Joan Plowright Movies
One of England's most esteemed actresses, Joan Plowright was trained at the Old Vic. She made her regional stage debut in 1951 and her London stage bow in 1954. Two years later, she joined the English Stage Company, where she essayed her most popular role up to that time, Margery Pincher in Wycherly's The Country Wife. That same year, she appeared in her first film, Moby Dick. In the original 1958 stage production of John Osborne's The Entertainer, Plowright co-starred with Sir Laurence Olivier, whom she would marry in 1961, a union that lasted until Olivier's death in 1989. She appeared on screen with her husband in the film versions of The Entertainer (1960) and The Three Sisters (1970), the latter of which was also directed by Olivier. During the same period, Plowright and Olivier were mainstays of London's National Theatre.In 1961, Plowright won a Tony award for her Broadway appearance in A Taste of Honey. Her stage work was briefly curtailed in the mid-to-late '60s, allowing her time to raise her family. From 1982 on, Plowright began appearing in films with increasing regularity, demonstrating at least two traits she'd evidently picked up from Olivier: a propensity for elaborate foreign accents (the hero's Jewish mother in Avalon (1990) and the heroine's Yugoslavian mom in I Love You to Death (1990)) and a willingness to take assignments possibly only for the money (Mrs. Wilson in Dennis the Menace (1993)). While an Oscar win is long overdue (although she was awarded a CBE from the Queen in 1970), Plowright was nominated for her work in 1992's Enchanted April. Perhaps one of her most endearing portrayals in recent years was as the high school teacher in The Last Action Hero who runs a clip from Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948) for her class, introducing Olivier as "the fellow who did all those Polaroid commercials." In 1999, Plowright additionally endeared herself to moviegoers with her role as one of a group of high society women living in fascist Italy in Franco Zeffirelli's Tea with Mussolini. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Previous film versions of Moby Dick insisted upon including such imbecilities as romantic subplots and happy endings. John Huston's 1956 Moby Dick remains admirably faithful to its source. "Call me Ishmael" declares itinerant whaler Richard Basehart as the opening credits fade. Though slightly intimidated by the sermon delivered by Father Mapple (Orson Welles in a brilliant one-take cameo), who warns that those who challenge the sea are in danger of losing their souls, Ishmael nonetheless signs on to the Pequod, a whaling ship captained by the brooding, one-legged Ahab (Gregory Peck). For lo these many years, Ahab has been engaged in an obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick, the great white whale to whom he lost his leg. Ahab's dementia spreads throughout the crew members, who maniacally join their captain in his final, fatal attack upon the elusive, enigmatic Moby Dick. Screenwriter Ray Bradbury masterfully captures the allegorical elements in the Herman Melville original without sacrificing any of the film's entertainment value (Bradbury suffered his own "great white whale" in the form of director Huston, who sadistically ran roughshod over the sensitive author throughout the film).Cinematographer Oswald Morris' washed-out color scheme brilliantly underlines the foredoomed bleakness of the story. Moby Dick's one major shortcoming is its obviously artificial whale-but try telling a real whale to stay within camera range and hit its marks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, (more)
Time Without Pity carried the name "Joseph Losey" on the credits -- the first time in three years that the blacklisted director was permitted to use his own name on a film. This British-made suspense film was based on a play by Emlyn Williams. Michael Redgrave stars an anguished father whose son (Alec McCowan) is accused of murder. With time running out, Redgrave struggles to prove his son innocent of the charge. The paranoia prevalent in Time Without Pity can be attributed to Losey's own experience at the hands of the HUAC, though this element never gets out of artistic control. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd, (more)
Laurence Olivier recreates his stage role of Archie Rice in this in-your-face film adaptation of John Osborne's play. The son of a legendary music hall comedian (Roger Livesey), Archie is strictly a third-rater, headlining a tacky music hall revue in a seedy seaside resort town. Archie can't admit that he's a failure, and his grim insouciance destroys everyone around him. Archie finagles his dying father into financing one last revue; he cheats shamelessly on his alcoholic wife (Brenda De Banzie); and he all but forces one of his sons (Albert Finney) to run off to join the army, only to die in the Suez. Through all his personal crises, Archie jigs and jabbers before his ever-diminishing audience, but by the end of the film he isn't even entertaining himself. Joan Plowright, who married Olivier shortly after completing The Entertainer, plays the film's one sympathetic character: Archie's daughter, whose love for her father blinds her to his flaws. The Entertainer was remade for television in 1976, with Jack Lemmon as Archie Rice and original songs by Marvin Hamlisch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, (more)
- 1963
This version of Chekov's classic play was recorded at the 1963 Chichester Festival. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1965
This Victorian comedy is a British television adaptation of Richard Sheridan's then famous play. The story is set in Lady Sneerwell's salon where the social elite gather for entertaining hours of gossip and backstabbing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This televised adaptation of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, originally screened on Britain's ITV in 1969, stars Alec Guinness, Tommy Steele, Joan Plowright and Sir Ralph Richardson in the principal roles. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alec Guinness, Tommy Steele, (more)
Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's three upper-class Prozorov sisters -- Masha, Olga, and Irina -- come no closer to their dream of returning to Moscow in director Laurence Olivier's 1970 film version of Three Sisters than they did in Chekhov's original 1900 play. This melancholy classic about shattered dreams, self-delusion, and compromise was directed by Olivier for Britain's National Theatre in 1967. The film, a literal record of Olivier's stage version, was produced in order to raise money for the ever-imperiled National. Olivier, who'd just recovered from a serious illness, plays the mischievous army doctor Chebutikin, while Olivier's wife, Joan Plowright, essays the major role of Masha, the snobbish general's daughter who tries to escape the stultifying banality of her provincial marriage by having an affair. Three Sisters was released in the U.S. in 1974 as part of the American Film Theatre series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeanne Watts, Joan Plowright, (more)
- 1973
Olivier stars in this production of the Shakespearean tragedy about greed and vengeance. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, (more)
Richard Burton plays a psychiatrist who attempts to discover why young Peter Firth has taken to mutilating live horses. In probing Firth's psyche, Burton discovers that the source of the boy's obsession is his mother, Joan Plowright, who has raised Firth with a convoluted set of values. Even as he gets closer to the reason behind Firth's horrendous acts, Burton discovers many previously locked-away secrets within himself. Equus was based on the play by Peter Schaffer who received an Academy Award Nomination for his adapted screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Burton, Peter Firth, (more)
Sir Laurence Olivier stars in this film about a group of people in a Soho restaurant who are all invited by a boisterous woman to a tea at her husband's home. Enraptured by the woman is an elderly businessman who may find that things with this enchanting woman may not be what they seem. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
- 1980
The diary of teenaged Holocaust victim Anne Frank was first published in book form in 1952, then adapted into a Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett two years later. Director George Stevens converted The Diary of Anne Frank into a film in 1959, an effort which required three hours' running time. This TV movie version, which first aired November 17, 1980, telescopes the material into two hours, downplaying the story's suspense in favor of character development. Melissa Gilbert stars as Anne Frank; Maximilian Schell and Joan Plowright play her parents; Melora Marshall is seen as Anne's sister, Margot. Doris Roberts and James Coco are cast as the Van Daans, with Scott Jacoby as their son (and Anne's first love), Peter. Clive Revill appears as fussy, obnoxious dentist Dussel. Rounding out the cast are Erik Holland and Anne Wyndham as the non-Jewish Dutch citizens who hid Anne, her family, Dussel, and the Van Daans in a tiny Amsterdam garret for two years during World War II. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melissa Gilbert, Maximilian Schell, (more)
This dark comedy charts the chaos that results when the panicked staff of a major English hospital attempts to prepare for a visit by the Queen Mother, only to face every problem imaginable. Britannia Hospital clearly attempts to recapture the anarchic bite of director Lindsay Anderson's previous satires If... and O Lucky Man, but fails to achieve the same combination of intelligent political critique, comic lunacy, and skillful filmmaking. (Indeed, the three films are often considered a loosely linked trilogy, largely due to the presence in all three of lead Malcolm McDowell). The film does make a valiant effort, but its commentary on the poor, labor disputes, and the inhumanity of bureaucratic institutions mixes uneasily with the film's broader elements, like the experiments of a cartoonish mad scientist. The result is often quite entertaining on a scene-by-scene basis, but the film never reaches the level of delirious, farcical energy or satirical sharpness to which it clearly aspires. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leonard Rossiter, Graham Crowden, (more)
The arrival of a mysterious stranger disrupts the lives of the members of a British family in this dark, psychological thriller. The stranger is one Martin Taylor (Sting), a dangerous charmer who ingratiates himself with the Bateses, a dignified, older couple (Denholm Elliott and Joan Plowright). The couple becomes especially fond of Martin after he demonstrates a strong, caring rapport with their daughter, a disabled invalid. It is only when he has become a part of the household, unofficially serving as the daughter's caretaker, that Martin's true, potentially demonic nature begins to show itself. Based on a script by Dennis Potter, the creator of the brilliant British television miniseries Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, the film layers its already charged situation with hints of the supernatural, aspiring to be both disturbing family drama and provocatively ambiguous morality play. Some moments of MTV-like stylization threaten to diminish the mood of slow suspense and unhealthy obsession, but Potter's distinctly warped sensibility and the solid performances generally carry the film over its rough patches. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sting, Denholm Elliott, (more)
Originally a nine-hour British miniseries, this film on the last four decades in the life of Richard Wagner may have taken its long-winded cue from the lengthy operas of the famous 19th-century German composer and musical theorist -- the Ring des Nibelungen is 14-15 hours in itself, divided into four separate operas. This biographical film begins when Wagner is first recognized for his work, yet in that same year, 1848, he was forced out of his homeland for his radical politics (he supported the unification of separate kingdoms under one Germany) and settled in Zurich for awhile. Focusing on character traits that are well-known and would not endear him to anyone, the film details his bigotry (a confirmed anti-Semitic), his insensitivity, and his obsession with money -- he went after the bottom line even if it meant losing friendships or ruining his marriage. Although Wagner is known for his music theory and the contribution he made to opera during his lifetime, very little attention is given to his actual works in this film. Venerable British thespians (Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Plowright, and Richard Burton as Wagner) light up the cast but not always with the same brightness. In the final analysis, the slow-paced story is simply too long in the telling, and even the visually sumptuous costumes and production design cannot make up for a slow script, uneven acting, and problems in direction. The film version runs 300 minutes. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave, (more)
- 1985
- PG
This period drama about the American Revolution has an overlay of rhetoric that thwarts the action, flattening out the story about a man and his loved ones caught up in the events of the time. Tom Dobb (Al Pacino) falls in love with Daisy McConnahay (Nastassja Kinski), an aristocrat who deserts her class to fight alongside the rebels. Tom teaches his son Ned (Dexter Fletcher) everything he needs to learn, though the growing rebellion consumes most of his attention. Eventually, the Redcoats are mowed down in large battle scenes, as the ragtag Colonialists go to war. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, (more)
- 1986
When a workaholic businessman needs to be married to maintain a good image, he asks a woman to pose as his wife. The film is a British production originally made for The Romance Theatre. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- 1988
- R
Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernard Hill, Joan Plowright, (more)
- 1989
The brilliant young British actress Jane Horrocks made her film debut in The Dressmaker. She plays Rita, the 17-year-old niece of two Liverpool sisters, who are united only by a common hatred. Older sister Nellie (Joan Plowright) is an emotionally repressed dressmaker, while Margo (Billie Whitelaw) is her brash, libertine younger sibling. Caught in the middle, Rita spends most of her time snivelling over her fate. Though it is clear that no love is lost in this household, the aunts betray a nasty jealous streak when the niece falls in love with American Wesley (Tim Ransom). This quietly turbulent domestic drama was based on The Secret Glass, a novel by Beryl Bainbridge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Plowright, Billie Whitelaw, (more)
Lawrence Kasdan's black comedy about a wife's ultimate revenge against her womanizing husband is based on a true story about the wife of a pizzeria owner who decided to kill her cheating husband. When her attempt to murder him failed, the husband refused to press charges against her because he felt she had done the right thing. Kevin Kline is the pizzeria owner Joey Boca in I Love You to Death. Joey is a smooth Italian lothario, modeled after Marcello Mastroianni, who cheerfully dons his plumbers overalls to repair his female tenants' plumbing in the rental apartments the family owns. Joey feels he is justified in bedding down countless numbers of women because of all the hours he puts in day after day at the pizzeria. Plus, as he tells one of his women friends, "I'm a man. I got a lotta hormones in my body." His wife Rosalie (Tracey Ullman) sweetly ignores her husband's philandering -- that is until she visits the public library and sees Joey fondling one of tenants in the book stacks. At first Rosalie considers suicide, but finally, egged on by her mother Nadja (Joan Plowright), she determines that Joey must be the one to face the music. But the people Rosalie hires to do Joey in are of the cut-rate variety and are unsuccessful. They then try to knock Joey off by feeding him barbiturate-laced spaghetti, but also to no avail. Rosalie then enlists pizzeria employee Deco Nod (River Phoenix), who has a crush on Rosalie, to do the job. But even then, they have no luck. As a last resort, they try to hire professionals. What they get instead are two drugged-out junkies -- Harlan (William Hurt) and Marlin (Keanu Reeves) -- who arrive at the home and blast at a slumbering figure in the bedroom. Then, while they report on their progress downstairs, Joey ambles into the living room, very much alive. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, (more)
The third of director Barry Levinson's autobiographical "Baltimore Trilogy" (the first two entries were Diner and Tin Men), Avalon covers nearly forty years in the lives of an immigrant Jewish family. Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) emigrates to Baltimore in 1914, where Sam's brothers Gabriel (Lou Jacobi), Hymie (Leo L. Fuchs), and Nathan (Israel Rubinek) are awaiting his arrival. By and by, Sam meets his future wife, Eva (Joan Plowright). With the introduction of the Krichinsky's grown son Jules (Aidan Quinn), the film ventures into culture-clash country. Unwilling to become a manual laborer like his dad, Jules opts for the life of a door-to-door salesman. Eventually, he teams with his cousin Izzy (Kevin Pollak) to open the first TV store in Baltimore. Thereafter, the disintegration of the Krichinsky family is paralleled by the rise of TV's omnipresence in the American home. Avalon's elegiac and melancholy effect is underlined by Randy Newman's soulful musical score. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn, (more)
- 1991
Originally aired on the Masterpiece Theatre television series and set in Great Britain towards the end of WW II, this romantic drama chronicles the sacrifices made by a blue-collar woman and her family. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Watt, Phyllis Logan, (more)
Previously filmed in 1935 with Ann Harding, Enchanted April, a romantic novel by Elizabeth, was remade in 1992. The first film skips along superficially at 66 minutes: the second, directed by the always intriguing Mike Newell, runs 101 minutes, allowing for richer characterizations and a bottomless reserve of brilliant dialogue. Two cloistered, married English women (Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson) impulsively rent an Italian villa and embark upon a vacation without their spouses. They are joined by two other ladies: the high-flown aging widow Joan Plowright, and elegant upper-crust beauty Polly Walker) whom they've never met. Under the spell of an exotic new location, the foursome are in for quite a few life-altering experiences, many of them amusing, and not a few very surprising. Impeccably accurate in its recreation of European manners and mores in the 1920s, Enchanted April is sheer bliss from fade-in to fade-out. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright, (more)
