The Buttercup Chain | |
---|---|
Directed by | Robert Ellis Miller |
Written by | Peter Draper |
Based on | The Buttercup Chain by Janice Elliott |
Produced by | Leslie Gilliat Philip Waddilove John Whitney |
Starring | Hywel Bennett Leigh Taylor-Young Jane Asher |
Cinematography | Douglas Slocombe |
Edited by | Thelma Connell |
Music by | Richard Rodney Bennett |
Production company | Columbia British Productions |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
The Buttercup Chain is a 1970 British drama film directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Hywel Bennett, Jane Asher, and Leigh Taylor-Young. [1] The screenplay was by Peter Draper, adapted from the 1967 novel of the same title by Janice Elliott.
France and Margaret are cousins, born on the same day to twin sisters. They grow up feeling a bond as if brother and sister. When he returns to London from boarding school, France and Margaret make a pact in which each finds a suitable romantic partner for the other. But when they go away to the countryside with Manny and Fred, a strange incestuous impulse seems to exist between the cousins, while Manny also must deal with a pregnancy.
The film was shot at Shepperton Studios and on location in England, Sweden and Spain. The film's sets were designed by the veteran art director Wilfred Shingleton.
It was entered into the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. [2]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "(Director) Miller and his screen writer, Peter Draper, avoided any revealing psychological confrontations in favor of making one of those depressingly modish movies in which the sensations created by things like slick photography, beautiful nudes and intrusive soundtrack music become the substance of the film, instead of its context." [3]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A romantic fable told with a brisk, confident if somewhat over-emphasised elegance. Content to stay at the intriguing and attractively impressionist level of complexities of motive and emotion that can only be briefly glimpsed or guessed at, The Buttercup Chain even suggests that Robert Ellis Miller has created a spiritual home in some kind of shadow land of Carson McCullers. But the original material does not seem to read that way, and the film suffers from an inexorable sliding apart of style and subject – paradoxically not because it fails to avoid the trite dangers of its romantic fantasy, but because it does not go far enough towards embracing and overcoming them. The various climaxes of Janice Elliott's novel spiral through a succession of landscapes, the cycle of changes both external and within the characters stated so flatly and objectively as to numb any suggestion of cheap romance. But the film simply peters out to its sad-sentimental end in the cold streets of Stockholm." [4]
Percy is a 1971 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas starring Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland.
Mike Leigh is an English writer-director with a career spanning film, theatre and television. He has received numerous accolades, including prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, the Venice International Film Festival, three BAFTA Awards, and nominations for seven Academy Awards. He also received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2014, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1993 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry.
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a 1994 American biographical drama film directed by Alan Rudolph from a screenplay written by Rudolph and Randy Sue Coburn. The film stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as writer Dorothy Parker and depicts the members of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors and critics who met almost every weekday from 1919 to 1929 at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel.
Yield to the Night is a 1956 British crime drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Diana Dors. The film is based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Joan Henry.
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is a 1968 British comedy film produced and directed by Clive Donner and starring Barry Evans, Judy Geeson and Angela Scoular. The screenplay is by Hunter Davies based on his 1965 novel of the same name.
Any Wednesday is a 1966 American Technicolor romantic comedy film starring Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, and Dean Jones. It was directed by Robert Ellis Miller from a screenplay by producer Julius J. Epstein based on the play of the same name by Muriel Resnik, which ran for 984 performances from 1964 to 1966. The film was titled Bachelor Girl Apartment in the UK.
Robert Ellis Miller was an American film director.
The 23rd Cannes Film Festival ran from 3 to 18 May 1970. This year, Robert Favre LeBret, the founder of the festival, decided not to include any films from Russia and Japan. He was tired of the "Slavic spectacles and Japanese samurai flicks.". The Russians took back their juror Sergei Obraztsov and left the jury panel with only eight members.
The 39th Cannes Film Festival was held from 8 to 19 May 1986. The Palme d'Or went to The Mission by Roland Joffé.
Joanna is a 1968 British comedy-drama film directed by Michael Sarne, and starring Geneviève Waïte, Christian Doermer, Calvin Lockhart and Donald Sutherland.
Loot is a 1970 British comedy film directed by Silvio Narizzano starring Richard Attenborough, Lee Remick, Hywel Bennett, Milo O'Shea and Roy Holder. It is based on the play of the same name by Joe Orton. It was entered into the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
Maxwell Hendler is an American painter. In 1975, he became the first contemporary artist to have pictures in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
That Woman Opposite is a 1957 British crime drama, directed by Compton Bennett and starring Phyllis Kirk, Dan O'Herlihy and William Franklyn. The screenplay, by Bennett, was adapted from John Dickson Carr's 1942 novel The Emperor's Snuff-Box.
Macabre is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Lamberto Bava.
The Love Ban is a 1973 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Hywel Bennett, Nanette Newman and Milo O'Shea. It was written by Kevin Laffan based on his 1969 play It's a 2'6" Above the Ground World. Laffan was one of 14 children from a devout Roman Catholic family and his critical view on the Church's stance on birth control was a recurring theme of his work.
The Virgin Soldiers is a 1969 British war comedy-drama film directed by John Dexter and starring Lynn Redgrave, Hywel Bennett, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Patrick and Rachel Kempson. It is set in 1950, during the Malayan Emergency, and is based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Leslie Thomas.
Janice Elliott was a prolific English fiction writer, journalist and children's writer. Her novels were critically successful in their time, but they are not currently in print.
The Buttercup Chain is a 1967 novel by the British writer Janice Elliott.