In Celebration **** (1975, Alan Bates, James Bolam, Brian Cox, Constance Chapman, Bill Owen, Gabrielle Daye) – Classic Movie Review 5242

Lindsay Anderson films David Storey’s first-rate, moving play In Celebration about three educated sons (Alan Bates, James Bolam and Brian Cox) going back home to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their mam and coal miner dad. 

Director Lindsay Anderson films David Storey’s first-rate, moving play In Celebration about three educated sons (Alan Bates, James Bolam and Brian Cox) going back oop North to the Derbyshire mining town of Langwith to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their mam and dad (Constance Chapman and Bill Owen). Dark secrets are revealed in their blue-collar home.

Dad has been a coal miner for 49 years, with just one year till retirement, and Mam is a pig breeder’s daughter of a higher social class. The family go to an expensive restaurant, but most of the film takes place in the family living room.

Anderson had directed the 1969 original stage production and his 1975 film In Celebration is a valuable record of a vital play from the time when Storey was working at his peak alongside Anderson in a series of plays at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Memorably, he re-assembles the original cast: Alan Bates as Andrew Shaw, Bill Owen as Mr Shaw, Constance Chapman as Mrs Shaw, James Bolam as Colin Shaw, Brian Cox as Steven Shaw, and Gabrielle Daye as Mrs Burnett.

The brisk and capable professional straightforwardness of the filming proves a strength. Anderson concentrates the attention on the play and the fine performances, and avoids what could have been the fatal trap of trying to open it out. Even its air of familiarity breeds only content, thanks to its emotional power. As a celebration of the quality of British acting, writing and direction of the early Seventies, it is wonderful. Playwright Storey writes his own screenplay.

The small but beautiful cast is completed by Gabrielle Daye as Mrs Burnett, a friendly neighbour who pops in for some of the scenes..

In Celebration is shot by Dick Bush, scored by Christopher Gunning and designed by Alan Withy.

It is part of the commendable American Film Theatre series of films from producer Ely A Landau. Eight films were shown in the first 1973–74 season and five were shown in the second 1974–75 season. They are: The Iceman Cometh, The Homecoming, A Delicate Balance, Rhinoceros, Luther, Three Sisters, Butley, Lost in the Stars, Galileo, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, In Celebration, The Maids, and The Man in the Glass Booth.

The 1969 play In Celebration is set in a Nottinghamshire mining town and ran for 12 weeks at the Royal Court Theatre, London, from April 1969. Storey, who wrote the play in three days, said the three brothers are based on aspects of himself: ‘One was a very passive nature, the second was a kind of conformist nature, and the third was a kind of bolshie nature that didn’t want to have anything to do with the other two.’

Anderson had originally offered Bates the part of the youngest son.

Brian Cox is an Emmy Award-winning Scottish actor, born on June 1, 1946 in Dundee, Scotland. It one of Cox’s first starring film roles. The stage and TV actor allegedly found the transition to cinema difficult and Anderson would get him to tone down his performance. Cox had appeared on TV since 1965, and played Trotsky in the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra.

David Storey (13 July 1933 – 27 March 2017) won the Booker Prize in 1976 for his novel Saville and the MacMillan Fiction Award for This Sporting Life in 1960. Anderson filmed This Sporting Life in 1963.

British film, theatre and documentary director, and film critic Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) is remembered for This Sporting Life, his 1968 film If..,  O Lucky Man!, In Celebration, Look Back in Anger, Britannia Hospital, Glory! Glory! and Is That All There Is?.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,242

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