Woman in a Dressing Gown | |
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Directed by | J. Lee Thompson |
Written by | Ted Willis |
Based on | TV play by Willis |
Produced by | Frank Godwin J. Lee Thompson |
Starring | Yvonne Mitchell Anthony Quayle Sylvia Syms Carole Lesley |
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor |
Edited by | Richard Best |
Music by | Louis Levy |
Production company | Godwin-Willis Productions |
Distributed by | Associated British-Pathé |
Release date |
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Running time | 93 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Box office | £450,000 (UK) £1 million (total) [1] |
Woman in a Dressing Gown is a 1957 British drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Yvonne Mitchell, Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms, and Carole Lesley. [2] The film won four awards at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival including the first ever FIPRESCI Prize and a special mention for "Best Foreign Film". [3] Mitchell won the Silver Bear for Best Actress. [4] The film also won the 1958 Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film. [5]
The screenplay was written by Ted Willis and the cinematographer was Gilbert Taylor. The producer was Frank Godwin. [6]
The film concerns a man who is having an extramarital affair and considers divorce, and his wife's reaction to the affair. Scenes compare and contrast the man's relationship with his wife versus his relationship with his lover. These are not only very different in content, but very different in film style, shots with his lover being in extreme close-up and/or unusually framed shots. Shots of the wife are mainly in wide angle, encompassing the chaotic mess of her house.
The film is considered an example of British social realism, and a prototypical version of Kitchen sink realism. Modern criticism has noted that it was more progressive in the field of gender politics than the British New Wave.
The Prestons are an apparently happy household made up of wife Amy (Yvonne Mitchell), husband Jim (Anthony Quayle) and teenage son Brian (Andrew Ray), living in a cramped flat on a London housing estate. On a Sunday morning she lovingly prepares his cooked breakfast but he announces he has to work.
However, tensions soon become clear. Though she has a breezy, loving character, Amy is a disorganised housewife. She finds it difficult to concentrate enough to tidy or cook properly. Jim is having an affair with a colleague, Georgie (Sylvia Syms), who threatens to break it off unless Jim divorces his wife and leaves his family. He promises that he will do so, and eventually demands a divorce. Amy is shocked and distraught, but vows to improve herself. She borrows ten shillings from her son (who is in his first job) and pawns her engagement ring for three pounds. She then gets her hair done and buys a half bottle of whisky for Jim. She has phoned Jim at work and told him to bring Georgie home. Her plan is foiled when heavy rain starts and ruins her new hair. She gets home looking worse than ever. She pulls her best dress out of storage but rips it putting it on. Her neighbour arrives and they start drinking the whisky. Amy gets drunk and ruins the table.
Brian finds her drunk and becomes angry with his father when he brings Georgie to the house. Jim slaps Brian, who leaves.
After a confrontation Amy orders Jim and Georgie out of the flat. Jim leaves, but has second thoughts, he tells Georgie it won't work and returns to his wife who is lovingly packing his case. She vows to get rid of her dressing gown. [7]
The film was based on a 1956 ITV Television Playhouse play written by Ted Willis. [8] It was the first of three films Sylvia Syms made with Thompson. [9]
The film was one of the most popular at the British box office in 1957. [10] According to Kinematograph Weekly the film was "in the money" at the British box office in 1957. [11]
J. Lee Thompson later said the film lost money but was well received by critics. [12]
Variety said it "had good b.o. possibilities." [13]
The New York Times said "Paddy Chayefsky would love it." [14]
Jean-Luc Godard wrote "One really has to rack one’s brains to find anything to say about a British film. One wonders why. But that’s the way it is. And there isn’t even an exception to prove the rule. Especially not Woman in a Dressing-gown anyhow, in spite of its acting prize? at the recent Berlin Festival. That just goes to show that the Germans have no idea either.... From beginning to end the film is an incredible debauch of camera movements as complex as they are silly and meaningless." [15]
On the film's rerelease on in 2012, Peter Bradshaw, in a five star review for The Guardian wrote that the film's "proto-kitchen-sink drama goes all the way where Brief Encounter loitered hesitantly....and unlike David Lean's film, this one shows people saying the relevant things out loud. An unmissable rerelease." [16] While Melanie Williams for the BFI Screenonline noted "an important reminder that postwar British realism did not begin with the New Wave, and that the 1950s were not devoid of socially engaged cinema, as is sometimes suggested. Indeed, in the field of gender politics, one could argue that this film is considerably more progressive than the New Wave that superseded it, in its focus on the travails of a middle-aged housewife rather than those of a virile young man." [17]
Willis later adapted the script into a stage play that was very successful. [18]
Dame Florence Marjorie Wilcox, known professionally as Anna Neagle, was an English stage and film actress, singer, and dancer.
Ice Cold in Alex is a 1958 British war film set during the Western Desert campaign of World War II based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Landon. Directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring John Mills, the film was a prizewinner at the 8th Berlin International Film Festival. Under the title Desert Attack, a shortened, 79-minute version of the film was released in the United States in 1961. Film critic Craig Butler later referred to the shortened versions as nonsensical.
Yvonne Mitchell was an English actress and author. After beginning her acting career in theatre, Mitchell progressed to films in the late 1940s. Her roles include Julia in the 1954 BBC adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. She retired from acting in 1977.
Oh... Rosalinda!! is a 1955 British musical comedy film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars Michael Redgrave, Mel Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Ludmilla Tchérina and Anton Walbrook and features Anneliese Rothenberger and Dennis Price.
John Lee Thompson was a British film director, active in London and Hollywood, best known for award-winning films such as Woman in a Dressing Gown, Ice Cold in Alex and The Guns of Navarone along with cult classics like Cape Fear, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and The White Buffalo.
Sylvia May Laura Syms was an English stage and screen actress. Her best-known film roles include My Teenage Daughter (1956), Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award, Ice Cold in Alex (1958), No Trees in the Street (1959), Victim (1961), and The Tamarind Seed (1974).
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.
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. The storyline bears a superficial and coincidental resemblance to the Ruth Ellis case, which had occurred the previous year but subsequent to the release of Henry's novel. The film received much positive critical attention, particularly for the unexpectedly skilled acting of Dors, who had previously been cast solely as a British version of the typical "blonde bombshell". The movie was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
Waterloo Road is a 1945 British film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring John Mills, Stewart Granger, and Alastair Sim. It is based on the Waterloo area of South London. According to the British Film Institute database, it is the third in an "unofficial trilogy" by Gilliat, preceded by Millions Like Us (1943) and Two Thousand Women (1944).
Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production, distribution and exhibition company active from 1927 until 1970 when it was absorbed into EMI. ABPC also owned approximately 500 cinemas in Britain by 1943, and in the 1950s and 60s owned a station on the ITV television network. The studio was partly owned by Warner Bros. from about 1940 until 1969; the American company also owned a stake in ABPC's distribution arm, Warner-Pathé, from 1958. It formed one half of a vertically integrated film industry duopoly in Britain with the Rank Organisation.
Tiger Bay is a 1959 British crime drama film based on the short story "Rodolphe et le Revolver" by Noël Calef. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson, produced by John Hawkesworth, and co-written by John Hawkesworth and Shelley Smith. It stars John Mills as a police superintendent investigating a murder; his real-life daughter Hayley Mills, in her first major film role, as a girl who witnesses the murder; and Horst Buchholz as a young sailor who commits the murder in a moment of passion.
Maurice Elvey was one of the most prolific film directors in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year. He also produced more than fifty films – his own as well as films directed by others.
East of Sudan is a 1964 British adventure film directed by Nathan Juran and featuring Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms and Derek Fowlds.
This Happy Breed is a 1944 British Technicolor drama film directed by David Lean and starring Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway and John Mills. The screenplay by Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame is based on the 1939 play This Happy Breed, by Noël Coward. It tells the story of an inter-war suburban London family, set against the backdrop of what were then recent news events, moving from the postwar era of the 1920s to the inevitability of another war, and the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. Domestic triumphs and tragedies play against such transformative changes as the coming of household radio and talking pictures. The film was not released in the United States until April 1947.
No Trees in the Street is a 1959 British crime thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson and written by Ted Willis, from his 1948 stage play of the same name.
No Time for Tears is a 1957 British drama film directed by Cyril Frankel in CinemaScope and Eastman Color and starring Anna Neagle, George Baker, Sylvia Syms and Anthony Quayle. The staff at a children's hospital struggle with their workload.
My Teenage Daughter, later Teenage Bad Girl, is a 1956 British drama film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Anna Neagle, Sylvia Syms and Norman Wooland. The screenplay concerns a mother who tries to deal with her teenage daughter's descent into delinquency. It was intended as a British response to Rebel Without a Cause. It was the last commercially successful film made by Wilcox.
Bachelor of Hearts is a 1958 British comedy film starring Hardy Krüger as a German who studies at Cambridge University. It was made to cash in on Krüger's popularity following the success of the war film The One That Got Away (1957). It combined elements of A Yank at Oxford with Doctor in the House.
Frank Godwin was an English film producer, best known for the film Woman in a Dressing Gown.
Edward J. Danziger (1909–1999) and Harry Lee Danziger (1913–2005) were American-born brothers who produced many British films and TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s.
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