Leave All Fair **** (1985, John Gielgud, Jane Birkin, Feodor Atkine, Simon Ward) – Classic Movie Review 12,065

Director John Reid’s excellent 1985 New Zealand drama film Leave All Fair stars John Gielgud, Jane Birkin, Féodor Atkine and Simon Ward.

It is an engrossing and thoughtful New Zealand film about the elderly John Middleton Murry (an excellent role for John Gielgud) and his complex relationship with his wife and literary client Katherine Mansfield, the New Zealand writer. Simon Ward plays the young John.

Birkin appears to effect both as the gifted and famed short-story writer Mansfield (in recollection) and as the fictitious Marie Taylor, a woman who stirs the memories of Mansfield in Murry, and who finds a letter from the dying Mansfield to Murry in his papers. The letter from Mansfield says: ‘All my manuscripts I leave entirely to you to do what you like with. Please destroy all letters you do not wish to keep and all papers. Have a clean sweep and leave all fair, will you.’ Murry is shown as a hypocritical morally superior exploiter of Mansfield’s memory, who ill treated her.

Féodor Atkine plays André de Sarry a fictional French publisher who is about to publish an edition of her collected letters and journals 33 years after the death of Mansfield. But now Murry is shown as struggling with his conscience as he recalls the ill and alone Mansfield, who is seen in flashbacks, and decides to publish almost all her work.

Leave All Fair is directed by John Reid, runs 90 minutes, is made by Pacific Films, Goldeneye and Challenge, is written by Stanley Harper, Maurice Pons, Jean Betts and John Reid, is shot by Bernard Lutic, is produced by John O’Shea, is scored by Stephen McCurdy, and is designed by Joe Bleakley.

The film was developed by New Zealand director Stanley Harper, but he was fired two weeks before shooting, and John Reid took over. Reid added the ghost element and the two time frames to the script.

It was shot in France at Moulin d’Ande and St Pierre du Vauvray with finance raised by Pacific Films.

The cast are John Gielgud as John Middleton Murry, Jane Birkin as Katherine Mansfield and Marie Taylor, Féodor Atkine as André de Sarry, Simon Ward as young John, Louba Guertchikoff as Lisa, Maurice Chevit as Alain, Mireille Alcantara as Violetta, and Leonard Pezzino as Alfredo.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,065

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com