A Royal Night Out

After a quiet period during the Summer, at least in terms of our film club, we started our new season with A Royal Night Out - we hoped it would be a crown-puller, but we only managed a small audience although they were pretty thirty and bar takings were good.

In advance of the film I wondered if it was going to be a sequel to The King's Speech or a prequel to The Queen.  In the event it was neither, and although it was enjoyable with some good performances it was less real than the whole of the Harry Potter saga.

Here are my notes:

A Royal Night Out

UK 2014                      127 minutes

Director:                      Julian Jarrold

Starring:                        Bel Powley, Sarah Gadon, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett

 “…the Windsors are given a sitcom-style veneer of just-like-us approachability in A Royal Night Out – a largely fictional romp that plays as a slab of official palace history as rewritten by Enid Blyton. That may sound ghastly, yet Julian Jarrold’s film has cheerily naff charm in spades. Following the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as they shed their regal cocoon, joining the great unwashed for the VE Day celebrations, it’s speculative history jauntily dressed as a cut-glass entry in the one-wild-night teen subgenre.”

Guy Lodge

In a broadcast speech to commemorate VE Day on 8 May 1945 Churchill said “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing”: in London there were three days of uproarious celebration and in Buckingham Palace George VI (Rupert Everett) and Queen Elizabeth (Emily Watson) reluctantly agree that Princesses Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) and Margaret (Bel Powley) might be allowed to have a night out on the town in the company of carefully selected chaperones.

The initial premise of the film is correct, but the development of the plot is entirely fictional: in 1945 Princess Margaret was only fourteen, the princesses went out in a group of 16 that included military protection, and rather than attending a party at the Ritz the princesses were allowed only to mingle with the crowds that filled the roads around Buckingham Palace.

Justin Jarrold began his career on TV where he directed an episode of Coronation Street before moving on to directing episodes of Cracker and Silent Witness.  After directing several TV films he made his cinema debut with Kinky Boots (2005), following this with Becoming Jane (2007) and Brideshead Revisited (2008).  His most recent TV work has included Appropriate Adult (2011), a dramatization of the life of Fred and Rosemary West, The Girl (2012), about Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren while he was making The Birds, and the mini-series The Great Train Robbery (2013).  He is currently working on The Crown, a TV series about the royal family.

The Book Thief

Tomorrow is the first proper screening of our new season and we will be showing The Book Thief.  I've not read the novel , but it's a film I've wanted to see for a while - despite the less than enthusiastic reviews. 

After binging on WW1 history books recently I've now moved on to Nazi Germany and after finishing The Origins of the Third Reich, which covered German history from unification through to 1932/33, the second volume - The Third Reich in Power - covers the period up to war in 1939.  The final volume The Third Reich at War covers the period from 1939 to the end of the Third Reich, and that is next on my reading list.  The books are all masterpieces of research and writing and put the whole terrible history of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis into fascinating context.

Hence this film has come along at an opportune time.

As I could few reviews that could offer  positive headline quotes I've selected a few anti-Nazi (and anti anyone else who burns books for political or ideological reasons) quotations instead.

Here are my notes:

The Book Thief

USA 2013                    131 minutes

Director:                      Brian Percival

Starring:                        Roger Allam, Sophie Nelisse, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for Oscar for Best Score (John Williams)
• 3 wins for Sophie Nelisse 
• A further 4 nominations.

“Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too."

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

 “You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police.  Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear.  They are afraid of words and thoughts!  Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden.  These terrify them.  A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."

            Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

In Nazi Germany Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), an illiterate young orphan is taken in by foster parents Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson).  Liesel learns to read and after witnessing a Nazi book burning begins to steal books to read.  Her story is narrated by Death (Roger Allam) and he finally tells what happened to Liesel after she survived the war.

The film is based on the Young Adult novel of the same name by Australian author Marcus Zusak that was on the New York Times Best Seller List for more than four years.  However although a work of fiction the story is set against genuine historical events: from the time that it consolidated its seizure of power in 1933 the Nazis instituted book-burning campaigns against authors whose work was deemed subversive or which undermined Nazi ideology; Kristallnacht was a Nazi pogrom against Jews in both Germany and Austria in November 1938; and the Second World War broke out in September 1939.

Brian Percival started his career with the BBC where he directed several prestige projects including adaptations of North and South, The Ruby in the Smoke and The Old Curiosity Shop.  Since then he has worked for ITV where he has directed six episodes of Downton Abbey. The Book Thief is his first film. 

Here's the trailer:

And here's the sound track