FairyTale: A True Story **** (1997, Peter O’Toole, Paul McGann, Phoebe Nicolls, Harvey Keitel, Florence Hoath, Elizabeth Earl) – Classic Movie Review 6290

This 1997 British drama is a beautifully produced, lovingly handled period movie, from Charles Sturridge, the director of the 1981 TV mini-series Brideshead Revisited.

In 1917, Elsie Wright (Florence Hoath) and Frances Griffiths (Elizabeth Earl) fake a photograph that seems to show actual fairies and is believed by many to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies. The fascinating real-life story of the two kids who perpetrated a hoax that fooled the world – even the Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O’Toole) – is retold in a plush, magical movie.

Paul McGann and Phoebe Nicolls are good as Elsie’s parents, and Harvey Keitel is outstanding, cast against type as escapologist Harry Houdini.

The screenplay by Ernie Contreras is based on a story by Ernie Contreras, Albert Ash and Tom McLoughlin, based in turn on factual accounts.

Also in the cast are Bill Nighy, Bob Peck, Anton Lesser, Tim McInnerny, Jason Salkey, Joseph May, Leonard Kavanagh (as the Stage Manager), Lara Morgan, Adam Franks, Guy Witcher, John Bradley, Anna Chancellor, Lynn Fraleigh, Sarah Marsden, Tara Marie, Peter Mullan, David Calder, John Grillo, Barbara Hicks, Christopher Godwin, Matilda Sturridge, Don Henderson and Tom Georgeson.

It is shot by Michael Coulter, produced by Paul Tucker, Bruce Davey, Wendy Finerman and Tom McLoughlin, scored by Zbigniew Preisner and designed by Michael Howells.

Another version of the tale, Photographing Fairies, also 1997, was filmed simultaneously.

Leonard Kavanagh is known for FairyTale: A True Story (1997), Sweeney! (1977) and The Winter’s Tale (1981).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6290

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