Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Films of the week
DARKEST HOUR
(2017) PG ● Saturday, 7.30pm, BBC1 ★★★★ Here’s a film that shows there’s more to playing Winston Churchill than having a paunch, smoking a cigar and growling through your dialogue. In 1940, Churchill takes over as Prime Minister from Neville Chamberlain, and the film focuses on the opposition that he faced from those who sought to appease Hitler and how, in the corridors of Whitehall and beyond, the mood shifted. An Oscar-winning Gary Oldman as Churchill (above) makes the statesman more than the cartoonish character we have come to know, giving great weight to the power and eloquence of his speeches (including ‘We shall fight on the beaches’), while not ignoring his famous eccentricities. It’s a gripping political thriller, with Churchill as its steadfast hero.
THE BELLES OF ST TRINIAN’S
(1954) ● Tuesday, 3pm, BBC2 ★★★★ During the 1940s, when Ronald Searle’s St Trinian’s cartoons were a subversive hit in satirical magazines, boarding schools were more usually settings for reassuring coming-of-age stories – think Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers. But with Searle as their inspiration, writerdirector team Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat made school the stuff of nightmares. The St Trinian’s girls run riot, cut loose by their progressive headmistress, Miss Fritton (Alastair Sim in drag). Armed with hockey sticks and cigarettes, the girls ditch classes and make deals with Flash Harry (George Cole), but rally round to save the school, in this first film, from closure. The radical formula wouldrunandrun,andthefirsttwo of three sequels show this week (on Wednesday and Thursday, see left).
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