Ordinary Lady Gets Elected

 Our last film featured Gemma Arterton and Sam Claflin as a pair of writers who collaborate (very successfully) on a film about the evacuation of Dunkirk. 



Although their characters are fictional (and one of them doesn't survive!) it is very easy to imagine that, had their collaboration continued, they would have become the real-life writing team of Muriel and Sydney Box.


The Boxes were a very successful and talented husband-and-wife writing team who collaborated on numerous British post-war films. Muriel was also one of the very, very few female directors of her generation (or indeed any other generation; film directing is still an overwhelmingly male undertaking).



Next Thursday's film is their adaptation of a stage play by Daphne Du Maurier, and (if it were up to me) one of the great feminist classics of all time.


The Years Between tells the story of Diana Wentworth, the wife of a popular and beloved MP who is killed in the early stages of the war, leaving her devastated and inconsolable.

When she is persuaded by her late husband's political colleagues to stand for Parliament in his place, she discovers (to everyone's surprise) that she is actually rather good at it. 



For the first time, she discovers she has an identity that goes beyond "devoted wife" and her life is very quickly transformed.


Then things get really complicated.

Muriel and Sydney Box's screenplay significantly improves on Daphne Du Maurier's stage play: opening up the action, adding new characters and radically changing the ending.



Those of you who have been coming to these film nights for some time may recall that I showed this film once before, about four years ago, but I have had a request to show it again - and it fits perfectly into our current series of Ordinary Ladies.


Unfortunately, the only available print of The Years Between is not of the best quality, so I would kindly ask you to make allowances; but the film itself is (in my humble opinion) good enough to warrant putting up with the slightly dodgy transfer. If anyone from the BFI is reading this (or indeed if anyone at all is reading this) perhaps you could look into releasing a re-mastered, restored copy of this very important and beautifully written film. Future generations will thank you!

In the meantime, everyone will have an opportunity to see it this Thursday (the 22nd of September) at the Victoria Park Baptist Church, at the usual time of 7.30. I look forward to seeing you there!

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