The Clandestine Marriage **** (1999, Nigel Hawthorne, Joan Collins, Timothy Spall, Paul Nicholls, Natasha Little, Emma Chambers, Tom Hollander) – Classic Movie Review 6554

An excellent cast makes director Christopher Miles’s 1999 British period film work smoothly, nicely and entertainingly. Thanks to all the good work, it is a very considerable success, and a very successful transfer of a play to film, with no whiff of the stage at all, attractively shot in Technicolor. The 18th-century Stanway House, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England, was the main location.

Trevor Bentham successfully adapts the 1766 play by George Colman the Elder and David Garrick, in which the merchant Mr Sterling (Timothy Spall), owner of an English country house, contrives his elder daughter Betsy (Emma Chambers)’s marriage to Sir John Ogelby (Tom Hollander), the heir of a hard-up noble family.

But Sir John in love with her younger sister, Fanny (Natasha Little), who in turn is in love with a handsome humble clerk, Richard Lovewell (Paul Nicholls), whom she has secretly married.

There is tour-de-force acting all round from the ideal players, all obviously relishing their roles, with Nigel Hawthorne outstanding as Sir John’s elderly uncle, Lord Ogleby and Joan Collins a campy hoot as Mrs Heidelberg.

Also in the cast are Cyril Shaps as Canton, Ray Fearon as Brush, Mark Burns as Capstick, Timothy Bateson as Gaoler, Craster Pringle as Ruben, Lara Harvey as Lucy, Jenny Galloway as Mrs Trusty, Philippa Stanton as Chamber, Cavan Kendall as Sergeant Flower and Roger Hammond as Traverse.

Hawthorne and Collins helped to fund the film when financial difficulties arose during production. Despite the producers’ temporary lapse in funding, the film was completed in six weeks. The BBC and British Screen backed it. In the end, it had an important distributor, United International Pictures (UIP), which at least gave it a chance of an audience.

William Hogarth’s Marriage à-la-mode, panel 1, The Marriage Settlement, inspired Colman and Garrick to write The Clandestine Marriage.

The classic comedy of manners and comedy of errors, inspired by William Hogarth’s Marriage à-la-mode series of pictures, was first performed in 1766 at London’s Drury Lane. It is quite a feat to make it current like this. It is admirable.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6554

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