| Tumbledown | |
|---|---|
 BBC DVD Cover | |
| Genre | Drama |
| Written by | Charles Wood |
| Directed by | Richard Eyre |
| Starring | |
| Composer | Richard Hartley |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Producer | Richard Broke [1] |
| Cinematography | Andrew Dunn |
| Editor | Ken Pearce |
| Running time | 113 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC1 |
| Release | 31 May 1988 [2] |
Tumbledown is a 1988 BBC Television drama film set during the Falklands War. Directed by Richard Eyre, it stars Colin Firth, Paul Rhys, and David Calder.
The film centres on the experiences of Robert Lawrence MC (played by Colin Firth), an officer of the Scots Guards during the Falklands War of 1982. [3] While fighting at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, Lawrence is shot in the head by an Argentine sniper, and left paralysed on his left side. [4] He then must learn to adjust to his new disability.
The film sparked enormous controversy when first broadcast in 1988, in part because it conveyed the flat indifference shown by government, society and public to the returning wounded from the Falklands War; this content forms much of the story, [7] as Lawrence struggles to come to terms with his terrible injuries, and to face a life in which he cannot do the thing he is trained to do, the thing he loves: soldiering.
The film also triggered controversy by presenting an unvarnished portrait of the protagonist: for example, his joy in the brutalities of war and a flashback scene toward the end which shows him exulting at the top of Mount Tumbledown. [8] The film portrays Lawrence's love of the military life as much as it portrays his feelings of abandonment and bitterness as he tries to cope with his wounds, with little help from the government that sent him into battle. [9]
Lead actor Colin Firth is reported to have said that the political left and right hated the film because it did not conform to any fixed ideology. [10]
Colin Andrew Firth is an English actor and producer. Over his career he has been the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2011, Firth was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace for his services to drama. That same year, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and appeared in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2011.
Timothy Simon Roth is an English actor and producer. He was among a group of prominent British actors known as the "Brit Pack".
Liza Tarbuck is an English actress, comedian, and television and radio presenter.
The Battle of Mount Tumbledown was an engagement during the Falklands War. The engagement was an attack by the British Army and the Royal Marines on the heights overlooking Stanley, the Falkland Islands capital. Mount Tumbledown, Mount William and Sapper Hill lie west of the capital. Due to their proximity to the capital, they were of strategic importance during the 1982 War. They were held by the Argentine 5th Naval Infantry Battalion, a reinforced, cold weather trained and equipped Marine battalion.
David Wheeler, better known as David Thewlis, is an English actor and filmmaker. He is known as a character actor and has appeared in a wide variety of genres in both film and television. He has received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and nominations for two BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Peter Macintosh Firth is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC One programme Spooks; he is the only actor to have appeared in every episode of the programme's ten-series lifespan. He has given many other television and film performances, most notably as Alan Strang in Equus (1977), earning both a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for the role.
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre is an English film, theatre, television and opera director. Eyre has received numerous accolades including three Laurence Olivier Awards as well as nominations for six BAFTA Awards and two Tony Awards. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1992 News Year Honours, and knighted in the 1997 New Year Honours.
The Falklands Play is a dramatic account of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982 Falklands War. The play was written by Ian Curteis, an experienced writer who had started his television career in drama, but had increasingly come to specialise in dramatic reconstructions of history. It was originally commissioned by the BBC in 1983, for production and broadcast in 1986, but was subsequently shelved by Controller of BBC One Michael Grade due to its pro-Margaret Thatcher stance and alleged jingoistic tone. This prompted a press furore over media bias and censorship. The play was not staged until 2002, when it was broadcast in separate adaptations on BBC Television and Radio. It was aired again on BBC4, 1 December 2020, over 18 years after it was last transmitted.
Paul Rhys is a Welsh theatre, television and film actor.
The cultural impact of the Falklands War spanned several media in both Britain and Argentina. A number of films and television productions emerged from the conflict. The first Argentine film about the war was Los chicos de la guerra in 1984. The BBC drama Tumbledown (1988) tells the story of a British officer paralysed from a bullet wound. The computer game Harrier Attack (1983) and the naval strategy game Strike Fleet (1987) are two examples of Falklands-related games. A number of fictional works were set during the Falklands War, including in Stephen King's novella The Langoliers (1990), in which the character Nick Hopewell is a Falklands veteran. The war provided a wealth of material for non-fiction writers; in the United Kingdom (UK) an important account became Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins' The Battle for the Falklands.
Emily "Eve" Best is an English actress and director. She is known for her television roles as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–2013), First Lady Dolley Madison in the American Experience television special (2011), Monica Chatwin in the BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014) and Princess Rhaenys Targaryen in HBO's House of the Dragon. She also played Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech.
An Ungentlemanly Act is a 1992 BBC television film about the first days of the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982.
Charles Gerald Wood was an English playwright and scriptwriter for radio, television, and film.
Robert Alasdair Davidson Lawrence MC is a former British Army officer who was severely wounded while fighting in the Falklands War in 1982. He documented his experiences during and after the conflict in a book, co-written with his father, John Lawrence, entitled When the Fighting Is Over: A Personal Story of the Battle for Tumbledown Mountain and Its Aftermath. This was adapted into the controversial BBC television play Tumbledown in 1988.
A Perfect Spy is a BBC serial adaptation of John le Carré's 1986 spy novel A Perfect Spy which was aired on BBC2 and broadcast from 4 November to 16 December 1987. It follows the career of the British MI6 spy Magnus Pym from his early days as a schoolboy to his eventual disappearance as a suspected agent of the Czech secret service. The series was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries and the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in 1988.
The King's Speech is a 2010 historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler. Colin Firth plays the future King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush. The men become friends as they work together, and after his brother abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast upon Britain's declaration of war on Germany in 1939.
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Nostromo is a 1997 British-Italian television drama series directed by Alastair Reid and produced by Fernando Ghia of Pixit Productions, a co-production with Radiotelevisione Italiana, Televisión Española, and WGBH Boston. The music is composed by Ennio Morricone. It stars Claudio Amendola, Paul Brooke, Lothaire Bluteau, Claudia Cardinale, Colin Firth and Albert Finney. It is described as "an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's epic story Nostromo of political upheaval, greed and romance in turn-of-the-20th-century South America."
Norman Leslie Megahey was a British television producer, director and writer.
