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The
Silent Era
From before WW1 on, Cecil Hepworth, pioneering British film-maker,
comes down to Lulworth every summer to film, making it probably
British cinema's first "repertory" locations area. His
largest-scale production is a £10,000 production of Hamlet
in 1913, for which he builds a plaster-and-lathe castle on the clifftop.
Hollywood filmmakers begin to adapt Hardy novels for the screen,
with a 1915 version of Far From The Madding Crowd by American producer
Larry Trimble the first to shoot on location. Hardy helps arrange
filming in and around Dorchester for the 1921 The Mayor Of Casterbridge,
later claimed as 'the first film made entirely on location in Britain.'
Shots of large-scale Army exercises staged on Salisbury Plain appear
in documentaries and as 2nd-unit footage in dramas set in the WWI
trenches, including D.W. Griffith’s Hearts Of The World (1918)
and M.A. Wetherell’s The Somme (1927).
British film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton shoots scenes in 1923 at
Beaulieu Abbey for his epic meant to show off the new Prizmacolor
process, The Virgin Queen.
A US producer comes to England to find a "British Hollywood"
and announces the best location would be Bournemouth.
The Early Sound-Film
Era
Under The Greenwood Tree, shot at Elstree studios in 1929, is the
first Hardy "talkie" (and musical), and the last Hardy
work filmed for the cinema till 1967.
Portland begins to be used for Navy service comedies (such as Jack
Hulbert in Jack Ahoy) and naval dramas such as Brown On Resolution
(starring a young John Mills), and an historical naval drama, from
Captain Marryat's book, Sir Carol Reed's first film (Mr) Midshipman
Easy.
Bournemouth appears in 'opening-night' crowd scenes in Gracie Fields's
showbiz comedy-drama Keep Smiling (1938).
The 1940s
As war begins, Hitchcock leaves for Hollywood and his Suspicion,
from a classic Dorset-set crime novel, is shot all on a soundstage.
Fritz Lang also films on a soundstage Geoffrey Household's Dorset-set
thriller Rogue Male as Man Hunt, which has a finale in the Lyme
Undercliff.
Second-unit scenes of Fighter Command airfields appear in The First
Of The Few (Spitfire) at RAF Warmwell, RAF Boscombe Down, and RAF
Ibsley, with director-star Leslie Howard staying at Christchurch.
Sherborne School makes its screen debut as the embodiment of the
English public school in the postwar drama The Guinea Pig, followed
by Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version with Michael Redgrave.
All Over The Town, a "postwar readjustment" drama, is
filmed partly in Weymouth and Lyme.
Cult director Michael Powell, who grew up partly in this area, shoots
the famous bomb-defusing finale of Nigel Balchin's psychological-reconciliation
story The Small Back Room on Chesil Bank, and the opening of the
film at Stonehenge.
The 1950s
Geoffrey Household, author of Rogue Male, becomes the most filmed
local writer after Hardy, with Brandy For The Parson, a 1951 comedy
shot mainly around Cerne Abbas, and Rough Shoot, a 1952 thriller
starring Joel McCrae shot around East Lulworth.
The Portland area plays an important role in the cycle of how-we-won-the-War
dramas. Ealing Studio's The Cruel Sea uses the rough waters of Portland
tide race to portray the North Atlantic in winter, and the Portland
Docks for harbour scenes. Ealing's war/smuggling drama The Ship
That Died Of Shame, from another Nicholas Montsarrat story, uses
Weymouth Quay and Poole Harbour. The Dam Busters reuses actual 16mm
footage of the bouncing bomb shot in Fleet Lagoon by inventor Barnes
Wallis. Sir Carol Reed returns to Portland and Weymouth to film
the war drama The Key with William Holden and Sophia Loren. The
postwar cycle of "service comedies" are also shot here,
as with You Know What Sailors Are. Norman Wisdom's The Bulldog Breed
uses both Portland and Poole locations, while The Navy Lark uses
West Bay.
Dorset's sandy heaths and quarries are utilised in a pair of semi-professional
16mm Biblical epics. Voice In The Wilderness and Messiah are shot
in the Purbeck area with hundreds of extras, both being privately
produced by Lady Madeline Lees of South Lytchett Manor, using Oriental
props given her by her missionary colleague, the explorer and mystic
Sir Francis Younghusband.
The 1958 Hollywood film of Terence Rattigan’s play Separate
Tables, for which David Niven wins an Oscar, is the first major
film set in Bournemouth, but (despite later publicity claims) is
all shot on a set representing a local chine and boarding house.
The Technicolor single-strip camera allows colour location filming,
and Disney's The Sword And The Rose, starring Richard Todd, and
The Moonraker, starring George Baker, are the first of Dorset's
many appearances in costume adventure-dramas.
Dorset as a children’s adventure playground comes to the screen
with the first Famous Five film, based on the stories by Enid Blyton
whose holiday home was at Swanage: a 1957 Children's Film Foundation
serial, Five On A Treasure Island, combines shots of Brownsea and
Corfe.
A cycle of so-called "nudie" films with titles such as
Travelling Light and Nudes Of The World are made semi-professionally
from 1955 on, in 16mm colour, as propaganda to promote the cause
of Naturism, by Edward Craven Walker at his Ringwood nudist camp
and Studland Beach, which with Sandbanks Ferry are often used to
indicate a vague Baltic setting. These semi-professional productions
receive wide cinema release, helping relax censorship.
The 1960s
Dorset's "adult playground" aspect continues to be seen
in nudist films, with Poole Harbour usually doubling for a vague
southern-Scandinavian coastal setting.
As WWII dramas graduate into Technicolor and widescreen epics, the
fact-based The Heroes Of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas, blends
location filming in Norway with scenes shot at Poole and Weymouth
docks.
Blacklisted American director Joseph Losey is drawn to film an SF-horror
film, The Damned, by the novel's bleak Portland setting. Dorset
quarries first appear as the wastelands of other planets in BBC’s
Dr Who.
BBC-TV begins to use Dorset as an all-purpose "heritage backlot,"
adding filmed location action scenes to its studio-shot serials
for children’s adventure serials such as The Three Musketeers
with Brian Blessed.
Sensitive new film stocks allow filming of interiors on location
even in period films, and lightweight cameras allow flexible ‘hand-held’
setups.
Tom Jones, a "liberated" period comedy from Henry Fielding’s
satiric novel, uses Cranborne Manor and estate, Minterne Magna gardens,
and Cerne Abbey.
Far From The Madding Crowd starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates,
Terence Stamp and Peter Finch is the first all-location production
of a Hardy novel, shot in colour and 70mm widescreen at over twenty
Dorset locations, and the three-hour film is considered by some
the best Hardy screen adaptation to date.
A semi-musical version of Goodbye Mr Chips starring Peter O'Toole
and Petula Clark , scripted by Terence Rattigan and directed by
American choreographer Herbert Ross again uses Sherborne, now seen
in colour and widescreen, as the epitome of the English public school.
The first Jane Austen TV adaptation with location shooting appears,
ITV’s Persuasion (1969), with its famous scene on the Lyme
Regis Cobb.
The 1970s
BBC's Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Dave Allen Show, and The
Goodies all shoot scenes on the Dorset coast.
Ridley Scott’s ‘Bike Boy’ ad for Hovis makes Shaftesbury’s
Gold Hill steep cobbled street a TV landmark.
ITV films a Famous Five series locally, much of it in the Christchurch-New
Forest area.
Locally-resident director Ken Russell demonstrates the area's versatility
as a locations centre by filming scenes for his lyrical "biopics"
with international settings here. Larmer Tree Gardens, Portland,
Bovington, Highcliffe Castle, the New Forest, Poole, and Bournemouth
appear in biopics about Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Gaudier-Brezka
(Savage Messiah, 1972), Tchaikovsky (The Music Lovers, 1972), and
Valentino (with Bournemouth and Poole portraying 1920s Hollywood).
With the switch to colour and the new BBC-2 channel, BBC-TV begins
to produce drama serials from Hardy's novels: Jude The Obscure and
The Woodlanders (both studio-shot with filmed inserts); Wessex Tales,
a series of 16mm telefeatures shot on the Dorset coast downs; and
a Dennis Potter adaptation of The Mayor Of Casterbridge with Alan
Bates, the first to shoot all on location in colour video, using
Corfe Castle village.
The "adult-playground" aspect is also used for social
satires, as in Mike Leigh's cult black comedy about a couple holidaying
in the Purbecks, Nuts In May (entirely shot there), and BBC's cult
1970s sitcom The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, which uses the
idea of "escape to Dorset" as a comedy motif with its
faked-suicide title sequence shot at West Bay. To The Manor Born
(1979-83) makes a manor house on the Somerset border into a tourist
attraction.
Wilton House near Salisbury becomes a regular setting for scenes
set in sumptuous Regency houses in films such as Lady Caroline Lamb
and Barry Lyndon.
In the "country house weekend" contemporary-crime crossover
genre, Athelhampton House portrays modern Gothic "Cloak Manor"
in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth.
The 1974 ‘remake’ of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter,
starring Sophia Loren and Richard Burton, uses the New Forest and
Winchester.
The 1980s
After a long battle with Hollywood producers, author John Fowles
and director Karel Reisz manage to film his 1967 bestseller The
French Lieutenant's Woman in a unique period-versus-modern adaptation
by Harold Pinter. Shot authentically in Lyme Regis, it makes the
town, with its stone Cobb jetty, an international tourism destination.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs episode which became the cornerstone of the
British union movement is given a big-screen yet naturalistic treatment
by writer-director Bill Douglas's 1986 big-screen 3-hour saga Comrades,
with the first two hours shot mainly in the ruined village of Tyneham,
dressed up as 1830s Tolpuddle.
ITV also uses the area for episodes of adult detective series Inspector
Wexford (Romsey plus parts of Bournemouth, as "Kingsmarkham")
and P.D. James's Adam Dalgleish (Clavel Tower on the Purbeck cliffs
as “The Black Tower”).
Channel Four launches its first night with a filmed Enid Blyton
made by the Comic Strip group of French and Saunders et al, Five
Go Mad In Dorset.
BBC uses Bournemouth as a general suburban setting for exterior
scenes in sitcoms such as Potter, Don't Wait Up, and Brush Strokes.
It also continues to use Dorset as an all-purpose locations centre,
e.g. in To Serve Them All My Days (Milton Abbas as a school near
Exmoor), Miss Marple (Powerstock in “A Murder Is Announced”
and Bournemouth as "Danemouth"), The Collectors (Poole
as "Wrelling"), Tenko (a quarried area near Moreton as
Malaya), and Beau Geste. (The desert outpost "Fort Zinderneuf"
is played by a fibreglass replica built in a Purbeck quarry, plus
Weymouth's Nothe Fort in interiors.)
BBC’s primetime ‘soap opera’ Howard's Way (1985-90)
turns the Hamble estuary into a tourism destination.
The 1990s
Cliff Richards's 50th-birthday Saviour's Day is shot atop the cliffs
at Durdle Door.
As well as using the area in its heritage dramas, BBC continues
using Bournemouth-Christchurch-Poole conurbation for its sitcoms
2.4 Children, One Foot In The Grave, and Waiting For God (which
is overtly set in Bournemouth alias “God's Waiting Room”),
while The Brittas Empire (1990-96) uses Ringwood. BBC Scotland’s
1997 2-part comedy The Missing Postman, adapted by humorous travel
writer (500 Mile Walkies) Mark Wallington of Swanage from his novel,
uses Poole and East Dorset to represent various places around England.
BBC's series Harbour Lights (1998-9) uses West Bay and nearby west
Dorset locations.
Mike Figgis' remake of Rattigan's The Browning Version, starring
Albert Finney, uses Milton Abbey rather than Sherborne School.
The New Forest portrays Sherwood Forest in the Kevin Coster Robin
Hood.
A cycle of 18th-19th century period literary adaptations follow
the success of Middlemarch on TV, showcasing the area’s profusion
of country villages, stately homes and estates, such as Mapperton,
Montacute, Wilton House, and Lacock village. Jane Austen’s
Persuasion and Emma (the Gwyneth Paltrow version) use west Dorset
locations, as does BBC’s Tom Jones. West Dorset’s ‘Jurassic
Coast’ portrays fairytale-land beaches as well as England
in Gulliver's Travels. Lacock village in Wiltshire features in Austen’s
Pride And Prejudice (1995) and Emma (1997), as well as in Moll Flanders
(1996). The Ang Lee feature version of Sense And Sensibility (1995)
uses locations near Salisbury, as does The Madness Of King George
(1994). Mrs Brown (1997) also uses Wilton House as Windsor Castle
as well as filming authentically on Wight. Hampshire and Wiltshire
appear as Hardy’s Wessex in The Woodlanders, and west Dorset
in The Scarlet Tunic (from "The Melancholy Hussar"), and
Dorset plus Stonehenge in ITV's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. A US
production of Rose Tremain's Restoration, set elsewhere, uses Mapperton
and Forde Abbey. The feature biopic Wilde, starring Stephen Fry,
uses Lulworth and Swanage. For Saving Private Ryan, the Ryan family
farm in Iowa is recreated in Wiltshire. Wiltshire and Somerset appear
as France in Chocolat. Elizabeth (1998) includes Montacute and Athelhampton
in its stately-homes lineup.
The 2000s
Adaptations of Austen and Hardy continue with a US cinema version
of Pride And Prejudice (2005), using Wiltshire and Hampshire locations,
an ITV Mayor Of Casterbridge (2003) using central and west Dorset
sites, and an ITV Persuasion [in production].
Germany’s state-TV channel ZDF sponsors a series of feature-length
TV adaptations of Rosamunde Pilcher novels, some of which are set
and filmed in Dorset, as with Morgen träumen wir gemeinsam
(Tomorrow We Dream Together) (2002) which uses Bournemouth, Milton
Abbas, Wareham, Studland, etc.
The Harry Potter films include Lacock Abbey in their diverse locations
lineup.
The Da Vinci Code films two scenes at Winchester Cathedral, representing
different locales. |
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