#cozy and sweet comedy of manners with a light moral touch. but it is very charming and i do find myself enjoying my time spent with this | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mariocki · 4 months ago

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All Passion Spent: Episode 2 (1.2, BBC, 1986)

"You really must not speak as though my life has been a tragedy. I had everything that most women would envy; I had position, comfort, children, and a husband I loved. Truly loved, Mr. Fitzgeorge. I had nothing to complain of."

"Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered, face it, Lady Slane: your children, your husband, your splendour... were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. Perhaps you were too young to know any better, but when you chose that life, you know, you sinned against the light."

"You're right, of course."

"Course I'm right, old Fitz may be a comic figure, but he retains some sense of values."

"Don't scold me any more, Mr. Fitzgeorge. I assure you that if I did wrong, I paid for it. But you must not blame my husband."

"Oh, I don't. According to his lights, he gave you everything you could desire. He merely killed you, that's all. Men do kill women, and most women enjoy being killed - so I am told."

#all passion spent #bbc #classic tv #vita sackville west #martyn friend #peter buckman #wendy hiller #harry andrews #maurice denham #phyllis calvert #graham crowden #david waller #jane snowden #eileen way #geoffrey bayldon #faith brook #hilary mason #john franklyn robbins #antonia pemberton #patrick barlow #having spent most of the first episode introducing us to the fairly large cast of characters‚ this second part pushes the action #forwards a little‚ but this is still a fairly slow and subtle thing. most of the joy is in seeing an assembled cast of this quality; most #rewarding are Lady Slane's aged children who‚ being supporting characters and not having the plot rest on their shoulders‚ can be less #nuanced and more archetypal. they're all fairly wonderful: Crowden as the domineering and dictatorial eldest son‚ Calvert the unbearable #snob of an elder daughter‚ Bayldon a truly grotesque miser and Mason and Franklyn Robbins as the two younger children who are the only ones #to show any humanity (but are both also rather flighty and airheaded). they're some wonderful performances but this is Hiller's show #through and through (tho Harry Andrews gives her a run for her money). Virginia Woolf was apparently no great admirer of Vita's literary #efforts and it's not hard to see why; there is a gulf in style between the cerebral‚ postmodern work Woolf was producing and this rather #cozy and sweet comedy of manners with a light moral touch. but it is very charming and i do find myself enjoying my time spent with this #story. quite a sweet thing all told

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