Peter Viney's Blog

By Dodie Smith
Directed by Tim Fywell
Written by Dodie Smith
Screenplay by Heidi Thomas

BBC Film 2003, DVD

CAST:
Romola Garai- Cassandra Mortmain
Rose Byrne – Rose Mortmain
Bill Nighy – James Mortmain
Tara Fitzgerald – Topaz Mortmain, stepmother to Cassandra and Rose
Joe Sowerbutts- Thomas Mortmain, the son
Henry Cavill – Stephen
Henry Thomas – Simon Cotton
Marc Blucas – Neil Cotton
Sinead Cusack – Mrs Cotton
James Faulkner – Aubrey Fox-Cotton
Sarah Woodward – Leda Fox-Cotton

David Bamber- vicar

My DVD is on the left

This started with watching the National Theatre Dear Octopus (LINK to my review). I realised I knew almost nothing about Dodie Smith except that she wrote 101 Dalmations. I’ll use that review:

Dodie Smith (1896-1990) was a prominent playwright with Dear Octopus (1938) among others. Nowadays 1930s plays remind me of Karen’s old drama teacher’s shelf groaning With Best Plays of (1938) (1947) (1953) volumes. They were pre-Godot, pre-Anger.

Apart from spotted dogs, Dodie Smith had escaped my attention. She went to RADA in 1914, and as an actor toured for ten years. Her novel I Capture the Castle (1948) was voted #87 in a BBC poll of favourite novels, and has been a film, a BBC full cast audio play (on audio books), an audio book straight reading, and even a Penguin ELT Graded Reader. Both Armistead Maupin and J.K. Rowling have praised the novel extravagantly.

It’s apparently quite popular

When I looked it up online, there has been a Folio edition too. Karen knew of it, but hadn’t read it. I’d never even heard of it. She wrote it in the USA during World War II, but it wasn’t published until 1948. It was her first novel, though her reputation as a playwright was strong.

It was optioned for a film, featuring Hayley Mills, by Disney in 1963. Dodie Smith could not work with her Disney appointed co-writer. After the massive success of 101 Dalmations in 1961, she must have had considerable leverage. Disney kept hold of it through thick and thin, before relinquishing the rights to the BBC in 2001.

It’s a romance with comedy. I’d say ‘The Ultimate Mills & Boone.’ We once went to a seminar at a Literary Festival with a Mills & Boone novelist. She came in wearing a twin set, flouncy blouse, pearls, high heels and expensively done hair and stunning make up. She said, ‘Do I look like a Mils & Boone author?’ We all nodded. She kicked off the heels, sat on the desk, and said something like, ‘Well, me name’s Debbie. I’m an ex-maths teacher from Manchester, and I applied my mathematical skills to working out the formula. I write two a year, research them on a four week holiday somewhere exotic and come back and write them.’ It was the best creative writing seminar I have ever attended. (My MA was supervised by Malcolm Bradbury too!)

Well, Dodie Smith had worked out the formula decades earlier. She has a touch of My Family & Other Animals, with a bit of Cold Comfort Farm. She pre-dates the former by eight years.

Rule one. The central figure and narrator must be female. √
Rule two: There must be two or three possible suitors. √
Rule three: She must dislike the one she eventually falls in love with on first sight. √
Rule four: She must have a female rival √
Rule five: Her love interest must fancy the female rival first. √
Rule six: Locations must look good. √
Rule seven: Others must try to foil the romance. √
Rule eight: Being foreign / exotic is an advantage for the suitor. √

BUT … this has a lot of comedy, which is not a Mills & Boone characteristic.

The novel is narrated by Cassandra Mortmain (Romola Garai), who is writing it down. It ends when she runs out of paper. In the film there are flashbacks to being nine, and there are alternative fantasies of the same event.

The basic plot. It’s set in the mid 1930s. Cassandra Mortmain is just 17. Her older sister, Rose (Rose Byrne) is 21. Rose is a beauty with long curly red hair. They live in a castle with their novelist father and their young stepmother. It really is a medieval castle too.

It opens with the family, years earlier, arriving at the castle. Cassandra’s narration includes a tantalising Daddy had been let out …
On reaching the battlements, Dad says I will write masterpieces here!
Cassandra’s cool voiceover adds, And we believed him.

The father, James Mortmain (Bill Nighy) was a famous modern novelist twelve years earlier but has written nothing since though he has an international reputation.

He is a man of occasional violent temper, and was sent to prison for four months for attacking his wife with a knife when Rose was nine. Near the start he opens his royalty statement: zero. (I’ve been there, done that!)

The stepmother, Topaz (Tara Fitzgerald) is fond of stripping naked in the rain and is an accomplished artist. She’s 29, so not much older than her stepdaughter, Rose. The family are wacky, Bohemian and very poor. The servant, Stephen (Henry Cavill), works for a farmer but works for them for nothing. He is smitten with Cassandra.

The landlords of the castle die and the mansion house and the semi-ruined castle is inherited by two American brothers. Their car gets stuck in the mud and they seek help at the castle. They hadn’t realised that they own the castle as well as the house.

The brothers were separated when their parents divorced and grew up separately. Neil (Marc Blucas)was brought up by their English dad in California and is a burly outdoor handsome chap (you see where this is going). He wants to be a rancher

Simon (Henry Thomas) was brought up in New England by the mother. He is the older and wealthier brother and also an intellectual, having written his dissertation on James Mortmain’s writing.

Rose has consulted the castle gargoyle in her desperation to find a rich husband. They’re a touch occult as well as Bohemian. She puts the two brothers off with her obvious attempts to flirt. Cassandra overhears their disparaging comments about Rose

Neil and Simon come for tea and Rose insists on playing the piano and having Simon turn the pages.

The sisters inherit fur coats and have to go to Simpsons on The Strand to collect them. . One is bear, one is monkey. There is a lot of humour throughout, as when the snooty assistant puts them down.

Incidentally, judging by Dear Octopus, Dodie Smith’s greatest strength is getting two or three women in competitive conversation .

There is a fine comedy scene when they, clad in furs, run into the brothers who are meeting their mom (Sinead Cusack) at the station. The girls try to run away (Rose in her bear coat), and someone says they saw a bear. A hunt ensues. It is the beefy Neil who carries the “fainted” Rose back to the station and invents a ludicrous story about a real bear. This is an important plot point.

We noted that Dodie Smith wrote this in America, and has an ear for American comments on 1930s Britain. Mrs Cotton determines to cure James’ writing block. The family is invited to a formal dinner at the Cotton’s mansion. Cassandra drinks champagne for the first time.

There’s an odd little line there. They joke about food in the future and would it be food capsules? James comes in to say that food capsules would only be eaten in private and Pictures of food would only be collected by rude old gentlemen. You make the later classic movie connection.

The dance shows the brothers competing for Rose while Cassandra is stuck with the vicar. It’s another well-honed gentle comedy scene.

Rose has her eye on the money. She also believes Neil despises her because she is breaking up his newfound sibling relationship with Simon. This is all coming out on a trip to the beach with all four of them;

So Simon falls for Rose. The sisters have joked that they dislike Simon’s beard. Rose gets to him. He shaves it off. Do men do that when asked? (I did!) A wedding is planned. Then Simon visits and dances with Cassandra, then kisses Cassandra sending her into guilty confusion. It is her first kiss. He is playing You and The Night & The Music.

We found it poignant that he’d spent his all on a wireless for Cassandra’s birthday, only to find Simon has gifted her the full expensive radiogram. He walks away, she follows him. Then Stephen proposes to her and they kiss.

Cassandra worries that Rose does not love Simon, and just sends a letter with three pages of purchases. Is that all that matters?

Topaz has deserted James for London. Cassandra tries to persuade her to return, then goes to a dinner dance with Rose and Simon. Simon doesn’t approve of the sophisticated dress Cassandra has borrowed from Rose.

That’s also when she discovers that You and The Night & The Music is also Simon and Rose’s “song.”

Cassandra and brother Thomas conspire to get Dad confined in an old tower to break his writer’s block. They’ll only let him out when he’s written fifty pages.

While this is all going on, they realise brother Neil has nipped off and eloped with Rose, whose affections have switched to the burlier bloke.

This is Dodie Smith, NOT Mills & Boone, so there is not quite the expected ending.

Overall, it is very good. Locations work – in Pembrokeshire for the castle, then up to the Isle of Man for the isolated tower. The London street scenes with multiple vehicles would have cost a bob or ten. Like the novel in rests on the appeal of the narrator, Cassandra and Romola Garai perfectly captures her wide eyed innocence as she grasps with ‘capturing’ (in her notebook) the events at the castle.

SEE ALSO:

Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith, National Theatre At Home

ROMOLA GARAI
Measure For Measure, Young Vic, 2017 (Isabella)
One Day (FILM) 2011