19. Manhattan (1979)

by Jaime Grijalba.

You may want to zoom in.

          FADE IN                                                          

          EXT. MANHATTAN - MORNING                                         

          Shots of Manhattan: buildings, skyscrapers, a modern             
          snapshot of New York today. People walking down streets          
          looking at their iPhones or looking at cinema markees            
          announcing 3D movies. The music of George Gershwin, of           
          course, fills the atmosphere.                                    

                              JAIME (V.O.)                                 
                    Chapter One. He had never been to                      
                    New York. He just thought about it                     
                    in the most incredible ways,                           
                    thinking of it as a snapshot of                        
                    1979, as Woody Allen had pictured                      
                    it in his film. He idolized it as                      
                    he knew that it was the center of                      
                    the world of contemporary                              
                    culture... No, no, that’s not too                      
                    preachy... Ok, let’s start again.                      
                         (clears throat)                         
 

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48. The Forsyte Saga- 1967

by Allan Fish

(UK 1967 1,295m) DVD1/2

The aristocracy of wealth

p  Donald Wilson  d  David Giles, James Cellan Jones  w  Lennox Philips, Donald Wilson, etc.  novels  John Galsworthy  m  Eric Coates  art  Spencer Chapman, Julia Trevelyan Oman

Eric Porter (Soames), Nyree Dawn Porter (Irene), Kenneth More (young Jolyon), Susan Hampshire (Fleur), June Barry (June), Margaret Tyzack (Winifred), Joseph O’Conor (old Jolyon), Ursula Howells (Frances), Lana Morris (Helene), John Welsh (uncle James), Fay Compton (Ann), John Bennett (Philip Bosinney), Terence Alexander (Monty), Nicholas Pennell (Michael Mont), Martin Jarvis (John), Michael York (Joly), Nora Swinburne (Aunt Hester), Terence Alexander (Monty), John Barcroft (George), A.J.Brown (Roger), John Baskcomb (Timothy), Cyril Luckham (Sir Lawrence Mont), Geraldine Sherman (Victorine Bicket), Terry Scully (Tony Bicket), Derek Francis (Elderson), George Woodbridge (Swithin), Nora Nicholson (Aunt Juley), Kynaston Reeves (Nicholas), John Bailey (Aubrey Greene), Austin Trevor (Botterill), Karin Fernald (Anne Wilmot), Alan Rowe (Settlewhite), Maggie Jones (Smither), John Phillips (Sir Alex McGown), George Benson (Marquess of Shropshire), Caroline Blakiston (Marjorie Ferrar),

Where would we be without The Forsyte Saga?  It was made as the flagship of the BBC’s fledgling new channel, BBC2, running for six months in the first half of 1967.  So popular was it that, armed with numerous BAFTA awards, it then showed on BBC1 the following year and literally stopped the nation on Sunday evenings and whole episodes were not so much talked about for days as months.  It was like a cultured soap opera, the intelligentsia’s antidote to Coronation Street.  Some critics may point at the BBC’s using black and white when colour was literally just around the corner – literally, with Susan Hampshire appearing in colour in Vanity Fair before the year was out.  However, the producers felt they had the cast they wanted and any delays would have meant losing several cast members, so they decided to shoot straight away.  Much as though colour would have been beneficial in some ways, monochrome suited the stuffed-shirt world of the Forsytes, and added to the sense of the funereal about their undertakings. 

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