Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Phillipa Lowthorne
Screenplay Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe
Story by Rebecca Frayne

2020

CAST

What a cast!

Keira Knightley- Sally Alexander
Jessie Buckley- Jo Robinson
Ruby Bentall- Sarah
Lily Newmark- Jane
Gugu Mbatha-Raw – Jennifer Hosten, Miss Grenada
Rhys Ifans- Eric Morley
Keeley Hawes – Julia Morley
Greg Kinnear- Bob Hope
Lesley Manville- Dolores Hope
Laurel Lefkow- Bob Hope’s new secretary
Clara Rosager – Maj Christel Johansson, Miss Sweden
Emma Corrin – Jillian Jessup, Miss South Africa
Loreece Harrison – Pearl Janssen, Miss Africa South
Suki Waterhouse – Sandra Anne Wolsfeld, Miss USA
Phyllis Logan – Evelyn Alexander, Sally’s mother
John Heffernan – Gareth, Sally’s partner
Luke Thompson – Peter Hain
John Sackville- Robin Day
Charlie Anson – Michael Aspel
Rupert Vansittart- Lord Bly
Miles Jupp – Clive

I usually stick to very recent films or classics. This is one I’d missed, but we enjoyed it so much that I decided to add a review.

The cast is ridiculously good, and we’ve admired many of them for years. There are five actresses who are all accustomed to leading roles, for starters. The story is set around the controversial Miss World Contest of 1970, and the beginnings of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Miss World used to attract 20 million viewers in the UK, and 100 million viewers worldwide in the 1960s and the organizers preferred to call it a ‘pageant’.

It was run by Eric and Julia Morley. Eric Morley had founded Come Dancing in 1949, and he became general manager of Mecca Ballrooms. He adapted the seaside / Butlins’ beauty contests first into ‘Miss Britain’ in 1951 then into Miss World in 1959 (in competition with the American ‘Miss Universe’). Julia Morley took responsibility for the chaperones for each girl (they must be unmarried and appear ‘untouched’), and they had strict security. They paraded in national costume, then swimsuits, then in frocks and their vital statistics were announced (36-24-36). Measurements were important.

Yes, I watched it. My mum and dad watched it. It was the extreme end of sexist, but women seemed as keen to watch it as men. Karen remembers girls looking forward to it, because of the styles and clothes. We all watched, but even by the mid-sixties I remember jokes on how each contestant stated they loved children and their ambition was ‘world peace.’ It was already kitsch by 1970 with an edge of Eurovision ‘so bad it’s good.’ At least it was never a freak festival like Mr Universe’s bodybuilders.

The cast are nearly all playing real people. Keira Knightley plays the serious mature history student, Sally Alexander. She has a young child, and lives with her partner Gareth (John Heffernan) and mother (Phyllis Logan). She is swept into the more anarchic wing of the women’s movement, led by the right-on Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley).

There’s a scene which sums up the relations when Sally sees Jo spraying graffiti on the normal 1970 advert (Keep Your Man Happy.) Sally tries to stop her and they both end up being chased by the police.

Then we have Eric and Julia Morley who ran the Miss World Contest (beautifully lampooned by Rhys Ifan and Keeley Hawes). Plus Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear) brought over to compere the show, and a total sleazeball. The marvellous Lesley Manville plays his wife, Dolores.

We have the contestants. The Morleys have been forced by a young Peter Hain into bringing in two South Africans, one white, one black (the latter as Miss Africa South). Miss Sweden is already tipped as the winner, but our attention follows Miss Grenada. She is played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw who was my choice of stage actress of the year after her role as Nell Gwynn in the play of the same name at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Sally is pushed by Jo into being the respectable and responsible TV face of the movement, interviewed by the sexist Robin Day … she has already been through even more sexist university interviews in front of an all male panel (who are surreptitiously marking her appearance out of ten on their notepads). I will note that Sally Alexander seems to be credited with coining the expression ‘cattle market’ to describe Miss World Contests. I doubt it. I think I first heard it in 1966 to refer to the Coming-Up Dance at university, where the new female freshers appeared for the first time. The expression was indeed used by women deriding the event.

The cutting back and forth between the Bob Hope story and the main story is well-done. We see Bob on a stage in Vietnam addressing a crowd of GIs with Miss Norway, who is there to wiggle. We see Bob hitting on his new 18 year old secretary. This is intercut with Sally Alexander’s interview travails. Then Jo Robinson and friends graffiti escapades. It seems odd at first, then falls neatly together. There are scenes of the contestants interacting. Miss Sweden, the favourite, is a pointer to the future. She doesn’t like being chaperoned and pushed here and there.

The women decide to disrupt the contest, leaving Bob Hope in some terror. It’s what happened.

The ending is well-known, it’s not plot spoiling to say that not only did Miss Grenada win, but Miss Africa South came second. One of the major scenes is when the just arrested Sally is allowed to go into the loo where she meets Jennifer, Miss Grenada and confronts her. Jennifer points out that her victory is a signal to all the little girls of colour in the world (Black is Beautiful) and that has importance of its own.

The early part was marred by somewhat heated discussion between Karen and me about thirty minutes in. We had to pause the film. She said, ‘We’ve seen this!’ and I insisted we hadn’t as it was far too recent. There were harsh comments on my fading memory. It is after all based on a true story. I remembered a TV play on the same theme years ago, but (after checking online)what we had heard in the car was the Reunion Radio 4 programme in 2010 where four people involved in the 1970 Miss World discussed the events fifty years on. This was the radio programme which directly inspired the film and we heard it on a car journey and discussed it at the time.

After our break, we decided to pick it up the next day. Neither of us could remember whether it was Netflix or Amazon Prime. No, not Netflix. So we went to Amazon Prime which wanted £3.49 to watch it. Odd. No “Resume” button either. We paid. The next morning I checked … we had started it FREE on BBC iPlayer. So beware.

As far as feel-good films go this is at the top end. It’s particularly nice to end with pictures of the women now, and a brief line about their subsequent lives. (Though that really is a cliché in these BASED ON A TRUE STORY films.)

APPEARANCES BY THE CAST REVIEWED ON THIS BLOG …

JESSIE BUCKLEY
Henry V, Grandage Season, 2013 (Katherine of France)
Romeo & Juliet, NT onscreen, 2021 (Juliet)
The Winter’s Tale, Branagh Season, 2015 (Perdita)
Harlequinade by Terence Rattigan, Branagh Season 2015 (Muriel)
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, Chichester 2014 (Constanze Weber)

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY
Anna Karenina (FILM)
The Imitation Game (FILM)

GUGU MBATHA-RAW
Nell Gwynn, by Jessica Swales, The Globe, 2015

LESLEY MANVILLE
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill, Wyndhams, London, 2018
Another Year, by Mike Leigh (FILM)
Mr Turner (FILM)
World On Fire (TV Series)

RUBY BENTALL
Hogarth’s Progress, by Nick Dear (Rose Kingston 2018)

KEELEY HAWES
High Rise (FILM)
Rebecca (FILM)
To Olivia (FILM)

RHYS IFANS
The Five Year Engagement (FILM)