orpheum

I agree that Powells quota quickies were better than most.In fact with the odd exception i find a period charm in them all.After all given that the films were produced for no other reason than to fill legal obligations rather than to entertain people.Also the producer wanted to produce them as cheaply as he could bearing in mind that he was being paid £1 per foot by the distributor.It is remarkable that it produced as many decent films and developing talents as it did.

Welcome To Highbury The Home Of Football

CaptainWaggett

I was only talking about Powell's quota quickies since I've only seen about half a dozen by other directors. And I still say that those two films are fairly rubbishy - nowhere near as good as the Love Test, as Steve says, or, my particular favourite, Something Always Happens.

penfold

It's hard to tell because we see so few. I could name a couple of cheapos from the thirties (Quota quickies?? Hard to define...) the equal of Mickey's....William Beaudine's Father Takes A Walk for Warners at Teddington,....and Henry Edwards' version of A Christmas Carol with Sir Seymour Hicks, for Julius Hagen at Twickenham .....whether because these were both from silent-directors-met-hard-times, or what, I don't know.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

CaptainWaggett

I saw Money for Speed (rubbish) and The Ghost Camera (excellent) last week (both edited by David Lean. As Penfold says, we don't see many and the ones we see either star or are directed by someone Before They Were Famous so perhaps we give them more attention than they deserves? (Who would bother with Hotel Splendide or indeed Lazybones if it didn't have Powell's name on it?)

Steve Crook

Not many bother with them even though they've got Powell's name on them

When they did that series of Powell's QQs at the NFT in March 2000 it wasn't exactly packed out. And we're still waiting (and hinting to everyone we can) for them to be released on DVD

Steve

orpheum

Given that they no longer get an airing on C4 weekday afternoons it is not surprising that most people are unaware of their existance.Furthermore the NFT hardly ever shows them so that does not help.

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penfold

Father Takes A Walk is a case in point....it was played on US TCM last winter, and a friend over there raved about it and copied it for me. I'd never heard of it, or the star, but the director was William Beaudine, director of silent classics such as Sparrows, with Mary Pickford, on his way to directing such US poverty row productions as Billy The Kid Meets Dracula...the quality of the film is nearer to his silent work, and has moments on location in the English countryside not far from A Canterbury Tale in effect. It's a cracking film....and few people know about it.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

mrjenkins

I have only watched 'Lazybones' once but I think the house might be "Shardloes" just north of Old Amersham. A walk can be taken in the park as a footpath runs along the bottom of the valley below the house. It can also be seen from the A413 toward Great Missenden.

mariocki

Link to earlier thread about Shardeloes:

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/lo...er-1954-a.html

You crazy idiots - my name's McGill!

Wee Sonny MacGregor

This house was under threat in the 1960s and might have been demolished as the upkeep was so great. Happily, the Tyrwitt-Drake family turned the house into luxury flats and the old pile survived. When the Queen Mother visited Michael Dennison and Dulcie Gray, she is supposed to remarked on how psoh the place was.