Providence **** (1977, Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn, John Gielgud, David Warner, Elaine Stritch) – Classic Movie Review 1314

Director Alain Resnais’s lovingly crafted 1977 drama was his first English-language film. It’s a total treat for the discerning.

The great and good John Gielgud steals the acting honours even from Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn, David Warner and Elaine Stritch. He plays an argumentative, bitter and infuriating dying writer called Clive Langham, who spends one tormenting night in his bed suffering from health problems and thinking up a story based on his relatives.

Clive invites his family to his home for the weekend after finishing his final novel. He shows in flashbacks how treacherous his family is, but this may only be his own vindictive take on them.

David Mercer’s superb and subtle screenplay motors on ambiguity, angst and anger. Such an exquisitely honed, beautifully literate work is a rare and unusual joy in the cinema.

It is interpreted with superlative performances from Bogarde and Burstyn as Gielgud’s son Claude and daughter-in-law Sonia, too, which along with Gielgud’s turn, make it a civilised delight just to let it all wash over you. Yes it is all dialogue, but it is still great cinema.

Providence was not fully respected are given its proper due in Britain or America, but it was appreciated much more in France, where it won the 1978 César Award for Best Film. This was one of a total of won seven César Awards that also included Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Music, Best Production Design, Best Sound and Best Editing. In America, it won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Gielgud as Best Actor.

In his 1981 book An Actor and His Times, Gielgud says this was his only completely successful attempt at film acting. He must have forgotten Prospero’s Books (1991). The absence of awards for Providence in the UK is very noticeable. There were no Bafta awards and no London Critics Circle awards.

Denis Lawson, Cyril Luckham, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Milo Sperber, Peter Arne, Tanya Lopert and Anna Wing co-star.

Alain Resnais died on March 1 2014, aged 91. Elaine Stritch died on July 17 2014, aged 89.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1314

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/

David Warner, David Mercer and Alain Resnais making Providence.