After Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria shut herself completely from the world. Leaving London and her royal duties, she seeks refuge in Osborne House (the royal family summer house) in the isle of Wright. Dressed in heavy black clothes, she took pleasure in nothing and actually didn’t allow any feisty behaviors in her household.

John Brown, a servant who worked at Balmoral who had struck a friendship with the prince during the last year of his life, was asked to come to the queen’s residence expecting his presence would provoke an emotional awakening.

Victoria refuses any public appearances and even leaving her apartments was something unusual. Brown stubbornly convinces her to get out of the palace and take some fresh air and even ridding her favorite horse. He becomes her personal servant and slowly, his influence over the queen grows… He treats Victoria like he would address a normal woman, without the usual deference and stiff protocol she was used to. It’s a joy to see her changing from a sorrowful widow to the woman she was before her husband died. Brown’s influence starts to displease many of her entourage and even her People start calling her Mrs. Brown, alluding to an improper relationship between them. Her long absence from London does not help the situation…

The entire cast of this movie is perfect. Everyone seems just in the right place and giving their best. Judi Dench is an amazing Victoria (as she is in any other role)! Her regal attitude is natural, she’s reserved and formal but not without an occasional spark of humor. She has no physical resemblance with the queen, and yet she effortlessly becomes her. For this role, Judi Dench was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and wins the BAFTA for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. It’s not surprising after seeing how powerfully she played the role of the queen.

Billy Connolly’s Mr. John Brown is a very passionate man. He does a great job portraying such an ambiguous persona. While caring for Victoria’s well being and happiness, it’s clear he is also very ambitious and intends to climb up all the stairs as fast as he can to reach to the top. We love him for making the queen smile and bringing her to life, but his blunt ways and relentless quest for power sometimes drive us away from him. His suffering towards the end is never over the top and easily touched us.

Mrs. Brown is a fair accounting of Victoria’s and John Brown’s relationship and remains our favorite movie about this sovereign.

A little note here for all Gerard Butler’s fans, you can see him here as the young brother of Brown. We almost didn’t recognize him but the voice was unmistakable.

Highly recommended!

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119280/

The story starts during Victoria’s childhood in Kensington Palace. Her education is in the hands of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her conniving and arrogant secretary Sir John Conroy. The young princess lives isolated from everything and everyone, especially from her father’s family.

Being the heiress of the throne of England and underage, many are those who would wish to control her. Conroy tries to force her to name her mother Regent and he would rule through the duchess. But Victoria, much more determined and perceptive than he thought, refuses and distances herself from her mother. Leopold I, king of Belgium and uncle of the young woman, also tries to influence her and his weapon reveals to be much more effective. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg is sent to England as a candidate for marriage. He is serious and cultivated and is sure they would have nothing in common. It doesn’t take long to see these two understand each other very well. The chess game between them is a lovely and quite symbolic moment.

The following years as a queen, Victoria tries to educate herself to the tasks and duties expected from a sovereign guided by the scheming but oh so charming Lord Melbourne (he could manipulate us any day!). If the young queen seems happier with her destiny, some of her choices and inexperience will have dreadful consequences…

Emily Blunt is a talented actress and if we never doubted she would play Victoria well giving her a mischievous and playful side, her looks don’t help her portray the small and energetic queen in the most faithfull manner. While considered pretty in her younger years, she was never a beauty. Victoria impressed her subjects with her radiant personality and her wit, and often her size and regular looks were misleading.

The real jewel of this movie is, without any doubt, Rupert Friend. We weren’t fans of him after seeing him as George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice (2005), but since this Austen screen adaptation was an overall disappointment, he kind of went unnoticed. Here he has the chance to shine! Intelligent, passionate and with an unshaken common sense he is the perfect co-sovereign, even if he has some tendencies to control his wife…

The same we can say about Mark Strong and his Sir John Conroy. We couldn’t be more pleased to see Strong getting more parts in cinema and TV since he really is an excellent actor. He brought all the aggressiveness and lust for power of Conroy adding a hint of madness and even some fear, towards the end. Quite a beautiful performance!

The most disappointing part is the end that is perfectly unnecessary. Why show those images of Victoria 20 years later and after having 9 children she would never have a figure as slender as Emily Blunt. It only gives the impression that Albert died the same year or shortly after.

Overall, this is a charming story with a lovely photography, gorgeous costumes and excellent performances that certainly will charm any period drama fan. There are some historical inaccuracies like the scene when Prince Albert saves the queen and is shot (actually nobody was hurt or the Prince tried to save anybody’s life), but these changes only add more drama to the plot without actually spoiling the story and our enjoyment. Just a small note, the song Only You by Sinead O’Connor seemed somehow misplaced in an historical movie, but maybe this is just us.

After watching The Young Victoria, we can only warmingly recommend Mrs. Brown which portrays the queen in her later years after the disappearance of her beloved Albert. A review is planned for this week, in case anyone is interested to know more about Victoria’s life.

Official site: http://www.theyoungvictoria.co.uk

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0962736/

Today we want to acknowledge some awards that this blog has received.

It’s always rewarding to know that our work  is appreciated and both Janicu (we are terribly late in responding to this award) and Annie had really nice and kind things to say about us:

Janicu from Janicu’s Book Blog who gave us a I LOVE YOUR BLOG award wrote:

This isn’t a book blog, but I love it! This was actually created by a couple of girls whose book blogs I read, and it focuses on period dramas. Sigh, I get so happy when I get introduced to a movie or miniseries want to watch. Then I force my husband to watch it with me.

Annie from Reading, Writing & Ranting who awarded us with the PREMIO DARDOS wrote:

These three women run a great blog that specialises in period dramas on film. Because we all know that there’s nothing a historical fiction fan loves more than a period film!

And we also want to thank WhiteLady from My Little Corner (Our new guest blogger) and Nefertiri from Nefertiri’s Book Blog for the ONE LOVELY BLOG Award.

Thank you Ladies!

After welcoming Zeek last year, we now have the pleasure of welcoming another guest reviewer. Whitelady, who is usually found at her own blogs Este Meu Cantinho and My Little Corner, has agreed to share with us and our readers some of her reviews on period dramas. We already took a peek at her first review, which will be up tomorrow, and really enjoyed it. We hope you enjoy it too. Welcome aboard Whitelady!

One of the things most mentioned when we’re talking about period dramas is the costumes. In fact period dramas are sometimes known as costume dramas so you can see how important that department is. We still remember the news earlier this year when a fire destroyed part of Tess of The Uberville’s wardrobe and they had to start over again. Fortunately this was a rare incident and usually costumes are stored for documentation or even future use. The first time we noticed a dress being used more than once was when we watched Bleak House right after watching N&S and noticed Margaret Hale’s dress on Lady Dedlock.

After that we realised that several other dresses appeared in several different dramas and characters. There’s already a site that documents this very well so we decided to show you here just some of them and leave you to explore the others. We are also curious to know if some of you had already noticed costumes being reused and could point some examples.

This blog was always meant to be a meeting place for all those who share our passion for historical movies and where everyone could express their opinions and give their best recommendations. Today, we’ll have our first guest reviewer – Zeek. She shares our interest for period drama and movies in general and you can visit her at her blog The Way I See It. This is her first review here and we hope it will not be the last. Welcome aboard Zeek !

Here’s the poster for The Duchess who will be released the 5th September in the UK (release dates). For more information, you can always read our news post about this movie.

Now, do you like it ? Do you think it will convince you to see the movie (in case you are not a Keira Knightley fan) ?

Image courtesy of comingsoon.com

ITV seems to have a trend in recent times of adapting old stories and give them a new look (think of the Austen adaptations) and they have done just that with the Miss Marple TV series. They have given it new settings, brighter colors and even, in one case or another, almost new storylines. Although we appreciate the new package, more attractive to young audiences, sometimes these changes might struck as a little bit odd. For instance, in The Body in the Library they not only change the identity of the murder but also created  a lesbian affair, in A Murder is Announced the characters are completely changed and the best is Towards Zero, who was a Superintendent Battle investigation where Marple doesn’t even show up…  We are far from what Agatha Christie wrote and we do understand if some fans find these TV adaptations not at all faithful to the spirit of Miss Marple and her creator.

Geraldine McEwan seems a bit too merry, always smiling her little smile almost as if appreciating a joke she is the only one knowing. Not exactly as we imagined the dear old lady, but it’s not entirely unpleasant. We do learn more about her past (made up for the sake of the series?) which makes her more human and less the terrifying Nemesis that was portrayed by Joan Hickson. It seems to us that McEwan went for a different approach and decided to make of Miss Marple the elderly aunt everyone would like to have…without the murders, of course.

Also, the series does have the virtue of having been a good vehicle for a whole generation of British acting talents. What a pleasure it is to watch again some of our favorite actors, and we do have to mention the talented Richard Armitage, even if his role of Philip Durrant in Ordeal byy Innocence doesn’t do him justice, the always delightful Joanna Lumley or the Catherine Tate as the excentric Mitzi.

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After three seasons as the super-sleuth Miss Marple, Geraldine McEwan decided to retire and was replaced by the talented Julia MacKenzie. More recently, you might remember her as Mrs. Forrester in Cranford. She already filmed A Pocket Full of Rye and A Murder is Easy but there’s no date of when these episodes will be aired.

We trully hope you enjoyed this special Miss Marples as much as we did. Now, we only have to wait for the new episodes and enjoy, once more, the adventures of our favorite lady detective.

Joan Hickson is for us the embodiment of the perfect Miss Marple. She looks old and sweet, a somewhat prim and harmless lady, always with a very innocent but sharp look. It’s fascinating how, without really seeming to mean it, she can extract information from the more resistant victim. We, and the other characters, are always surprised in the end by how insightful she was, how well she knows human nature even if she has spent her life in St Mary Mead – a small village in the country. Miss Marple seems always busy gathering tidbits of information that in the end are proven to be important for the explanation of the mystery. Hickson’s Miss Marple seems thoroughly distracted during most of the story but when she explains it in the end one can only think: How obvious that was!

Even if Agatha Christie dedicated one of Marple’s books to Margaret Rutherford, it was to Joan Hickson (then young and playing a housekeeper in Rutherford’s movie) that she said: « I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple ». It seems that even the creator of the old lady saw how perfect Hickson would be for the role and who are we to say the contrary.

Joan Hickson’s Marple followed us over the years and she became one of our favorite TV characters and, even if we do enjoy the most recent series, it will be very hard to replace, in your minds, that frail and discreet old lady who always knew how to uncover the most unspeakable sins.

The TV series she took part in was produced by the BBC between 1984 and 1992:

The Body in the Library, 1984
The Moving Finger, 1985
A Pocket Full of Rye, 1985
A Murder is Announced, 1985
Sleeping Murder, 1986
At Bertram’s Hotel, 1987
Nemesis, 1987
Murder at the Vicarage, 1987
4:50 from Paddington, 1987
A Caribbean Mystery, 1989
They Do It With Mirrors, 1991
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side, 1992

 
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And the wonderful intro to the series :

[youtube=http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hgdk6CLrt0&feature=related]

It was during the 60s that Miss Marple was first adapted to the screen. From 1962 to 64 four Miss Marple movies were made featuring Margaret Rutherford as the main character.
 
The titles are Murder She Said, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy! Murder Ahoy isn’t based on any of Agatha Christie’s novels. Margaret Rutherford was a comic actress and gave the role and energetic and loud profile that seems a bit at odds with Miss Marple’s personality. Christie herself doesn’t seem to have been to fond of those adaptations at first but one of her later books is dedicated to margaret Rutherford so it might be that she ended up having some appreciation for them.An interesting detail is that a young Joan Hickson had a part in one of the movies and apparently Christie told she would like for her to portray Miss Marple one day. Profetic words…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15CtYVK27wk]

Helen Hayes portrayed Miss Marple in movies called A Caribbean Mystery(1983), and Murder with Mirrors(1984). She was a stage and movie star long before starring as Miss Marple and few other famous names can be recognized in the movies. For instance in Murder with Mirrors an all star cast which included Bette Davis and Sir John Mills was assembled to act with her, despite that some of the reviews were less than stellar. She was closer to the birdlike quality of the character imagined by Christie who persisted till she got the answers she needed. The movies are interesting for fans of Agatha Christie who will definitely want to take a look at them but Miss Marple is maybe a bit too neat and not quite as we imagined her. Strangely these movies are set even more close to our times. What were they thinking?

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 We’re having some problems displaying a video of Murder With Mirrors, so here’s the link.

Another all star cast surrounded Angela Lansbury in the movie The Mirror Crack’d in which St Mary Mead becomes the set of an historical movie and the inhabitants are naturally curious about seeing movie stars at close range. The bickering between the two main stars – Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak – make for some humourous scenes. Lansbury’s Miss Marple is a bit young for the role but she is tenacious when looking for clues and when her nephew asks for her help she does deliver the culprit. The movie is set in the 1950s as Christie wrote it.
 
On a curious note Angela Lansbury later starred in the Murder She Wrote series whose main character was partially based in Miss Marple.

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