The crying baby with the bright red face Sandy Dennis has thrust into her hands in a hospital waiting room would now be in her fifties (assuming it was a girl).
For someone who regards a film made in 1970 as recent, it's sobering to realise that over half a century now separates us from this attempt by sixties schlockmeisters Max J. Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky to go legit by filming Margaret Drabble's 1964 novel 'The Millstone' in a fashion reminiscent of 'The L-Shaped Room'. More decades now separate us from this film than from this film and the silent era; a time when telephones had rotary dials, the Post Office Tower featured prominently in the background during the street scenes so we knew it was London, Sandy Dennis was a bankable Hollywood star, and Penelope Keith as a nurse and Ian McKellan in his film debut look young and fresh-faced (the latter playing a gay man long before he came out in reality. "I keep it secret not because it's wicked but because it's so dull!").
And the stylistic tic indulged in by first-time big screen director Warris Hussein is pans and zooms rather than pans and steadicam, as it would be today.
For someone who regards a film made in 1970 as recent, it's sobering to realise that over half a century now separates us from this attempt by sixties schlockmeisters Max J. Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky to go legit by filming Margaret Drabble's 1964 novel 'The Millstone' in a fashion reminiscent of 'The L-Shaped Room'. More decades now separate us from this film than from this film and the silent era; a time when telephones had rotary dials, the Post Office Tower featured prominently in the background during the street scenes so we knew it was London, Sandy Dennis was a bankable Hollywood star, and Penelope Keith as a nurse and Ian McKellan in his film debut look young and fresh-faced (the latter playing a gay man long before he came out in reality. "I keep it secret not because it's wicked but because it's so dull!").
And the stylistic tic indulged in by first-time big screen director Warris Hussein is pans and zooms rather than pans and steadicam, as it would be today.