Tuesday 31 January 2017

American Friends (1991 Tristram Powell)

Fascinated by an incomplete memoir of his grandfather's, Michael Palin has fashioned a credible story about the meeting of a repressed Oxford don (well played by himself in dead serious mode) and a couple of Americans (Trini Alvarado and Connie Booth) in Switzerland in the 1860s, and what happens in Oxford later, involving caddish (but charismatic) Alfred Molina. It was screenwritten by Palin and Powell, and is very low-key.

With Bryan Pringle, David Calder (from Bramwell), Roger Lloyd Pack, Alun Armstrong.

It's sensitively shot by Helena's cousin Philip Bonham-Carter and great grandson of political speaker Violet B-C who I read in Palin's first diary had a deadly dull speaking voice. Georges Delerue provides respectful music, BBC DVD seems to be out of print, thus dodgy VHS grabs below.





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