A secretary suspects that her employer's three elderly sisters are plotting to kill him after he announces he'll no longer finance their philanthropic endeavors.A secretary suspects that her employer's three elderly sisters are plotting to kill him after he announces he'll no longer finance their philanthropic endeavors.A secretary suspects that her employer's three elderly sisters are plotting to kill him after he announces he'll no longer finance their philanthropic endeavors.
- Old Welsh Woman
- (uncredited)
- Old Welsh Woman
- (uncredited)
- Solicitor's Clerk
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaUrsula Granville's debut.
- Quotes
Owen Morgan-Vaughan: I've been driving for hours and hours, slag heaps and pit heads and vile black hills. Huh! How vile was my valley! I'm sick of all this Celtic clap trap about Wales. My Wales!
[mockingly]
Owen Morgan-Vaughan: Land of my Fathers! As far as I'm concerned, my fathers can keep it. You can tell he's a Welshman by the lilt in his voice. Huh, little black back-biting hypocrites, all gab and whine! Black beetles with tenor voices and a sense of sin like a crippled hump. Cwmglas! Full of senile morons and vicious dwarfs, old poles of women clacking at you like blowsy hens, self-righteous little humbugs with the hwyl, old men with beards in their noses cackling at you, blue gums and clackers. Oh the mystical Welsh-huh! About as mystical as slugs!
Isobel Morgan-Vaughan: You must forgive my brother, Miss Prentiss. He sees in Cwmglas so many of his own endearing qualities.
Maude Morgan-Vaughan: He looks just like his mother.
Owen Morgan-Vaughan: I don't know who's got the dirtiest mind, Maude - you or the Devil.
Maude Morgan-Vaughan: He's religious too.
A post war-Gothic tale with a great deal on its mind this is a movie that never really works. Graced with a script that was written in part by Dylan Thomas the dialog is often very literate in a way that real people never talk. The writing does provide for some very wicked exchanges between the characters but it never really comes to life. Some of the miners are just a bit too poetic about the tragedy that has befallen their small town.
Thematically the film is about the clash of the old and the stayed with the new and the modern. I mention this because the film seems much more interested in ideas than it is in any real action. We have the three sisters who never left home and want to rebuild things the way they were battling their brother and his secretary who have come from the outside and want live in the present and deal with the situation as it is. Its a battle that forms the basis, in one way or another, for almost every scene often to the detriment of the drama. Everything seems to be arranged to have some deep meaning from the aliments of the sisters to the crumbling nature of the manor house. I wasn't watching a movie so much as a dramatized argument for the modern; there aren't people on the screen rather they are ideas.
I applaud the filmmakers for wanting to make a movie that is more than a Gothic drama, but they went the wrong way and forgot the drama. Honestly this is a tough movie to get through, its 80 minutes long and feels like twice that in the lecture hall. As good as the basic plot line is the execution makes this a film I doubt I'll ever watch again.
Worth a shot if you don't mind seeing a literate drama that tries too hard and just misses being something special
- dbborroughs
- Feb 6, 2007
Details
- Runtime1 hour 22 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1