Another Country **** (1984, Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Michael Jenn, Robert Addie, Anna Massey, Rupert Wainwright, Betsy Brantley, Cary Elwes) – Classic Movie Review 2.148

Playwright/ screenwriter Julian Mitchell’s extremely fine, provocative, award-winning 1981 London West End theatre hit gay stage play Another Country happily is filmed retaining its exciting young stars Rupert Everett and Colin Firth from the London run.

They play a couple of misfit Thirties English public schoolboys, based on the infamous real-life characters Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean who became known as the Cambridge spies.

Mitchell explores the effect of repressive and alienating public school life in the Thirties on the outsider Guy Bennett as his homosexuality and unwillingness to play the game turn him towards the idea of supporting Communist Russia.

Alas, the play that worked so extraordinarily well in the West End and challenged audiences’ responses seems coarsened here on film. And Mitchell’s apparent central notion that being repressed, tormented and caned at school has the effect of turning English boys into Russian spies like Guy Burgess – here fictionalised as Guy Bennett (Everett) – is ridiculous, not to say offensive, as outsiders become the ‘enemy’ within.

Firth’s character is fictionalised as Tommy Judd.

Director Marek Kanievska’s handling of the 1984 transfer to film is also very uncertain though. Nevertheless, the subject, the actors, their performances and the script, and the film-making’s general air of intelligence mark it out as special. It is a very good-looking film, thanks to Peter Biziou‘s cinematography, which won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984.

It is especially good to see what the young Everett and Firth are capable of, sparking off their long and successful careers. Firth gives a strong. quietly tough performance of a concerned young man frustrated by the corrupt system. And Everett gives an outstanding tour de force as he subtly shows the hurt and pain of dealing with his situation.

Guy’s instincts lead him bravely to show and act on his homosexuality in a society where it was illegal, being true to himself, but they also lead him in the wrong direction of betraying his country. Everett was Bafta nominated for the Most Outstanding Newcomer to Film.

The progress of the romantic relationship between Guy and Cary Elwes’s Harcourt is delicately and subtly done. And there is much conviction placed too in the film’s strong fragrant whiff of 1930s British public school life, building up a convincing portrait of the oppressive society of an élite school between the wars.

Another Country is book-ended by scenes of an old Guy Bennett being interviewed by a young woman, recording his memories for posterity which leads back to the 1930s public school.

Also in the cast are Michael Jenn, Robert Addie, Anna Massey, Rupert Wainwright, Betsy Brantley, Cary Elwes, Tristan Oliver, Frederick Alexander, Adrian Ross-Magenty, Geoffrey Bateman, Philip Dupuy, Guy Henry, Jeffry Wickham, John Line, Gideon Boulting, Llewyln Rees, Arthur Howard, Ivor Roberts, Crispin Redman and Nicholas Rowe [Nick Rowe].

Charles Spencer, the ninth Earl Spencer, younger brother of Princess Diana, is an extra with no dialogue in three scenes.

The play premiered on 5 November 1981 at the Greenwich Theatre, London, with Rupert Everett as Guy Bennett and Joshua Le Touzel as Tommy Judd. Kenneth Branagh played Judd when it transferred to the Queen’s Theatre in the West End in March 1982. After six months, Daniel Day-Lewis took over as Guy Bennett, and Colin Firth took over in 1983.

The play won the Society of West End Theatre Awards Play of the Year title for 1982. The play takes its title from a lyric in the British patriotic hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country.

Cast are characters are: Rupert Everett as Guy Bennett, Colin Firth as Tommy Judd, Cary Elwes as James Harcourt, Michael Jenn as Barclay, Robert Addie as Delahay, Rupert Wainwright as Donald Devenish, Tristan Oliver as Fowler, Piers Flint-Shipman [credited as Frederick Alexander] as Jim Menzies, Adrian Ross Magenty as Wharton, Geoffrey Bateman as Yevgeni, Philip Dupuy as Martineau, Guy Henry as Head Boy, Jeffry Wickham as Arthur, John Line as Best Man, Gideon Boulting as Trafford, Nicholas Rowe as Spungin, Anna Massey as Imogen Bennett, Betsy Brantley as Julie Schofield, and Jim Tavaré as student and Colin Firth’s stand-in.

Robert Addie (10 February 1960 – 20 November 2003) starred as Sir Guy of Gisburne in the 1980s British TV series Robin of Sherwood. He died of lung cancer aged 43.

Jeffry Wickham (5 August 1933 – 17 June 2014) was President of Equity from 1992 to 1994 and the father of actress Saskia Wickham.

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