L'honneur des Winslow

What a brilliant film, just seen it on TV. Trailer in the UK press called it "emotion among the upper classes". Odd, because it's about a not-very-rich MIDDLE

class family's fight against the UPPER class establishment. "Let right be done" - their case about the theft of a few shillings ends up exposing the unfairness of military tribunals and possibly changes the process. Their lack of money to

carry on the fight is essential to the story. Catherine loses her dowry (and

fiancee). Her brother has to quit university for a dull job. Also, though their upper lips remain stiff, their warm affection and loyalty as a family is obvious. Acting and directing are great. And that last line, oh wow! xxx

In movies I really like, the quality they all possess is believable characters; they make me care about what happens to them. I think this movie clears that hurdle. Mamet's signature direction and dialogue are brought to life by a wonderful ensemble of actors. The plot is an interesting vehicle showing how an English family reacted when something bad happened to them and gives insight into a period when things were changing in English society. Changes that would lead to be tectonic shifts in British life like women's suffrage and a questioning of the government's infallibility.

I gave it an 8

Just saw The Winslow Boy, and it was a real gem of a movie. Mamet has always been the king of brilliantly droll dialogue, the sort of dialogue that is funny not in its words but its performance, and Winslow Boy is no exception. With unusually clean language, Mamet has written a screenplay that illicits honesty from its players without ever being forced or awkward. It's gorgeous.

The cast lent itself beautifully to the script's Mametian style. Most poignant was Nigel Hawthorn, who managed to break my heart with the shift of an eye. It was the kind of razor-sharp subtlety that Mamet's writing (plays and screenplays) requires, and Hawthorn delivered it with soft spoken brilliance.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit right off that I have never read the Terence Rattigan play from which this film is derived. Therefore, my evaluation of it purely concerns the film itself. I saw the movie during its brief stint in American theaters, and I was very surprised. It is the sort of film that I was amazed made it into Anerican movie theaters at all. It is neither fast-moving nor action-packed, and it contains no sexual content or violence. It centers around a functional British family and has very little romance. It does, however, address many issues and has a great deal of sophisticated humor.

Rebecca Pidgeon's performance was particularly memorable. She had the perfect combination of restraint and sarcasm. I have heard complaints about her-that she was too stiff and lackluster, but I found her character very believable. Perhaps this is because I come from a close, sarcastic family myself. The Winslows came off as very attached to each other, but their Britishness prevented them from being mushy.

I would definitely not recommend this movie to everyone. It is a very specific type of film and probably would be enjoyed by someone who is a fan of slow-paced, dialogue-driven period pieces or by someone who is a bibliophile. It is an unusual film, but I personally think it is pure gold.

Terence Rattigan's classic English play from the 1940s but set just before WW1 has been filmed at least five times. This 1999 version is by the American director David Mamet, with his wife Rebecca Pidgeon in a lead role as the Boy's sister Catherine, along with Nigel Hawthorne and Gemma Jones as the parents. The acting honours however truly belong to Jeremy Northam as their barrister, Sir Robert Morton, who finds himself strangely attracted to young Ms Winslow. He is the full QC-MP, urbane, smooth as silk (dammit he is a silk) and deeply cynical, scambling up the greasy pole at Westminster, using his legal skills as best he may. Yet he compromises his career by taking the case. It involves the absurdly trivial matter of the alleged theft of a five shilling postal order but by the time it's over Sir Robert and his clients have managed to put the Navy and half the government on trial. Northam make this almost unbelievable transformation seem not just likely but inevitable.

`The Winslow Boy' is of course based on a real case, the Archer-Shee affair, though Rattigan modified the story substantially. In particular the Archer-Shee's counsel, Edward Carson, the prosecutor of Oscar Wilde and raving anti-Irish home ruler, never became personally involved with the family. He was made a law lord (top British judge) shortly after so his quite spectacular career was not affected by his involvement in the Archer-Shee case. Yet the most interesting thing in the film is the entirely ficticious relationship between Sir Robert, the conventional male supremacist and Catherine, the dedicated suffragette. In the end sex triumphs over politics, as it so often does. A pity it did not do so in the case of Lord Carson.

The Boy himself has a wonderful line in English Public School patter (I'm sure an American audience would need sub-titles). Sadly the real Boy was killed in WW1, which also killed the society to whom the Archer-Shee case was so important.