to buy a goblet for sale in his antique shop. He is thrilled to see her again because he could not stop checking her out at the restaurant. He asks where she is staying and the next day he shows up and wants to take her out on the town.
But, back to Jane being suspicious – she has every right to be. Renato is not who he says he is. I mean, he is attentive and passionate and romantic and very possibly in love with her but he isn’t exactly unencumbered, shall we say. He has a family – not just nieces and nephews like he eludes to but a wife and children. The wife, he claims, is living somewhere else, by her choice. She’s fine with him seeing others because she’s doing the same. That’s how Italians are, he claims. Maybe they are, but that isn’t who or how Jane is.
Still, she is drawn to Renato and can’t seem to let him go and…well, you will have to watch the movie to know what happens, but I will say there was one scene that suggested….okay. Again. You will have to watch it.
I love the scenery in this movie. It was shot on location in 1954 and it is gorgeous. The film had a budget of $1.1 million and was one of the first British-produced films to be shot entirely on location.
According to the site Luca’s Italy, (https://lucasitaly.com/2017/11/30/venice-in-the-movies-summertime-1955/) “Most of Summertime was filmed in and around the Piazza di San Marco and Campo San Barnaba, where Brazzi’s shop was located. The building is still a shop, but today sells toys rather than red Murano glass goblets, but curiously, never seems to be open.”
The blog post also states, “The Pensione Fiorini, where Hepburn stays, is now the stunningly named Splendid Hotel on Rio dei Bareteri.”
If you would like to read more about the movie here are a couple of reviews:
I watched this movie on Amazon but I do see it is free on YouTube. I can’t vouch for the quality:
I had to switch things up for my next movie because I couldn’t find Having A Wonderful Time streaming anywhere. I also decided not to watch Clambake because I tried to watch it and I couldn’t push through. Plus, if I had watched Clambake and written about it, I would have run into the Comfy, Cozy Cinema that Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are planning and going to start September 5.
If you are interested in joining in, Erin has designed some wonderful graphics again this year and you can see the list below:
Next week I am going to write about Summer Magic with Hayley Mills to wrap up my Summer Movie Marathon.
I know that summer is winding down for most of us already, with kids already heading back to school in some places, but around here we don’t say summer is over until the first of September so I am watching summer movies for the month of August.
This week I am writing about Beach Blanket Bingo from 1963.
I started this movie and immediately decided I might not be able to make it through it. Ultimately I decided to push through it so my readers never have to.
And so I’d have some funny material for my blog.
I suffer for my blog readers. What can I say?
So here is the plot of the film – um….there isn’t one. I don’t think so anyhow.
There is just Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon jumping out of an airplane for whatever reason, kids (who actually look anywhere from 30 to 40 years old) dancing half-dressed on the beach, a lot of singing for no apparent reason, perverted old men chasing young girls, and some bumbling bad guy in a “motorcycle gang” who’s goal is to – er – I am truly not sure. Kidnap a pop singer I think.
Oh and a mermaid. There is a mermaid.
There is also a singer who is in love with Frankie’s character and Annette is jealous of.
I watched the movie and still had to go search online for a summary so I know what in the world happened.
Online it said this: “Frankie (Frankie Avalon) and the gang are hitting the beach for some good old-fashioned shenanigans. To get the party underway, the manager (Paul Lynde) of pop singer Sugar Kane (Linda Evans) decides a skydiving publicity stunt will really do the trick. As Frankie and the others are pulled into the plan, things get out of control. Throw in Bonehead (Jody McCrea) falling in love with a mermaid (Marta Kristen) and a kidnapping biker (Harvey Lembeck), and the party’s just getting started.”
Do the trick of what? I have no idea.
This movie was the fourth one in an eight-movie series with the first one released in 1963 and the last one being released in 1987 (yikes). From what I can see each movie had the actors playing different characters with unique plots. (Or what were supposed to be plots).
Three of the movies were released in 1964 and three in 1965.
So I looked this particular movie up on Wikipedia and it said this (there are spoilers but don’t worry…I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to rush out to watch this one), “A singer, Sugar Kane (Linda Evans), is unwittingly being used for publicity stunts for her latest album by her agent (Paul Lynde), for example, faking a skydiving stunt, actually performed by Bonnie (Deborah Walley).
Meanwhile, Frankie (Frankie Avalon), duped into thinking he rescued Sugar Kane, takes up skydiving at Bonnie’s prompting; she secretly wants to make her boyfriend Steve (John Ashley) jealous. This prompts Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) to also try free-falling. Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his Rat Pack bikers also show up, with Von Zipper falling madly in love with Sugar Kane. Meanwhile, Bonehead (Jody McCrea) falls in love with a mermaid named Lorelei (Marta Kristen).
Eventually, Von Zipper “puts the snatch” on Sugar Kane, and in a Perils of Pauline-like twist, the evil South Dakota Slim (Timothy Carey) kidnaps Sugar and ties her to a buzz-saw.”
So….yeah…ahem. There you go. The scene with the buzz saw? Completely psychopathic material. It got very dark at that point I thought.
I did like at least one exchange between characters.
The manager of the pop singer says, “I didn’t catch your name, boy.”
And Frankie shoots back, “I didn’t throw it.”
When I first started the movie and saw Don Rickles was in it I thought, “The only thing that will save this movie is Don Rickles.”
As I got more into the movie, though, my thought was, “Not even Don Rickles can save this movie.”
But there is one stand-up act he performs in the middle that actually does save the movie…more about that below because is it just me or did Annettee always look like she was 40 even in her late teens?
She was 18 in this movie but seriously looked like 40 to me, or at least 30. Even Frankie looked old(ish) to me but he was 25 in the movie. Did you know he’s still alive? I didn’t. I knew Annette was gone – she passed away from complications of MS several years ago. I remember because my mom and I were talking about her since she was more from my mom’s era than mine.
Of course, I am teasing a bit about how old they looked. Everyone else in the movie probably was in their 30s or 40s, though. Even Rickles noticed. According to information I read online, he even broke character at one point while pretending to be in a nightclub act, teasing Frankie and Annette by asking why they were in the film, because they were so old. I must have missed this when I first watched the movie because I went back to watch it again and cracked up for the first time watching the movie. I absolutely love how you can tell how the cast is actually laughing for real – it’s so authentic.
The movie is supposed to be goofy fun so I tried to cut it some slack, but … oh my ….it was hard to struggle through most of it. The campy sound effects didn’t help anything and then there were these scenes interspliced into the movie of an old man chasing (literally) a young woman in a bikini. Weird.
I thought it was interesting, or unsettling I guess, to read that the pop singer was originally going to be played by Nancy Sinatra but she dropped out because part of the plot of the movie was a kidnapping and her brother, Frank Sinatra Jr., had only recently been released after he was actually kidnapped at the age of 19. A ransom was paid by his father Frank Sinatra to have him released.
John Ashley plays Steve, the husband of the sky-diver, in this movie (and was her actual husband in real-life) but usually played Frankie’s friend in other movies. One reviewer said the movies were about friendship ultimately and it was weird to see Ashley not playing Frankie’s friend in this particular movie.
There is plenty of music in these movies from Frankie and Annette and several other real-life artists including, Donna Loren and the Hondells and I have to admit the music really isn’t that bad.
The pop singer for the movie was portrayed by Linda Evans but she lip synched songs sung by studio vocalist Jackie Ward.
A 12-page comic book was produced by Dell Comics and released at the same time as the movie.
Frankie later said of the movie, “That’s the picture of mine that I think people remember best, and it was just a lot of kids having a lot of fun — a picture about young romance and about the opposition of adults and old people. There’s nothing that young people respond to more than when adults say `These kids are nuts,` and that’s what this movie was about. It was also fun because we got to learn how to fake skydive out of an airplane.
I thought it was also interesting to read that a skit on the Carol Burnett show with the cast and Steve Martin was based on the movie. I recently saw that clip and knew it was based on one of these movies but not which one.
I watched the movie on Amazon Prime. It’s free right now with a Prime subscription.
This month I will be writing about classic summer movies that I’ve picked out on my own or that were suggested to me. These will be movies released before 1970.
Some will be campy, some will be about the cheesiest thing you’ve ever seen, but all will have an element of fun in them.
First up is Gidget (1959) starring Sandra Dee.
This movie had me all kinds of nervous and stressed, let me tell you.
First, they seemed to be rushing very young girls toward sex and romance way too early and that surprised me for a movie from the late 50s.
Second, while much of the scenes were meant to be funny, I just kept thinking about how dangerous many of the situations young Gidget was in were.
I was practically yelling at the TV at one point.
We start with Francine Lawerence in her bedroom and her friends are telling her it’s time she grew up and tried to get a man. She’s about to turn 17 and her friends are taking her to the beach so she can join them in trying to hunt men.
Of course, much of the movie is meant to be silly so when her mother asks why she doesn’t look excited to go, Francine’s friend says it’s because she’s going on her first “manhunt.”
The mom is a little shocked but sort of shrugs it off when Francine’s dad protests that she’s too young for that.
Francine is of the age when young girls look for boyfriends, her mother says.
Again, I was a bit shocked with this declaration but continued on.
On the beach, Francine’s friends undress to their bathing suits and do their best to catch the attention of a group of young men lounging on the beach next to their surf boards.
Francine isn’t as – ahem – developed as her friends so she doesn’t garner much attention.
The boys are also on to the girl’s ploys and mock and ignore them for the most part.
Francine would rather go swimming than catch boys anyhow so she sets out into the ocean and gets herself caught in some seaweed, which leads to her calling for help.
A young surfer named Jeffrey “Moondoggie” Matthews (James Darren) comes to her rescue and once she is rescued his friends mock him and Francine, but one of them offers to take Francine back to their hut and help her learn about life. Eek.
Francine is naïve and clueless about the flirting surfer so she ignores him and instead wants to know how she can get a surfboard too. She’d love to be part of the gang, she says.
They all wave her off and tell her to go home but the next day she is back at the beach to buy a surfboard and meets the Burt “The Big Kahuna” Vail, played by Cliff Robertson – a man who is close to 30 but spends his days surfing the waves all over the world.
Francine eventually inserts herself into the group and gains the nickname Gidget from them. Moondoggie isn’t too happy with her being in the group because he knows his fellow surfers aren’t the nicest guys and will try to take advantage of her.
At point he has to rescue her from the first guy who suggested teaching her how life works – ahem again – and tells her to go home.
“The lessons you’re going to get here aren’t what you are looking for.”
And they aren’t because the lessons Gidget wants are ones that will teach her how to surf so she can fit in with the guys, especially Moondoggie, who she’s fallen for.
Meanwhile at home, while Dad was once nervous about his little girl becoming a manhunter, he decides he should use her to get in good with his boss by having her go out with the boss’s son who is visiting.
The word pimp came to my mind at this point, I’m sorry to say.
There is a ton of humor in this movie, even if I was cringing at some of the scenes with men trying to take advantage of Gidget’s innocence.
I didn’t like the idea that a girl is expected to start dating men at such a young age, even if it was a different time.
Still, I had some fun with the movie and liked the surfing and beach scenes, even if the surfing scenes were very fake.
I thought it was interesting that Elvis was the first choice to play Moondoggie but he was in the U.S. Army at the time. Luckily he went on to make some dumb beach movies on his own in the future, including Clam Bake, which is one my list to watch for this series.
The movie was based on the book Gidget, the Little Girl with Big Ideas by Frederick Kohner who based the main character on his daughter Kathy. According to Wikipedia, the screenplay was written by Gillian Houghton, who was then head writer of the soap opera The Secret Storm, using the pen name Gabrielle Upton.
There were a few more Gidget movies made after this including Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Gidget Goes to Rome, Gidget Grows Up, Gidget Gets Married, and Gidget’s Summer Reunion.
Different actresses played Gidget in each movie.
There was also a series called Gidget that ran for one season in 1965 and starred Sally Fields.
The original movie is said to have kicked off the “beach genre” movies, a couple of which I plan to watch.
I didn’t look up a ton of reviews and trivia about this one but did see this excerpt of a review by Craig Butler in Allmovie notes: “Although the very title prompts snorts of derision from many, Gidget is actually not a bad little teenaged flick from the ’50s. Great art it definitely isn’t, but as frivolous, lighthearted entertainment, it more than fits the bill. Those who know it only by reputation will probably be surprised to find that it does attempt to deal with the problems of life as seen by a teenager—and that, while some of those attempts are silly, many of them come off quite well. It also paints a very convincing picture of the beach-bum lifestyle, much more so than the Frankie Avalon–Annette Funicello beach party movies.”
Have you ever seen Gidget or any of the other Gidget movies?
My complete Summer Movie Marathon list (with some additions possible):
I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr late last year and was swept up in the story, written for middle schoolers but with a message for all ages. The book was heartbreakingly beautiful.
Last week I watched a German movie based on it and it was as breathtakingly beautiful as the book.
So much of the movie was exactly how I pictured it in the book.
Before I continue, I want to mention that the movie is in German so if you don’t speak German you will have to read the subtitles.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is a semi-autobiographical book based on the facts of Kerr’s life. The main character of the book is Anna Kemper and the story is told her from her point of view.
Her father, like Judith’s, was a newspaper columnist from Berlin who spoke out against Hitler right before Hitler won a majority to take over in Germany. Because he spoke out against Hitler, Arthur Kemper is on the Nazi’s hit list. A member of the police who is not a Nazi warns him that he needs to get out of Germany before Hitler is elected.
Anna’s father escapes to Switzerland and the family joins him even before they know the results of the election because they are warned by their father through their Uncle Julius to do so.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is the story of the family’s life in Switzerland and then Paris, France. There are other books after this book that tell of their move to London, where they eventually settled. I believe Judith eventually moved to New York City.
The movie begins in Berlin in 1933 and then shifts to Switzerland. I was thrilled to find out that the movie was actually shot on location in Switzerland and then in various places in Germany.
The views when they moved to the country were absolutely beautiful and I didn’t see how they couldn’t have actually been shot in Switzerland.
The movie filmed scenes in
Berlin, Germany
Prague, Czech Republic
Bodensee, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Soglio, Switzerland
And Munich, Baveria, Germany’
All of the actors are outstanding in this, especially the little girl, Riva Krymalowski, who plays Anna. Her expressions and line delivery are subtly powerful.
The woman who played the mother – was also outstanding in my opinion.
This is a movie that could have been extremely dark, but because the book keeps a lighthearted tone (as light as you can when writing about Nazis chasing people down for their faith or political beliefs) the movie keeps a similar lighthearted tone mixed in with somber themes.
When the children move to Switzerland they have to learn a new language and new customs. They also deal with antisemitism, which becomes more apparent when non-religious Germans come for vacation at the hotel they are staying at but the Germans would not speak to them or let their children play with them because they are Jews who left Germany.
In the book, the children who usually play with Anna and her brother Max don’t play with Anna and Max while the other German children are there because the German children won’t play with them. This was cut out of the movie but in the book they all remain friends after the other German children leave and Anna’s Swedish friend apologizes for abandoning her.
I know everyone thinks Paris is beautiful but I was disappointed when the movie left the gorgeous scenery that Sweden provided. I’m not as thrilled with buildings – even ones in Paris.
What I did love is how free Anna’s mother and father felt in Paris and how they showed their love to each other — finally feeling like they weren’t being hunted down while there.
Like in the book, the children have to learn the languages of the countries they move to and Anna is better at this than her brother Max. She quickly learns and excels at French for example.
While she learns the languages, though, she still struggles with feeling like a refugee. Her father reminds her that Jews have always been refugees and they are no different. He encourages his children to always act respectfully and kind so that people who hear from the Nazis that Jews are awful, selfish people will not those lies aren’t true.
I found it interesting to read that Kerr held her German citizenship until 1941 and then was considered to be “stateless” or not a citizen of anywhere from 1941 to 1947. In 1947 until she died she was a citizen of Britain, where she eventually earned an OBE.
One thing that the movie brought home for me more than the book was the mother’s character, including how hard it was on her to leave Germany, as well as how strong she had to be for her family. I didn’t catch on to this as clearly when I read the book, but she was a musician who wrote operas so when she had to leave her piano behind in Berlin, it was like losing a part of herself.
In the movie there is a scene where they visit a rich family who left Berlin (and who they knew because Anna’s father once wrote a scathing review against the husband) and Anna’s mother is excited to see they have a piano. She has the chance to play it and it lifts her spirits immensely.
I felt like the movie developed her character even more.
The scene between the Kemper family and the richer family also demonstrated to me the huge disparity that developed between classes among the Jewish people during that time. The Kempers lost everything when they fled and were living in poverty. This man was somehow able to keep all of his wealth when they left Germany and ended up living in a wealthy area of Paris with plenty of food and clothes and other items for their children.
In both the book and the movie, Anna talks about how she’s read books where famous people all have difficult trials to overcome before they become famous. She comments to her brother, “Maybe that means I will be famous one day.”
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is part of a three-book series of semi-autobiographical children’s books that Kerr wrote. She also wrote and illustrated 57 books in her lifetime – including The Mog series – and they have sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit was translated into 20 languages.
In London, where she lived until she died in 2019 at the age of 95, Kerr finally found the home she’d been craving since her family left Germany in 1933.
For October and November, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be watching cozy or comfy movies, and some of them will have a little mystery, creepiness, or adventure added in. You can find out about the other movies we watched by searching Comfy, Cozy Cinema in my search bar at the right.
This one was a different one this week because it was a documentary about four British actresses who are legends in theater, movies, and television. All four of them have been named “dames” by the British monarchy. This is the female equivalent of being dubbed a knight.
The documentary is a series of sit-down interviews with Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Joan Plowright, and Dame Eileen Atkins.
The documentary was made in 2018 and all the women were in their 80s. They are now in or nearing their 90s but all four are still alive.
All four women have been friends for probably 40 years or more.
If you haven’t heard of one or the other of these women, I’ll detail below some examples of what they’ve been in. Most would be familiar with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith at least.
I watched this documentary a few years ago and found it enchanting, hilarious, touching, and inspiring. I made my husband watch it with me and now I’ve made Erin watch it with me too.
The entire documentary consists of the women at Joan’s cottage where she used to live with actor Laurence Olivier, simply telling stories about their careers and families and the time they spent together as friends.
All four actresses have worked in theater, the small screen and big screen.
They all started in theater and hearing their early stories about those days was very interesting to me, even though I’ve never been interested in participating in it myself.
Judi Dench is well known for her work on British sitcoms (As Time Goes By and A Fine Romance. She stared in A Fine Romance with her future husband Michael Williams) but more prominently an entire line of movies from the Bond movies where she played M, to Shakespeare in Love where she played a queen. She also played queen in Mrs. Brown.
Her list of movies also includes Chocolat, Philomenia, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and … well, there are tons of them. (A link to her work: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001132/)
Maggie Smith is most well known recently for Downton Abbey and Harry Potter. She played the Dowager Countess Violet Crowly in Downton Abbey and Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter. (a link to her work: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001749/)
Eileen has been in a ton of films and television as well, Paddington 2, Wicked Little Letters, The Crown, The Archers, Beautiful Creatures, etc., etc. (A link to her work: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0040586/)
Joan’s film list includes The Spiderwick Chronicles, Mrs. Palfrey at the Clairmont, Dennis the Menace, and 101 Dalmatians among so many others. (Here is a link to her work: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0687506/)
The documentary is pretty laid-back and easygoing. There are some great quotes from all four women about acting and life in general. They bounce off each other in hilarious exchanges between the women and the interviewer and the crew helping with filming. There is footage from their past films and plays woven throughout.
This is not a rated G film with Judi dropping a couple of f-bombs during the filming, especially in regard to a question about growing older.
Maggie is so funny because she seems unable to use the word “child” throughout. She refers to the son of Joan and Laurence (they call him Larry)’as “a small person.” Like when she tells a story about him she says, “When Richard was a small person…”
The story she tells is hilarious too. She once overhead Laurence Olivier begging his young son to tell him if he had thrown the key to his liquor cabinet down the dumb waiter.
“Richard, tell Daddy where the key is. Daddy needs his num-nums.”
Maggie laughs and says, “The idea that a great actor was reduced to using the word num-nums.”
I also really giggled at the conversation about how they each became dames.
Judi became one first and called Maggie when she became one and said, “Don’t worry…you can still swear.
“You can swear more actually,” Judi says with a laugh.
“You just do it privately,” Maggie snickers and speaks with a very posh accent.
Joan was a lady before she was a dame because she married Sir Laurence Olivier, Maggie points out.
“Well, darling, it is quite difficult to have two titles,” Joan replies. “People don’t know which one to use.”
“You’ll have to grapple with it, Joan,” Maggie smith says while the other women laugh.
There are also some very profound quotes from the women mixed in with the laughs.
At one point Judi is asked how people face the fear associated with acting.
“Fear is petrol,” she states in a matter-of-fact tone. “Fear is the petrol. It generates such an energy. Fear. Being frightened. If you can somehow channel it, it can be a help.”
I really love this documentary because it is a wonderful reminder of what women can do when they cast aside societal expectations and just go for their dreams.
These women had a passion for acting. They wanted success and went for it and didn’t let anything stop them. In a day and age where women had to fight for every crumb, they won the whole loaf and then showed other women how to do the same thing.
As I told Erin, I just love watching these women talk about their past but also teared up when they showed all the roles they have played. I mean these women were pioneers for women who were told they couldn’t play certain roles and couldn’t be mothers and wives AND successful in their careers at the same time.
Not only did they defy expectations but they completely exceeded them. I mean Judi Dench was literally in Shakespeare in Love for eight minutes and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She is 88 years old and two weeks ago she recited a Shakespeare soliloquy from memory on the Graham Norton Show:
I found the documentary for free (with commercials) on Tubi but you can also rent it off various streaming services.
We are taking a break from the Comfy, Cozy Cinema for Thanksgiving but will be back next week for The Fishermen’s Friends and then on November 30 with a bit of Jane –Sense and Sensibility.
I’m not sure what we have on tap for December but stay tuned. If Erin and I don’t do a joint Cozy Christmas cinema together, I’m sure she and I with both be watching our favorites and sharing about them on our blogs.
