A Voyage Round My Father

We have it from no less than the author himself that John Mortimer preferred Laurence Olivier's film version of A Voyage Round My Father to what Alec Guinness who created the role for the London stage did back in 1971. I can certainly see Guinness in the part with his own interpretation, but Olivier doing this in the twilight of his career is certainly something to see.

It's staged differently the accident. According to Wikipedia Clifford Mortimer hit his head on the roof of a London Taxi in 1936 and detached the retinas in both eyes. His world went dark permanently after that. In the film Mortimer hits his head on a tree branch. But Mortimer being the irascible iconoclastic sort that he was just never gave into it. Not only did he not acknowledge the blindness, but wife Elizabeth Sellars and son Alan Bates never could either and weren't allowed to. No training in braille, no seeing eye dogs, Olivier only uses a walking stick to warn him of obstacles ahead. He continues the practice of law quite successfully.

Olivier was 77 when he made A Voyage Round My Father and while he doesn't do all that well at a younger age, when he grows into the part where his real age and his character's age blend he's absolutely superb. His scene with Jane Asher when he's "looking" her over as his prospective daughter-in-law is the highlight of the film for me.

Note should also be given to young Alan Cox who plays young John Mortimer who grows up to be Alan Bates. Done for Thames television A Voyage Round My Father is one great television drama.

John Mortimer is best known for creating Rumpole Of Old Bailey which is popular on both sides of the pond. You can see a bit of Leo McKern's Horace Rumpole in what Olivier does.

A must for Horace Rumpole's legion of fans.

A very moving film. Worth it just to see Larry (The master) at work. A very personal invitation by Sir John Mortimer to share his memories of his father and one which I was more than happy to accept.

Sir Laurence Olivier, the magnificent!! What a sweet comedy and the line to best ALL lines: "I ALWAYS get angry when I'm dying!" and he does. This was his swan song a few years before he died.

And how great it was to see two Anthonies play opposite on another, Alan Bates and Laurence Olivier. Father and son, it was so wonderfully sweet and funny. Of course, the beautiful English countryside wasn't half-bad either.

I love observing the native habits of the English. They are so funny and so well educated...at least they were back in those times before the fall of the Empire. To watch all the goings-on in the courtroom was well worth the price of the movie. U.S. courtroom behavior is so much more cut and dried with none of the unmeant and deliberate humor that was injected in this movie.

See this one, and understand that it can well be a primer for dying the good death.

This movie is another sensitive story about the relationship between a aging and temperamental old father (superbly played by Olivier) and a shy, intelligent and good natured son (Bates). Good dialogues, excellent footage of English's landscape but otherwise not a great new point among other movies with the same context (just remember, for example, "Dad", with Barnard Hughes and Martin Sheen).