Comrades | |
---|---|
Directed by | Bill Douglas |
Written by | Bill Douglas |
Produced by | Simon Relph |
Starring | Keith Allen |
Cinematography | Gale Tattersall |
Edited by | Mick Audsley |
Production companies | Skreba Films FilmFour International |
Distributed by | Curzon Film Distributors |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 183 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £3,010,000 [1] |
Comrades is a 1986 British historical drama film directed by Bill Douglas and starring an ensemble cast including Robin Soans, Phil Davis, Keith Allen, Robert Stephens, Vanessa Redgrave and James Fox. Through the pictures of a travelling lanternist, it depicts the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who were arrested and transported to Australia in 1834 for trying to improve their conditions by forming an early form of trade union. [2] It was Bill Douglas's last film.
In credits order:
The film had a very long and troubled production. Although Bill Douglas had the screenplay ready in 1980, it took six years to complete it, due to problems of filming in England and Australia, Douglas's perfectionism, and conflicts with his first producer, Ismail Merchant. [2] Parts of the film were shot in the ghost town of Tyneham in south Dorset which was taken over by the military during WWII for use as a training area and is still part of a large military range.
The film was first shown at the Southampton Film Festival in February 1986. [3] It was also shown at the London Film Festival in 1986, and entered into the 37th Berlin International Film Festival in February 1987. [4] In August 1987 it was released in British cinemas.
After a short run in cinemas, followed by a VHS release in 1989, [5] the film was largely forgotten. However, 20 years later Bill Douglas's small but significant production was reappraised, and in 2009 the British Film Institute released a restored version of Comrades on DVD, [6] followed in early 2012 by a three-disc dual format DVD and Blu-ray box set. [7]
The film has been described as "a moving, magical poem of human dignity, decency and hope". [8] Sheila Rowbotham praised the film as a "poetic and painterly work which was also a vigorous challenge to Thatcherism" and complimented Gale Tattersall's cinematography, while also identifying various flaws deriving "from the grandeur of Douglas's cinematic ambition". [9]
Dame Vanessa Redgrave is an English actress. Throughout her career spanning over six decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making her one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. She has also received various honorary awards, including the BAFTA Fellowship Award, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, and an induction into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE was an English actor, director, producer, screenwriter, manager and author. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), as well as two BAFTA nominations for Best British Actor for his performances in The Night My Number Came Up (1955) and Time Without Pity (1957).
The Browning Version is a play by Terence Rattigan, seen by many as his best work, and first performed on 8 September 1948 at the Phoenix Theatre, London. It was originally one of two short plays, jointly titled "Playbill"; the companion piece being Harlequinade, which forms the second half of the evening. The Browning Version is set in a boys' public school and the Classics teacher in the play, Crocker-Harris, is believed to have been based on Rattigan's Classics tutor at Harrow School, J. W. Coke Norris (1874–1961).
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six agricultural labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, England, who, in 1834, were convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. They were arrested on charges under an obscure act during a labour dispute over cut wages before being convicted in R v Loveless and Others and sentenced to penal transportation to Australia. They were pardoned in 1836 after mass protests by sympathisers and support from Lord John Russell and returned to England between 1837 and 1839.
William Gerald Douglas was a Scottish film director best known for the trilogy of films about his early life.
Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill, known professionally as Phyllis Calvert, was an English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.
Hue and Cry is a 1947 British film directed by Charles Crichton and starring Alastair Sim, Harry Fowler and Joan Dowling.
The Way to the Stars is a 1945 Anglo-American black-and-white second world war drama film made by Two Cities Films. The film was produced by Anatole de Grunwald, directed by Anthony Asquith, and stars Michael Redgrave, John Mills, Rosamund John, and Stanley Holloway. In the United States it was shortened by 22 minutes, and the shortened version was distributed by United Artists under the title Johnny in the Clouds.
Greensted Church, in the small village of Greensted, near Chipping Ongar in Essex, England, has been claimed to be the oldest wooden church in the world, and probably the oldest wooden building in Europe still standing, albeit only in part, since few sections of its original wooden structure remain. The oak walls are often classified as remnants of a palisade church or, more loosely, as a kind of early stave church, dated either to the mid-9th or mid-11th century.
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Robin Soans is a British actor, and a playwright specialising in verbatim and documentary plays. These plays include Across the Divide (2007); A State Affair (2000) which looked at life on a Bradford estate, produced by Out of Joint Theatre Company; The Arab Israeli Cookbook ; Talking to Terrorists ; Life After Scandal ; and Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. Other plays include Bet Noir ; Sinners and Saints and Will and Testament.
They Were Sisters is a 1945 British melodrama film directed by Arthur Crabtree for Gainsborough Pictures and starring James Mason and Phyllis Calvert. The film was produced by Harold Huth, with cinematography from Jack Cox and screenplay by Roland Pertwee. They Were Sisters is noted for its frank, unsparing depiction of marital abuse at a time when the subject was rarely discussed openly. It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas.
R v Lovelass and Others (1834) 172 ER 1380 is a formative case in the history of UK labour law. It saw the Tolpuddle Martyrs, farm workers who wished to form a union to prevent wage cuts, convicted and deported to Australia. It triggered protests, which led to the workers' eventual release and return to Britain.
The Dorset Estate is a post-war Modernist housing estate in Bethnal Green, London.
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There are several cottages associated with the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Most are in Tolpuddle in Dorset while one is in Essex.
George Loveless was a British Methodist preacher and a leader of a group of six agricultural workers who became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.