‘The Long Memory’ (1953) stars John Mills as a man newly
released from prison. He has served
twelve years for a crime that we learn he did not commit. He faces his freedom with a grudge against
those who lied in court and is followed closely by both a policeman (John
McCallum) and a journalist (Geoffrey Keen).
Mills’ character – Davidson – heads for the Kent Marshes and takes up
residence on an abandoned boat. These
scenes are wonderfully reminiscent of another film starring John Mills – ‘Great
Expectations’. The 1946 version of the
Dickens novel is the only one that I would ever consider watching, nothing else
will ever live up to it. To be reminded
of watching it took me back to wet Saturday afternoons with toasted
teacakes. The scenes of the marshes in
‘The Long Memory’ were therefore just as delightful and comforting due to
association. The camera didn’t stint on
scenes of mud flats, boats steaming in and out of the estuary and waving grasses. The soundtrack too gave us the lonely calls
of wetland birds, enhancing the atmosphere. I thought how wonderful, to catch
the essence of the Kent Marshes on film in this way. No doubt this is now a protected landscape,
but with nature you cannot keep things exactly the same. Water encroaches or recedes, wildlife
succumbs or thrives on altered environments.
And sometimes, our ways of protecting a landscape is to sterilise it a
little – the abandoned boats and wilder human inhabitants have probably now
been removed to somewhere less picturesque.
But here we see it in all its post-war glory.
We also see one of my favourite actresses from this period,
her talent rightly preserved on screen too. To many of my generation, she was
an eternally old lady with a penchant for religious programmes. In my teens, I wrote her off as a highly
uncool God-squaddie, a figure of fun. No
doubt the next generation down has never even heard of her. But back in the
1950s, Thora Hird was, in my view anyway, the bees knees. This has only become
apparent to me while I have been writing the History Usherette. I marvelled at her youth in ‘Went the Day
Well’; laughed uproariously at her knowing comments in ‘Sailor Beware’;
identified with her as Arthur Askey’s wife in ‘The Love Match’ and then boggled
at the fact that she was playing Dirk Bogarde’s Mum in ‘Once a Jolly
Swagman’. Thora had humour, character
and a fantastic talent. But of course
she wasn’t a glamour girl, so her early fame never reached the heights that it
should have done. Thora often played
characters that were older than her own years.
This is perhaps why she did become more of a household name in the 1980s
– she had spent so long preparing to be old that when she got there she was
well practiced at it, and played it for all she was worth. She will be remembered by many for her role
in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologue ‘A Cream Cracker Under the
Settee.’ This is sad, being remembered
as a lonely old woman that has fallen over, when she played so many vital and
funny roles in her younger days.
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| Thora by @aitchteee |
Her part in ‘The Long Memory’ is no exception. She plays a woman whose husband has “gorn
orff with anovver woman” and declares it to be daft at his ripe old age of
55. So she is again an older housewife,
supposedly 15 years or so older than her real age. It is a small, incidental
role but she is memorable in it and brandishes the comic relief potential. She brings out the wisdom of her character,
as she tackles her husband’s midlife crisis.
This was all quite fascinating – I thought that midlife crises’ were a
modern invention, a product of a society that drives us on to want more and
better all of the time. But Thora’s
husband is the classic case, leaving a wife that has been through everything
with him for a blonder and younger model.
Human nature never changes I suppose, even if the landscape
that they live in does.
***
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Fiction based on the Powell and Pressburger Film, ‘A
Canterbury Tale’.
“It's a book that can be read in one sitting
(though I spread it over two as I wanted to linger over it a bit) and despite
great poignancy it's a joy. If you've seen the film, it is a lovely adjunct to
it - if you haven't seen the film, do watch it, it's a gem, and then read this
lovely little book.”
Review on Amazon by tillyschneider
***
Help sought…
I am currently researching information for a potential
biography of my namesake actor Thorley Walters. If anyone knows of any useful
publications, or indeed if they ever met him, I would be most interested to
hear from you. Please email
agathadascoyne@gmail.com
