Sonia Dresdel Movies
Sonia Dresdel was primarily known as a stage actress during her 25-year career, but managed to carve out a niche for herself in movies and television as well. Born Lois Obee in 1908, she aspired to a theater career and spent years in repertory -- in 1943, at age 34, she appeared in a production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Westminster Theatre in London that turned her into a star. She went on to light up various comedies and dramas, in everything from Mourning Becomes Electra to Oedipus the King (both with the Old Vic Company), and for a decade was regarded as one of England's top stage actresses. During the second half of the 1940s, Dresdel became closely associated with manic, destructive characters, both on-stage in plays such as The Same Garden, and onscreen in its film adaptation, While I Love (1947). She enjoyed a two-year run in the play This Was a Woman in the starring role, of a wife and mother whose personal demons drive her to destroy her family, and then brought the part to the screen in 1949, and it was in this same period that she got her most memorable screen part, in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948). Portraying the hostile, near-manic wife to Ralph Richardson's Baines, a role right up there with Lady Macbeth and Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca for sheer cruelty, she cut an inimitable screen figure -- between her performance and Reed's direction, and the exceptional editing by Oswald Hafenrichter, she was impossible to forget in the part. Her other movies of the era included the brilliant thriller The Clouded Yellow (1950), and her later film work included performances in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) and Lady Caroline Lamb (1972).By the 1950s, Dresdel had begun working in television as well, but her overall career declined along with her stage roles, as she began appearing in too many melodramas and thrillers that did her no credit -- with her intense, angular features, she was suited to such roles, though she also took on parts on occasion that seemed to fit her poorly in their sympathetic nature, in plays such as Doctor Jo. But she found it difficult to get back to better work, and Dresdel's fiercely independent nature forced her to decline offers of career assistance from sympathetic colleagues. As the parts ceased to interest her as much, Dresdel went into management, during the 1950s, becoming a company director and also a stage director late in the decade, under the aegis of the New White Rose Players, on works such as the thriller Night of the Shoot. As with many leading lights of the 1940s and '50s British theater, Dresdel found little available to her in film in the 1960s. She passed away in 1976, best remembered by theatergoers and those who'd seen her in The Fallen Idol. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Screenwriter Robert Bolt's directorial debut is a lushly romantic saga concerning the 1812 love affair between the wife of William Lamb, Lord of Melbourne, and the author of the poem Childe Harold, Lord Byron. Excited and embarrassed by the attendant affections heaped upon him, Byron found his writing talent waning, and in 1813 the lovers ended their affair. In her first novel, Glenarvon in 1816, Lady Lamb included a satiric portrait of her former lover. But when she later witnessed Byron's funeral in 1828, she was so affected by his death she never mentally recovered from the trauma. The film charts the doomed romantic course for Lady Caroline Lamb (Sarah Miles), beginning with her marriage to the politically promising William Lamb (Jon Finch) and continuing with her scandalous affair with Byron (Richard Chamberlain). The film then chronicles Lady Caroline Lamb's supreme sacrifice on behalf of her husband's political career. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sarah Miles, Jon Finch, (more)
- 1960
Peter Finch portrays the titular flamboyant Irish poet/playwright in The Trials of Oscar Wilde. The storyline, lifted to a great extent from actual court records, recounts Wilde's late 19th century libel action against the Marquis of Queensbury. The author loses, whereupon he himself is tried for sodomy due to his homosexual affair with the Marquis' son, Lord Douglas. Wilde is sentenced to prison; the public humiliation leads to the once-proud writer's immortal poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol--and to his premature death in 1900. The film had to tiptoe around certain touchy legalities, in that sodomy was still a punishable offence in British courts in 1960. The US title for this film was The Trial of Oscar Wilde, effectively killing the ironic double meaning of the plural British title. In certain regions, the film was shown as The Man with the Green Carnation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Finch, Yvonne Mitchell, (more)
- 1958
Hollywood hasbeen Keefe Brasselle stars in the British Death Over My Shoulder. The resistable Mr. Brasselle plays a detective who is unable to meet the medical payments for his ailing son. Professional killer Bonar Colleano is hired to bump off Brasselle so that the boy will collect the insurance. Not unexpectedly, Brasselle has a change of heart-but Colleano doesn't. This plot chestnut was old when Douglas Fairbanks used it in 1915's Flirting With Fate. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1956
A fine upstanding wife finds it difficult to keep her sordid past as a criminal a secret from her husband and neighbors. The trouble begins when someone robs a neighbor. As the wife suddenly vanishes thereafter, the police immediately label her the prime suspect. Meanwhile, her husband searches the city in hopes of proving her innocent. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1956
Now and Forever is a very slight piece, buoyed by the charm and attractiveness of its young stars. Janette Scott and Vernon Grey play Janette Grant and Mike Pritchard, who fall in love despite the objections of Janette's wealthy parents. Realizing that they will never be permitted to marry, Janette and Mike run off together, sparking a nationwide search for the two elopers. By the time the authorities catch up with the pair, public sentiment is firmly in favor of their union, culminating in a conditional change of mind on the part of Janette's mom and dad. Though the film seems flat and obvious when viewed on television, it truly comes to life before a large and appreciative moviehouse audience. Forgotten for many years, Now and Forever was happily rediscovered by the late film historian William K. Everson in his 1979 book Love in the Film, which was dedicated to star Janette Scott. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janette Scott, Vernon Gray, (more)
- 1951
In this crime drama, an innocent man is accused of killing a major crime lord. Fortunately, a canny police inspector believes he didn't do it and launches his own investigation. It pays off and he discovers that the crime boss is alive and simply feigned his death by killing a colleague and making the body resemble him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1950
The Clouded Yellow stars Trevor Howard as David Sommers, a former member of the British Secret Service. After the war, Sommers takes a low-profile job cataloguing butterfly specimens. While thus employed, he make the acquaintance of Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons), a curious young lady who seems to be hiding something. Indeed she is, as Sommers discovers when Sophie is brought up on murder charges. Championing her cause, Sommers helps Sophie escape, prompting Scotland Yard to put another ex-secret agent on the couple's trail. The chase extends from London to Liverpool, culminating in a tangled web of murder and madness. The Clouded Yellow was the first independent production supervised by Betty E. Box. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Simmons, Trevor Howard, (more)
- 1949
In this drama a power-mad psycho woman vents her frustration by being cruel and abusive to her family. Because she disapproves of her daughter's marriage to a doctor, the wicked mother destroys the marriage. She tires of her husband and poisons him so she can get a new one. The only one she leaves alone is her darling son, a renowned medical researcher. When he wises up to her evil ways, he calls the cops. In the end the woman is convicted and sent to an asylum for the criminally insane. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sonia Dresdel, Walter Fitzgerald, (more)
Adapted from the Graham Greene story The Basement Room, director Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol is told almost completely from a child's eye view-but it isn't a children's story. Young Bobby Henrey idolizes household butler Ralph Richardson. Therefore, when it seems as though Richardson might be implicated in a murder, Bobby does his best to throw the police off the track. The boy succeeds only in casting even more suspicion upon Richardson. As the story progresses, Henrey's hero worship is eroded by Richardson's shifty behavior, and even more so when the boy discovers that the butler's boasts of previous heroism are just so much hot air. The ending of the film differs radically from Greene's story. While it would seem that director Reed was merely paying homage to the "happy ending" philosophy (hardly likely, given the doleful climaxes of such films as Odd Man Out and The Third Man), the director had very solid reasons for altering the story: he was more fascinated by the concept of the boy's imagination nearly sending his idol to the gallows, rather than having the butler entrapped by facts. And though the ending is happy for the boy, the butler's fate is much more nebulous. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan, (more)
- 1947
Also known as While I Live, this British programmer serves as an excellent dramatic showcase for veteran farceur Tom Walls. Covering a period of 25 years, the story concentrates on the reclusive Julia (Sonia Dresdel), who has never come to grips with the fact that her sister Olwen (Audrey Fildes) committed suicide. Each year on the anniversary of Olwen's "disappearance", Julia has regaled the citizens of Cornwall with a sacrament-like radio broadcast of the poem Olwen was writing at the time of her demise. When a young woman who dimly resembles Olwen arrives on the scene, Julia becomes convinced that her sister has returned from the Beyond, leading to a series of mystical events, romantic encounters and tender reconciliations. Billed first, Walls dominates every scene he's in as a local faith healer named Jeremiah, who claims to possess "second sight"-and he's the most normal character in the story! While I Love was adapted from a play by Robert Bell, which also starred Sonia Dresdel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Walls, Clifford Evans, (more)
- 1944
In this melodrama, a pilot gets amnesia after a plane crash. A good friend helps him to remember by discussing the troop transport plane they built together. While still in the hospital recovering, the pilot asks the friend to marry him. He then learns that they are already married. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
