A Question of Attribution **** (1991, James Fox, Prunella Scales, David Calder, Geoffrey Palmer) – Classic Movie Review 9270

‘Awfully able man, that’s the tragedy of it.’

A Question of Attribution (1991) is a careful and opulent transfer to film by director John Schlesinger of Alan Bennett’s witty and wise one-act play, with most involving and gratifying performances by James Fox, Prunella Scales, David Calder and Geoffrey Palmer as the MI5 boss Donleavy.

It was originally part of a theatre double bill in Single Spies, the first half of which was An Englishman Abroad, already filmed by Schlesinger in 1983.

The spy security net is tightening round Surveyor of the Queen’s Paintings, Sir Anthony Blunt (Fox), a Soviet agent for 25 years, and Chubb (Calder), a new MI5 man from Purley, is assigned to interrogate him. Blunt is studying a painting at Buckingham Palace when he is surprised by Her Majesty the Queen. Blunt knows that the Queen knows he is a traitor.

The highlight of the film, as on stage, is Prunella Scales’s superbly funny and canny portrait of a fact-obsessed HMQ, a great show-stopping turn effectively scaled down for the camera.

Although it remains a sketch and fails to achieve the tragic dimension of An Englishman Abroad, it is an extremely enjoyable film.

Also in the cast are John Cater, Mark Payton, Jason Flemyng, Anne Jameson, Barbara Hicks, Ann Beach and Edward de Souza.

A Question of Attribution is directed by John Schlesinger, runs 70 minutes, is made by British Broadcasting Corporation and WGBH, is released by BBC, is written by Alan Bennett, based on his play, is shot by John Hooper, is produced by Innes Lloyd and is scored by Gerald Gouriet.

Gerald Gouriet recalls: “John Schlesinger asked me to compose something in Handel’s style – the themes of the film being ‘things that were not as they seemed’ and ‘incorrect attribution’. I did not steal it from Handel and nor should it be taken as ‘pastiche’. It was composition in the Baroque style.”

It was screened as a film in the BBC TV series Screen One on 20 October 1991 in the UK.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9270

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