[RS.com] Blue Remembered Hills - Play For Today (1979)

IMDB Link:

Code:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078882/

IMDB Rating: 7.5/10

Director: Brian Gibson

Cast:
Colin Welland ... Willie
Michael Elphick ... Peter
Robin Ellis ... John
John Bird ... Raymond
Helen Mirren ... Angela
Janine Duvitski ... Audrey
Colin Jeavons ... Donald Duck
Dennis Potter ... Narrator (voice) (uncredited)

Description:
"The loss of Eden is experienced by each and everyone of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood .... . Whereas the discipline is imposed by an adult, when children are amongst themselves, it's all continual fidget and movement, exploration, speculation, wonder. In a sense to lose that is to lose Eden, is to be expelled from the Garden." (Potter, from 1990 Interview with John Cook)

Following on soon after the massive success of Pennies from Heaven, Blue Remembered Hills (BRH) is quintessentially Potter and yet, in important respects, unlike most of the rest of his work. Out of line with much that he had previously written, BRH is, at first sight, at least, one of the most naturalistic dramas to have emerged from Potter's pen. As he described it himself in his introduction to the published scripts, "Compared with most of the plays I have written, ..., it is by far the simplest in both form and content, for as well as taking place without hindrance, diversion or any kind of secondary plot, the characters - being children - are not allowed eloquence, obvious introspection, rhetoric or even the useful consolations (and normal dramatic lie) of properly consecutive thought."

However, this "naturalism" is counterfeit, as we might expect from Potter. First, he introduces what he refers to as a "ripple" on the surface of this naturalism: he has all the child characters played by adult actors. Second, he chooses to utilise adult bodies as he sees them as a "magnifying glass but also ... as the seismograph which could more truthfully measure the quakes and tremors of childhood's emotions", and disturbs us with the savagery of their behaviour - much as Golding did with Lord of the Flies.

The child characters portrayed are aged seven at about the same sort of time that Potter himself would have been seven or so, and our immediate thought might be that here again is an instance of Potter becoming (nostalically?) autobiographical. But such nostalgia would be misplaced. His vision of the childhood of the 1940s is far from romanticised and Houseman's poem which provides the title and the final voiceover is used ironically. Childhood, in BRH, is not the innocent and romantic memory for Potter but rather a deeper insight into the way the human mind and emotions work - at whatever age.

Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/132310092/DPBRH.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132316628/DPBRH.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132323387/DPBRH.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132330696/DPBRH.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132338120/DPBRH.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132346001/DPBRH.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132353398/DPBRH.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132360817/DPBRH.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/132363264/DPBRH.part09.rar

File size: 799Mb | Dimensions: 672 x 496
Video: 1417kbps XviD | AUdi: 131 kb/s mp3
Running time: 72 minutes

Winner of the 1980 BAFTA TV Award for Best Single Play

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