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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 11, 2023 20:56:23 GMT
Sorry, Topbilled I love this romance. You're quite right, it has little to do with the boy and his father, but she's such a good person and she deserved someone like Sir Robert.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 11, 2023 20:57:15 GMT
I like how the film fit our theme of Father Melodramas.
I can't quite get past the way Leighton's role was played up at the expense of almost everything else. This threw the film off balance for me and I was disappointed, as I had higher expectations for it.
If they wanted it to mostly be a love story, then they could have just restructured it as a love story between Leighton and Donat...and made the brother's issues a minor subplot that brought Donat into her life.
Everything with the fiance next door was superfluous and virtually unnecessary.
Also because Leighton's role was played up, it made it seem like she had more of a relationship with the father, than the mother did...which threw it even more off balance for me.
Again I had high expectations and I dislike it when I get disappointed in a film that others love and cherish so much. But I have to be honest about how it affected me.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 11, 2023 21:00:37 GMT
Now that you've seen this version of THE WINSLOW BOY, check out David Mamet's version from 1999(?). I haven't seen the play, but both film versions focus more on the daughter and father's principles, not much on the boy. Maybe that is how the play was written. I like both film versions. Interested how others compare the two. I like that one, too, Kims. I think I like this Catherine better, but the "new" Sir Robert better.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 11, 2023 21:14:50 GMT
I like how the film fit our theme of Father Melodramas.
I can't quite get past the way Leighton's role was played up at the expense of almost everything else. This threw the film off balance for me and I was disappointed, as I had higher expectations for it.
If they wanted it to mostly be a love story, then they could have just restructured it as a love story between Leighton and Donat...and made the brother's issues a minor subplot that brought Donat into her life.
Everything with the fiance next door was superfluous and virtually unnecessary.
Also because Leighton's role was played up, it made it seem like she had more of a relationship with the father, than the mother did...which threw it even more off balance for me.
Again I had high expectations and I dislike it when I get disappointed in a film that others love and cherish so much. But I have to be honest about how it affected me. I experienced it differently, but respect your views and arguments.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 11, 2023 21:51:35 GMT
A thank you to Andrea for a great choice, which sparked a spirit and fun exchange of comments.
I wrote the below comment back in January and chose not to edit it now, even though I see a few things I'd like to bring up having just seen the movie again. But since that's always the case after you see a movie again, I'm just going to let the comment stay as it was first written.
The Winslow Boy from 1948 with Robert Donat, Margaret Leighton, Cedric Hardwicke, Neil North and Jack Watling
"Let right be done."
The Winslow Boy, based on a true story, is an outstanding movie. It beautifully weaves together a narrative of a fight for justice and individual rights with an equally compelling tale of how that fight buffeted the personal and professional lives of several members of one family.
The fourteen-year-old young son, played by Neil North, of a middle-class English family is expelled from the British Naval Academy for allegedly stealing a small sum. His father, played by Cedric Hardwicke, accepts the boy's assertion of his innocence and begins a fight, which will turn into a two-year crusade, to prove the boy's innocence.
At a high level, the father argues the boy didn't have a chance to fairly represent himself at the Academy's hearing. Under English law, going back to Magna Carta, the father has to bring a "petition of right" guided by the principle of "let right be done" to parliament to force a new and full trial over the event. (My apologies to English Law for that bastardization.)
That requires the massive expense of hiring a top barrister, played by Robert Donat, and having the mental and physical strength to endure the hardship of, effectively, taking on the might of the Crown in an uphill battle all the way.
Based on a Terence Rattigan play - you almost can't go wrong using a work of Rattigan's to make a movie - director Anthony Asquith smartly keeps the story personal as, otherwise, his movie would have turned into an arcane legal battle better suited for a documentary.
Hardwicke's middle class family is forced to make many sacrifices for its legal fight as, for financial reasons, we see the older son must quit Oxford and get a job, which actor Jack Watling, playing the flighty son, handles with wonderful English aplomb.
The marrying-age daughter, played by Margaret Leighton, watches her engagement slowly come apart as her prospective father-in-law won't abide the trial's notoriety. Meanwhile, the family's mother, a woman not built for much suffering, must endure a reduced financial and social position for the family.
It is Leighton, though, a self described non-radical suffragette, along with Hardwicke who press the fight: he to prove the boy's innocence and she, and she wonderfully admits this, not for her brother, but for her belief in the legal right at the core of the fight.
Along the way, we see a cold Donat and Leighton lock horns - he's no suffragette - the father's health deteriorate greatly and the family tear a bit at the seams.
We also see, though, English justice bend but not break as some in the government take up the boy's case in a fight that seems to be handled fairly as the powers that be know they have to let it be fair to maintain the support of the public.
While the law in The Winslow Boy, especially for an American, gets a bit murky at times in the details, you still get it: an individual, one "unimportant" young boy, is demanding that the powerful state, "the Crown," honor his right to a fair trial against that same state, that same "Crown."
It's a nice reminder to us Americans that our Founding Fathers didn't invent individual rights de novo.
It's also a lesson for us today where some want certain offenses, offenses which they find particularly unacceptable, to be adjudicated outside of the norms of American justice with defendants having their rights - the right to face their accusers, the right to counsel, the right to prepare a defense, the right to the presumption of innocence and the right of full transparency - attenuated.
History always judges adherence to principle as trumping a period's expediencies of will and dictates of passion.
The acting in The Winslow Boy is universally good, but it is Hardwicke, Donat and, most impressively, Leighton who keep all this talk of rights, petition and Magna Carta from becoming tedious.
Leighton creates a character we should all aspire to be on our best days: A person of principle, but not obdurate radicalism; a person willing to fight for her beliefs, but with a respect for the hurt that can do to others in her life and a person willing to change her mind when presented with compelling counter arguments.
The Winslow Boy is the type of movie we are referring to when we say they don't make movies like that any more. It has no violence, no special effects and no gratuitous sex; instead, it simply tells a gripping story about a basic human right, wrapped inside a compelling family drama involving good, but flawed people. Movies don't get much better than that.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 11, 2023 22:06:37 GMT
Thanks so much for that brilliant review, Fading Fast. You've brought out all the reasons why I love the movie so much and particularly why I love Catherine.
Fading Fast said: So true. I wish it could be required viewing.
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Post by NoShear on Jun 12, 2023 16:38:50 GMT
Margaret Leighton as the Winslow daughter: God, what a beautiful photo: Worthy of an Andrea Doria avatar!
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Post by kims on Jun 12, 2023 19:36:23 GMT
Now that you've seen this version of THE WINSLOW BOY, check out David Mamet's version from 1999(?). I haven't seen the play, but both film versions focus more on the daughter and father's principles, not much on the boy. Maybe that is how the play was written. I like both film versions. Interested how others compare the two. I like that one, too, Kims. I think I like this Catherine better, but the "new" Sir Robert better. I agree! Have you seen the TCM snippet of Omar Sharif discussing David Lean's direction to play Zhivago doing nothing? I wonder if Rebecca Pidgeon was told to be aloof, unemotional to the point I wondered what attraction any man would have for her?
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 12, 2023 20:25:36 GMT
Margaret Leighton as the Winslow daughter: God, what a beautiful photo: Worthy of an Andrea Doria avatar! I was getting tired of the old one! I'll give this a try but I may have trouble recognizing myself. I'll give this a try. Topbilled doesn't like her though, so it's kind of like Jezebel going to the party in red when the hostess particularly said white. what I probably need is just another Marsha Hunt with a new hairdo.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 12, 2023 20:28:45 GMT
God, what a beautiful photo: Worthy of an Andrea Doria avatar! I was getting tired of the old one! I'll give this a try but I may have trouble recognizing myself. I'll give this a try. Topbilled doesn't like her though, so it's kind of like Jezebel going to the party in red when the hostess particularly said white. what I probably need is just another Marsha Hunt with a new hairdo. It's going to take a bit to adjust as you and Ms. Hunt's picture are so connected in my mind.
That is a beautiful picture of Ms. Leighton though.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 12, 2023 21:24:10 GMT
I like Margaret Leighton in THE GOOD DIE YOUNG (1954). I just didn't like the way her character was written in THE WINSLOW BOY (1948). It's not a reflection on her as an actress.
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Post by NoShear on Jun 12, 2023 22:19:29 GMT
I like Margaret Leighton in THE GOOD DIE YOUNG (1954). I just didn't like the way her character was written in THE WINSLOW BOY (1948). It's not a reflection on her as an actress. Relieved to read, TopBilled, as Andrea Doria's latest is awesome! (Not that her previous avatars weren't fabulous as well.)
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 12, 2023 22:24:56 GMT
Well I'm back. Margaret was just too drop dead gorgeous for me, I couldn't identify.
I just needed a new hairdo.
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Post by NoShear on Jun 12, 2023 22:27:39 GMT
God, what a beautiful photo: Worthy of an Andrea Doria avatar! I was getting tired of the old one! I'll give this a try but I may have trouble recognizing myself. I'll give this a try. Topbilled doesn't like her though, so it's kind of like Jezebel going to the party in red when the hostess particularly said white. what I probably need is just another Marsha Hunt with a new hairdo. Gosh, Andrea Doria, I almost missed your Margaret Leighton and already really miss it!
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 12, 2023 22:36:29 GMT
She's up for grabs now, NoShear! I do love that photo.
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