Drama Smörgåsbord - Disc 13:
Anne Of Green Gables, a 1985 Canadian film adaptation of the 1908 novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery based on her childhood experiences on Prince Edward Island. This runs about 3 hours 15 minutes so it's been split into 2 files.
Leeds United! was a film from the BBC Play For Today series about "the true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to."
Staying On (from Granada TV) is another one of those 1980's nostalgic Indian films (Jewel In The Crown, Ghandi, The Far Pavilions, The Last Viceroy, A Passage To India). As with Anne of Green Gables, I believe this was shown in the US on PBS' Great Performances. "McCluskiegunj in North India is a hill station where many of the British who didn't want to return to the UK stayed on after Independence in 1947. Paul Scott (author of The Raj Quartet) based his mythical Pankot on this and several other places in the north. Staying On focuses on this little known aspect of the Raj - the remnants. Retired British officer Colonel Smalley (Trevor Howard) decided to stay on because he was too old to start afresh in the UK and he knew no other place but India. Besides, his pension went farther in India than in the UK. For his wife Lucy (Celia Johnson), to stay on in warm India and be waited on is much better than returning to a grim postwar Britain. Unfortunately for many real life Smalleys, the money didn't really extend to a life of luxury and they were merely tolerated rather than welcomed by Indians. As the Colonel realises, it soon became a matter of "hanging on" rather than staying on. The colonial backdrop notwithstanding, Staying On is, more than anything else, a moving portrait of old age. The process of ageing gracefully with a lifelong partner is beautifully captured in the film. Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, who were paired in David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945), re-unite in this film to great effect. They bicker and quarrel, yet clearly love each other. In their own ways, they both embrace India, though they still have their Raj hangovers. The Colonel has many Indian friends, but despises Anglo-Indians, while Lucy yearns for some friends of her own race. However, what looms over the film is the overweening intrusion of a garishly modern India, in the shape of the vulgar Shiraz chain of hotels, which is contrasted with the quaint Smiths hotel in which the Smalleys live. The film, then, works both as a paean to old age and a bittersweet look at a bygone era."
The Chain is more of a comedy-drama and was the source from which the TV series Moving Story was developed.
"The Chain is linked by a series of moves. As one couple moves out of their current residence to live in posher quarters, another moves in, and so it goes all the way up to the lavish mansioned owned by self-made millionaire Leo McKern. The cycle starts all over again when McKern, wishing to be closer to his roots, returns to the working-class neighborhood whence he came. Each move is wryly commented upon by the team of professional movers headed by Warren Mitchell. The enormously gifted British cast includes Billie Whitelaw, Nigel Hawthorne, Maurice Denham, Denis Lawson, Phyllis Logan, Anna Massey and David Troughton."
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