Akenfield (1974)
Country: GB
Technical: col 98m
Director: Peter Hall
Cast: Garrow Shand, Peggy Cole, Barbara Tilney
Synopsis:
As he prepares to bury his grandfather, young Suffolk farm labourer Tom turns over in his mind the oft repeated tales of three generations of bondage to the local squire, the backbreaking toil, escape through military service, and brief moments of pleasure.
Review:
An adaptation of Ronald Smythe's book, that reflects on the importance of climate, belief and poverty of education in the lives of villagers for centuries past, and how new ideas and modern machinery have changed the rules of the game. Hall chose to use local non-actors and minimal production paraphernalia for his fantasia-like recreation of schoolroom, baptism, harvest and so forth, interwoven with repeated snatches of Tippett's Corelli fantasia and the same family reminiscences told again and again. Some of the rustic scenes have a timeless quality that could dispose the viewer to Arcadian nostalgia, were it not for the voiceover reminding us how unpleasant it all was. A valuable document of the realities behind the rural economy, but it could all have been over in a third of the time.
Country: GB
Technical: col 98m
Director: Peter Hall
Cast: Garrow Shand, Peggy Cole, Barbara Tilney
Synopsis:
As he prepares to bury his grandfather, young Suffolk farm labourer Tom turns over in his mind the oft repeated tales of three generations of bondage to the local squire, the backbreaking toil, escape through military service, and brief moments of pleasure.
Review:
An adaptation of Ronald Smythe's book, that reflects on the importance of climate, belief and poverty of education in the lives of villagers for centuries past, and how new ideas and modern machinery have changed the rules of the game. Hall chose to use local non-actors and minimal production paraphernalia for his fantasia-like recreation of schoolroom, baptism, harvest and so forth, interwoven with repeated snatches of Tippett's Corelli fantasia and the same family reminiscences told again and again. Some of the rustic scenes have a timeless quality that could dispose the viewer to Arcadian nostalgia, were it not for the voiceover reminding us how unpleasant it all was. A valuable document of the realities behind the rural economy, but it could all have been over in a third of the time.
Country: GB
Technical: col 98m
Director: Peter Hall
Cast: Garrow Shand, Peggy Cole, Barbara Tilney
Synopsis:
As he prepares to bury his grandfather, young Suffolk farm labourer Tom turns over in his mind the oft repeated tales of three generations of bondage to the local squire, the backbreaking toil, escape through military service, and brief moments of pleasure.
Review:
An adaptation of Ronald Smythe's book, that reflects on the importance of climate, belief and poverty of education in the lives of villagers for centuries past, and how new ideas and modern machinery have changed the rules of the game. Hall chose to use local non-actors and minimal production paraphernalia for his fantasia-like recreation of schoolroom, baptism, harvest and so forth, interwoven with repeated snatches of Tippett's Corelli fantasia and the same family reminiscences told again and again. Some of the rustic scenes have a timeless quality that could dispose the viewer to Arcadian nostalgia, were it not for the voiceover reminding us how unpleasant it all was. A valuable document of the realities behind the rural economy, but it could all have been over in a third of the time.