The way we were... The L-Shaped Room (1962)

It’s still a surprise to find former ballerina and star of American in Paris and many more Hollywood films trudging around a grey and white London looking for a room to rent but it happened and Leslie Caron was deservedly awarded a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for best actress only missing out to Patricia Neal in Hud at the Oscars (along with Shirley MacLaine, Rachel Roberts and Natalie Wood!). She is indeed outstanding and is perfectly cast as the woman in trouble but who is able to get ahead of her situation.

In an interview accompanying the 2017 remaster, the remarkable Caron – then 86, now 94 – explains that in a meeting with screenwriter and director Bryan Forbes, she explained that she felt her character would have more agency and be less timid than as originally written. As she spoke, Forbes seemed to be doodling away at his desk but when he finished he presented her with an instant re-write of the part incorporating her views. So it was that her French sensibilities were able to alter the course of the film with results that remain impressive.

There’s some critical opinion that won’t quite accept Forbes as a full member of the Kitchen Sink Club but in ways his film reflects the broader sensibilities of say an Antonioni or Truffaut in terms of the communication between men and women. Tom Bell’s Toby is full of masculine energy as well as writerly disappointment and struggles to connect with Jane at first. Even when they eventually do, he’s at a loss in terms of how to respond: where she leads he finds it difficult to follow because of male pride and values that he might have expected himself to be free of.

Brock, Leslie and Tom

At the end he presents Jane with his manuscript for a story called The L-Shaped Room and it’s perhaps the only way he can explain the changes she has made in him. Caron is the perfect carrier for this sentiment; it’s not even swinging and here she is making her own choices, deciding on her choices, rebuffing support from the father of her child, Terry (Mark Eden, later the villain Alan Bradley in Coronation Street, killed by a tram in Blackpool!) on the grounds that she doesn’t love him. Tough choices and from a time when marriage was preferable to illegal abortion for some.

The film is indeed gentler than contemporary efforts set further North but I’ve a feeling that Forbes’ later successes have influenced the view of this film which deals with a number of taboo areas in a calm way that’s more accepting and less moralising than you might expect. Another famous Corrie legend, Patricia “Pat” Phoenix plays Sonia a sex worker with whom June has a very matter of fact albeit guarded, discussion about the nature of her work. The women understand even if the men struggle.

Vintage Classic promo for the Blu-ray

This is also one of those films that makes Reel Streets essential reading and it’s fascinating to see their “then and now” pictures of the locations especially when Jane trudges down St. Luke’s Mews, W11 as viewed from Basing Street, then Clydesdale Road, W11 and looking across to Colville Square. These streets look very fine now but in 1962, Notting Hill was less in demand…today's white-washed Georgian townhouses were yesterday's slums along with the mews with doors hanging at odd angles and a general air of poverty.

Those golden old days before eh?

Talking of which there are others in the house where June finds her accommodation in the famous L-Shaped Room - basically two rooms split into one sharing a tiny window in the top storey of a Georgian ruin, infested with bed bugs, damp and much else besides. No bed bugs were harmed in the making of this film although it’s difficult to say especially when Johnny (Brock Peters) the man in the I-shaped room next to the L, shows up with a means of squishing them. Brock Peters has a lovely intensity as the jazz-playing Johnny who, from Toby’s throw-away comment, we are to read as a gay man – his jealousy of his friend’s relationship perhaps being a reflection of his loneliness and need for inclusion?

Cicely Courtneidge, Leslie Caron, Bernard Lee, Avis Bunnage and Brock Peters

Similarly with Cicely Courtneidge’s superb turn as the ageing actress Mavis who famously performs Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty as featured later in the introduction to The Smith’s The Queen is Dead. She is so well-wrought and full of nuanced dark corners. There’s a scene in which she reveals herself to June by showing her a picture of the love of her life and the latter’s reaction says all we need to know. Jane is non-judgemental and, again, that’s something – clichés aside – you might expect from a broad-minded Parisian? Not that Sylvia Sims or June Richie couldn’t have done just as well?

Then there’s no-nonsense land-lady Doris (Avis Bunnage) who drives a hard bargain and yet doesn’t want to appear mean in front of one of her gentleman friends. Even the cameo players have depth such as Gerald Sim as the doctor in hospital who helps Jane to give birth with non-judgemental sympathy. Even in the big Smoke there are friends to be found and if that makes Forbes a tad more romantic than his peers then so be it. This is the story of one woman’s ability to make her choice and it is uplifting and more complex than many a more sanitised or superficially grimy take.

Dusty Verdict: Watch this film for the streets of London, for the craft of the actors and the rightly lauded work of the leading lady, it’s a snapshot of the Golden Age of post-war Britain. For those who dream of resetting this country at some point in the past… maybe a timely reminder of life when it was harder for everyone, not just the outsiders in the boarding house.

I watched the Vintage Classics Blu-ray which features the 2017 restoration and interviews with Leslie Caron and the writer of the original book, Lynne Reid Banks. There’s also a featurette on The L Shaped Room and the British New Wave. This was the start of the Sixties when this country began to look up and beyond the austerity post War and Empire, when Victorian laws were revised and thrown away. Clearly, we are still in the middle of this process…

 

PS: You can find Reel Streets here - it is very well researched and highly addictive!

 

 

 

The Bucolic Bardot… Dulcima (1971), Carol White

This is a deceptively simple film which features one of Carol White’s finest performances alongside the great John Mills. The interplay between the two is exceptional and showed that the “Battersea Bardot” could not only hold her own with the very best, acting and reacting with the natural emoting seen in her Loach films, but also that she could place herself in different contexts. This is not the kitchen sink of the city but the barn door of Gloucestershire countryside and she fits right in, hair a natural brown, pitch perfect accent and freckles revealed in her un-made-up face.

 Based on a novella from HE Bates – author of The Darling Buds of May, The Triple Echo and Love for Lydia – the story is a typical rural affair, transposed from his usual stamping ground of Northamptonshire to Gloucestershire, with filming taking place around Minchinhampton and Tetbury.  

Fresh from his best supporting Oscar for Ryan’s Daughter (1970), the 62-year old Mills looks fit as a fiddle as Farmer Parker, devoid of rustic charm and a penny-pinching drunk given to cheating his competition of fair prices at the market and stashing his cash under carpets, in biscuit tins and under his hat. He’s a selfish old get who starts the film after a long lunchtime session by driving his Land Rover all too close to Dulcima Gaskain (Carol) as she pushes her baby brother in a pram. He ends up crashing into his chicken coop and Dulcima rushes to help, as he falls out onto the mood in a stupor.

Sir John

Dulcima “Dulce” Gaskain is the eldest of countless siblings and is a drudge for her parents, driven especially hard by her father (Bernard Lee), who expects her to look after him at the expense of her own happiness. After a hard day’s mopping, shopping and cooking, she lies in bed reading of a better life, looking dreamily at the latest fashions and alighting with a smile on an advert showing a handsome young man advertising the knitwear brand Albert.

Seeing Parker’s chaotic existence, she sees an opportunity to make some money by helping to clean his house and generally making herself useful. At first, he doesn’t quite see it, especially when sitting room is transformed as Dulce clears his clutter and washes his threadbare curtains but a hot meal soon persuades him that perhaps he can take advantage of this young woman.

Both of them have ulterior motives and when Dulce accompanies Parker to the cattle market, we see how the wily old sod deliberately takes out a competing farmer by saying he’ll buy his cows so that he can get a better price for his own cattle. He doesn’t follow through with his offer and perhaps this gives Dulce the signal that he deserves a little of his own medicine.

Dulce distracts

Dulce then deploys a different approach by driving Parker to distraction with a few buttons lowered on her top and some earthy leaning and bending as she cleans the floors. If he was happy with her food and cleaning, he’s delighted to see more of her and all the while Dulce keeps a tally of how much he owes her. Getting actually paid the old man requires a greater level of commitment though and Dulce finally gets what she wants by giving him what he’s obviously not had for some time… poor fellow is so distracted he even gives her more than she asked for although she later tells him he overpaid her; it’s a canny game between the two.

All the while Dulce has been warding Parker off with talk of her jealous boyfriend, Albert – inspired by the advert – but she gets a start when one day the man from the advert turns – as the Forest Warden from the neighbouring estate (Stuart Wilson). From this point on she keeps on bumping into the younger man and Parker, who keeps on seeing him from a distance, becomes increasingly uncertain. 

Love is blind though and Dulce moves in to be rewarded with a higher salary and a TV set. The point has been reached were the balance in the couple’s strange relationship has been tipped in Dulce’s favour and when she gets dolled up and flirts with “Albert” on the bus, she arranges a date with him. It’s quite the transformation for White as the “dolly bird” of the sixties emerges in full bloom and it’s clear Parker is out of his depth and age group.

Carol White and Stuart Wilson

Now this amiable tale changes tone as there’s nowhere for Albert’s love to go as Dulce becomes increasingly attached to Albert and yet the resolution is not going to be a clear one: will Dulce take responsibility for where she has led the old man, will he realise that his pursuit of her is hopeless?

Dusty Verdict: Frank Nesbitt directs with a lightness of touch that frees the two main players to interact in funny and convincing ways. White’s Dulcima does not come across as cynically as she might and there’s a genuine win-win for both Dulce and Parker until life intervenes.

Mills is as good as you expect with some delightful expressiveness and he’s truly convincing as the dirty old farmer from the days when baths were less frequent and the four-wheel drives were often battered and purely functional. White responds so well and is perfectly at home in the country showing the comic touch to make light of Dulce’s duplicity as well as the dramatic flair we all know she has.

Dulcima is available on Blu-ray now so there’s no excuseto miss this one.