The truth behind the fairy tale? You won’t find it here
‘You won’t be able to take your eyes off the glowing beauty of Grace Kelly,” was how they promoted Rear Window in 1954 and, boy, were they right. It was a sentiment that applied all the way through Grace Kelly: Lost Tapes of a Princess (Channel 4). Whether in home movie footage or archive news bulletins, she was stunning.
We know the Grace Kelly story: born into a high-achieving family with a father who held her to high standards – he was a three-time Olympic gold medal winner – and found her wanting; the Oscar-winning film career; then turning her back on Hollywood at the height of her fame, aged just 26, to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco. The documentary opened with a newsreel of her departing for Europe from New York, thousands of fans lining up to wave goodbye.
Other films have attempted to look beneath the fairy tale gloss. A Channel 5 documentary earlier this year claimed she had paid $1m of her own savings as a dowry to the House of Grimaldi, and was down to her last $10,000 when she died. A 2014 biopic (admittedly a terrible one) starring Nicole Kidman presented an unflattering portrait of Rainier. And there were rumours for decades that the marriage was unhappy.
All of this helps to explain the existence of the Lost Tapes, because this was an airbrushed, officially endorsed production. Kelly’s son, Prince Albert, granted the film-makers access to the family archive, and to her childhood home in Philadelphia (which he now owns). It suggested that Kelly was a complex character, and one who made certain sacrifices. But it insisted that she was content, aside from the discomfort of being so scrutinised by the media.
The film stated, extraordinary as it sounded, that 1,800 journalists were present at her wedding. The Duchess of Cambridge famously copied Kelly’s wedding dress, and the idea of an actress marrying into royalty brought to mind a certain California-based couple, but the strongest parallels were with Diana, Princess of Wales.
Any dissatisfaction was touched on only briefly, as with Kelly having to turn down a comeback role in Hitchcock’s Marnie: “She realised very quickly it was not really compatible with her role and her responsibilities here,” said Albert, and that was that. We were told that a “weariness” sometimes overwhelmed her, but that wasn’t explained: depression? Or simply the stress of her role? The film laid the blame for any unhappiness at her father’s door.
The narration was oddly stilted. But Kelly did look happy in the home videos. And couldn’t you just gaze at her loveliness all day?
The theme of this week’s Time (BBC One) was forgiveness. Should it be granted? Is it deserved? Mark (Sean Bean) killed a man while drunk driving, and is wracked with guilt. He wanted to write a letter to the victim’s widow, telling her that he thinks of that poor man every morning when he wakes up. But that’s not an offer of comfort, it’s an act of self-pity, as prison officer Eric Mcnally (Stephen Graham) astutely pointed out.
Then there was the restorative justice meeting in which Mark’s cellmate, Daniel, sat across a table from the parents of a young man he killed in a bar fight. He hoped for forgiveness. But when Daniel (a great performance from Jack Mcmullen) admitted that he had stabbed their son to save face – he’d pulled the knife in a stupid row over a pint, and “if I put it away I’ll look like an even bigger mug” – they were appalled. “It’s unforgivable,” said the victim’s mother, played by Marie Critchley in a small role that packed a lot of power.
Writer Jimmy Mcgovern wants us to know that behind every prisoner is a story of life taking a wrong turn. The sorry case of Daniel, who got himself into that row because he didn’t want to admit he only had £1.20 to his name so couldn’t stump up for a replacement pint; the man who robbed a betting shop because he couldn’t bear to go home to his wife and admit he’d gambled their money away. Whether you find this all a bit bleeding heart liberal will depend where you stand on justice. The betting shop example did feel didactic, particularly when there are other prisoners – a sinister drugs kingpin (Brian Mccardie, aka Tommy Hunter in Line of Duty), Mark’s terrifying bully (James Nelson-joyce) – who are sketched simply as villains.
The bullying was hard to watch, although it gave Bean the chance to act his socks off. These are two very different central performances: Mark’s distress is written all over his face; Eric keeps it all inside. But in this episode it was the supporting cast who stood out.
Grace Kelly: Lost Tapes of a Princess ★★★
Time ★★★★