Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Craig Roberts
Screenplay by Simon Farnaby
Based on the book by Scott Murray and Simon Farnaby

Theoretically 2021 (film festival), actually March 2022

CAST
Mark Rylance- Maurice Flitcroft
Sally Hawkins- Gene Flitcroft
Jake Davies – Michael Flitcroft
Christian Lees – Gene Flitcroft, twin
Jonah Lees – James Flitcroft, twin
Rhys Ifans – Mr McKenzie
Steve Oram – Gerald Hopkins
Ian Porter- Dick Nelson
Mark Lewis Jones – Cliff
Johann Myers – Willie
Nigel Betts – Tony Marsh
Marc Bosch – Sevvy Ballesteros

It’s no surprise that the opening screen is BASED ON A TRUE STORY (they all seem to be now) and that the end credits show pictures and short clips of the real Maurice Flitcroft, who it was all based upon. Maurice Flitcoft was a crane driver from Barrow-in- Furness who decided at the age of 46 to enter the Open Golf Championships in Britain, in spite of having neither experience nor any ability in the sport. He then went on, having been banned for playing the worst ever rounds in the history of the competition, to keep entering it in disguises under false names.

The film came out at the same time as The Duke and parallels the story closely- both are comedies with a poignant edge, centred on a real life tale of a stubborn Northern English working class bloke competing with the system in the 60s / 70s past. We like films about incompetents with big ambitions (like Eddie The Eagle).

I have zero interest in golf. I once reluctantly accompanied friends round nine holes when I was twenty and resolved never to do it again, and I haven’t. We filmed a comic golf episode of A Week By The Sea at Enid Blyton’s Purbeck Island golf club (she built and owned it) so I have at last walked around a few holes. My total lack of interest has ended conversation at a few social events when everyone else was a golfer. If you don’t play, they lose interest in you extremely quickly.

I thought the film lost opportunities at humour on dress codes – there are some, but they could have expanded greatly. The Society of Authors used to meet at a golf club restaurant (awful food) and several of us had hysterical laughter at the posted list of dress rules detailing allowed height, pattern and colour of socks, length of skirts and the exact dates when shorts might be worn.

I had sympathy with Maurice Flitcroft. He’s played by Mark Rylance, which makes the film essential viewing. Maurice is married to Jean played by Sally Hawkins, the other essential reason for viewing.

There is a lot, really a lot, of the late Norman Wisdom both in storyline and in Rylance’s performance. Reviewers noted the same in Charlie Stemp’s performance in Crazy For You at Chichester Festival Theatre last week, so maybe Norman Wisdom is in the collective. The little man with a poignant smile against adversity on all sides muddling through.

As the end makes clear, the Flitcroft’s twin kids really were disco dancing champions, and the found songs on the soundtrack like Build Me Up Buttercup do channel discos, but without much reference to the storyline.  You Make Me Feel Like Dancing works for the twins and was 1976, but The Drifters You’re More Than A Number In My Little Red Book, also1976, has no apparent connection to anything. Other songs are not accurate to the time either … Build Me Up Buttercup is 1968, not 1976. The Twins dance to Money, Money, Money in July 1976, before it was released. Ride Like The Wind appears in a 1978 scene, though it’s 1979. Sorry!

There are some subtle references. Jean was diverted from a theatrical career by having an illegitimate child, Michael, who Maurice happily takes on. Michael becomes an executive at Vickers, the company Maurice works for as a crane driver, and is deeply embarrassed by his dad’s new found fame as The World’s Worst Golfer. I noted the row of Everyman classics hardbacks in the living room. This family was education centred.

Another was when financially strapped after redundancy, they lose their house and move into a caravan. I wondered, was it a tied company house? Anyway, there’s a scene of Maurice leaving the caravan in the rain that screams out its visual parallel to Rylance’s most famous stage role, as Rooster Byron in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem.

I enjoyed Maurice’s conversation in Spanish with ‘Sevvy Ballesteros’ in the changing room, then his French when posing as French golfer Gerard Hoppy. The boss at Vickers is Gerald Hopkins, which does not go unnoticed.

That’s significant in that the early part shows Maurice as a wartime evacuee in Scotland where he said he got a decent education in music and languages. Even in the 60s and 70s in my English home town, grammar schools and the A stream in secondary moderns did languages (invariably French) and lower streams didn’t. It would be unusual in a working town for blue collar workers to speak a foreign language. Maurice may have a really strong English accent, but he fights his way through. Note that while Maurice is cloth-cap industrial working class, he teaches Michael about engineering (leading to Michel’s executive role). Also note that Maurice is a crane operator in an engineering works as was my maternal grandfather, and he was proud of it as a highly-skilled job (though my grandad was in a steelworks).

The Flitcrofts have to go from early twenties to late sixties in age, which both actors do with aplomb.

This is an earlier sequence at home:

This is one of the older sequences:

In filming there are around three semi-animated fantasy sequences which break out from the standard nature of the story, I thought jarringly.

It’s a “sweet” film, with humour and significant “Aaah, Bless!” factors towards the end, It’s a fine British cast. The acting and accents is as one would expect, perfect for the roles. A blockbuster it’s not. It’s on DVD now, and it’s the sort of DVD that will quickly make its way to budget offers in Asda. We bought the DVD, and some cold, wet winter afternoon, feeling a little ill perhaps, it will be a perfect film for rewatching.

It was well received:

LINKS:

MARK RYLANCE
Nice Fish by Mark Rylance and Louis Jenkins
Farinelli & The King, by Claire Van Kampen, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2015
Richard III – Apollo 2012 Mark Rylance as Richard III
Twelfth Night – Apollo 2012  Mark Rylance as Olivia
Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, West End
La Bête by David Hirson, West End, 2010
+ film and TV
Wolf Hall, TV Series (as Thomas Cromwell)
Bridge of Spies, directed by Steven Speilberg
Dunkirk, directed by Christopher Nolan
Don’t Look Up, directed by Adam McKay