As with LIPSTICK ON YOUR COLLAR, the later re-working of this play, most of the action is set within the 1956 War Office in the midst of the Cold War and just prior to and contemporaneous with the Suez Crisis. Private Robert Hawk is the newly-arrived Russian language clerk. He is the son of a Yorkshire coalminer and a graduate of grammar school and of Oxford. He is doing his two years of national service. His job at the War Office is to assist the MI3 section in the translation of intercepted Russian documents on troop movements. Hawk is caught between his own working class roots and the upper middle class values and behaviours of the officers he works with. They mock him for his background, his immaturity and his intellectualism. He is also caught between his almost adolescent romantic idealisation of women as he sees them portrayed, for example, in his visit to the theatre to see Chekhov’s The Seagull and his equally adolescent sexual drives which lead him to consort with a prostitute for sexual release. He survives all this by inventing personalities for himself so that, in a pub and surrounded by football fanatics, he asserts his status by pretending to be (and convincing the fans that he actually is) the Russian national team goalkeeper. His deception fails when an old friend, Pete, comes into the pub and inadvertently unmasks him. To impress Pete that he holds an important position at the War Office, Hawk sets out to obtain a classified document but Pete fails to arrive at the rendezvous and the document is discarded.

Lay Down Your Arms [ITV Saturday Night Theatre] (Dennis Potter 1970).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 12 min
Size: 	1.07 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	700x576 ~> 745x576
Aspect ratio:  	1.295
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#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/890BD51C6CAD839/Lay_Down_Your_Arms__ITV_Saturday_Night_Theatre__(Dennis_Potter_1970).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Christopher Morahan & Dennis Potter – ITV Saturday Night Theatre: Lay Down Your Arms (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Moonlight on the Highway is a television play by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on 12 April 1969 as part of ITV’s Saturday Night Theatre strand. The tale of a young Al Bowlly obsessive attempting to blot out memories of sexual abuse via his fixation with the singer, the play was the first of Potter’s works to use popular music as a dramatic device and strongly anticipated Potter’s later ‘serials with songs’ Pennies from Heaven (1978), The Singing Detective (1986) and Lipstick on Your Collar (1993).

Synopsis
Al Bowlly obsessive David Peters (Ian Holm) is visited in his run-down bedsit by Marie (Deborah Grant), a researcher for Severn Television, who is collecting material for a documentary about the singer. David is the editor of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society fanzine and Marie hopes to secure him as the programme advisor. David is enthusiastic about the offer but has other things on his mind; he has an appointment with an NHS psychiatrist the following day and his anxiety about the meeting, coupled with the novelty of entertaining his beautiful visitor, leads him to make an unwelcome pass at her. Marie fights off his advances and runs out the flat, leaving a defeated David to reflect on his problems.
In the waiting room the next day, David gets into an altercation with an elderly patient who has never heard of Al Bowlly. By the time he is finally called to see Dr Chilton (Anthony Bate), David is agitated by the older man’s ignorance – especially as today is the anniversary of Bowlly’s death. The doctor’s calm demeanour, however, soon puts David at ease and, with some difficulty, David explains that his mother died six weeks earlier after having nursed her throughout his adult life and harrowingly recounts how, at the age of ten, he was abducted by a stranger and sexually assaulted. Alongside these traumatic events, David hints as some “wicked” acts he has committed but Chilton stops him before he can elaborate on these and prescribes him some anti-depressants. He is warned not to drink alcohol or eat cheese while taking the tablets as they will “make [his] tongue wag.”
After David leaves, Chilton informs the two student doctors who have been in attendance throughout the session that he believes David’s claustrophobic relationship with his disabled mother and the earlier torment of sexual abuse have resulted in a sense of sexual disgust that he overcomes in his obsession with the innocent music of Al Bowlly. Chilton dismisses his junior colleagues’ concerns that David may attempt suicide and suggests it is more likely that the desperate desire to discharge his secrets will perhaps lead him to confide in a friend.
Later that evening, David attends the annual meeting of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society. Relieved that his ordeal with the psychiatrist is over, David forgets the warning not to mix his medication with alcohol and drinks heavily. After much merriment, the Society President calls David up on stage to talk about the success of the fanzine. As David holds forth in his speech about the beauty and innocence of Bowlly’s music his mind wanders back to the sexual assault and, realising he is surrounded by friends whose attitudes to love and sex match his own, reveals that he has slept with 136 prostitutes. As he leaves the stage and the scandalised Society members return to their festivities, a jubilant David approaches a large blow-out of Bowlly mounted on the wall. He smiles: “Good old Al!”

Moonlight on the Highway [ITV Saturday Night Theatre] (Dennis Potter 1969) (1).mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	52 min 24 s
Size: 	792 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	698x576 ~> 768x576
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 919 kb/s
BPP: 	0.199
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/17E138E754A7246/Moonlight_on_the_Highway__ITV_Saturday_Night_Theatre__(Dennis_Potter_1969)_(1).mkv

https://rapidgator.net/file/097c0376bff0763a98348be7deb679dc/Moonlight_on_the_Highway_[ITV_Saturday_Night_Theatre]_(Dennis_Potter_1969)_(1).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post James MacTaggart & Dennis Potter – ITV Saturday Night Theatre: Moonlight on the Highway (1969)  first appeared on Cinema of the World.

First filmed theatrically in 1962, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel, TENDER IS THE NIGHT, was given a lavish (seven million dollars) treatment in this British-Australian-American miniseries version. Set in Europe’s waning days of the Roaring Twenties, the plot focused upon the tempestuous marriage between jaded psychiatrist Dick Diver (Peter Strauss) and the beautiful, schizophrenic socialite Nicole Warren (Mary Steenburgen). An international cast did an excellent job impersonating the “Lost Generation” for which Fitzgerald was the principal spokesman (the author was himself all but burned out by the time the original novel was published, and his desperation oozes through every page). The script, by the iconoclastic Dennis Potter (PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, THE SINGING DETECTIVE), was based upon the 1951 “chronologically re-edited” version of the novel prepared by Malcolm Cowley. First broadcast by Britain’s BBC2 in six 55-minute installments from September 23 to October 28, 1985, TENDER IS THE NIGHT subsequently aired in a five-part version (albeit unedited) over America’s Showtime network from October 27 to November 26, 1985. (All Movie Guide)

Tender is the Night.Part1.1985.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 41 min
Size: 	1.88 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	694x474 ~> 694x520
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 374 kb/s
BPP: 	0.174
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#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/6187F2371847928/Tender_is_the_Night.Part1.1985.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/11CB925F78E2454/Tender_is_the_Night.Part2.1985.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Knights & Dennis Potter – Tender Is the Night (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

After a brief tutelage with innovative BBC documentary producer Denis Mitchell, Dennis Potter teamed with producer Anthony de Lotbiniere to film a documentary (later described by David Niven as “absolutely wonderful”). Returning to the Berry Hill roots of his childhood, Potter used interviews with locals (including his parents) to show changes in the working-class traditions of the Forest of Dean, where “the green forest has a deep black heart beneath its sudden hills, pushing up slag heaps and gray little villages clustering around the coal.”

https://nitro.download/view/762D2131DF72C91/Between_Two_Rivers_(Dennis_Potter_1960).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Dennis Potter – Between Two Rivers (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Transmitted on 13th October 1965 at 9.05 p.m. on BBC 1 as part of the Wednesday Play series. Repeated on 6th July 1966 on BBC1

The play is a fictionalised account of the relationship between Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell. It cleverly integrates events, conversations and chance remarks into the narrative which later become part of the “Alice” books but more than anything it’s a touching story of unrequited love where frustration and innocence co-exist but never quite resolve their conflict. It was later remade as the film ‘Dreamchild’.
Yet another “Alice” actress with a “Doctor Who” connection, Deborah Watling went on to become Victoria, the companion of the Patrick Troughton incarnation of the time-travelling Doctor. Apparently the producers saw her pictured as Alice Liddell on the cover of the Radio Times (right) and cast her on the spot.
It’s interesting to compare the play with the later film “Dreamchild” which was based upon it. Both feature the same story-within-a-story but the film adds yet another layer with the inclusion of the sequences of the grown-up Alice, troubled by visions of her younger past and still unable to make sense of her relationship with Charles Dodgson. Both have typical Dennis Potter time-flips, where the present connects almost seamlessly to the past, and where fact merges with fiction as Alice meets characters from Wonderland in situations which have metorphorical connections to real life.
The film deals ostensibly (and inaccurately) with her visit to New York as part of the Lewis Carroll centenary celebrations, but the subtext of the Carroll-Liddell relationship is really at the core of it. While the added Alice Hargreaves sequences (and, I suppose, the Henson special effects) created a more commercial film, they do tend to distract from that core and effectively provide the solution on a plate. The play is far more satisfactory and allows the viewer the luxury of working it out for themselves.
George Baker lnvokes a very believable Dodgson and looks scarily like the real thing. I particularly liked his mood swings, where the character would stammer his way through painful shyness, suddenly explode into frustrated beligerence and then just as suddenly become a teacher again, taking huge delight in setting a mathmatical problem for a student. Rosalie Cruthley is likewise excellent as Mrs Liddell as she portrays growing concern over the attention which Dodgson pays to Alice. Deborah Watling makes a charming Alice and there’s one sequence where she backs away in fear from the Turtle and the Gryphon as they advance on her, which is almost a precursor to all the monster confrontations she was later to experience as Doctor Who’s companion, Victoria.

829MB | 1h 01m | 640×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F17B4A775364A42/Alice_-_by_Dennis_Potter.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Gareth Davies & Dennis Potter – The Wednesday Play: Alice (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.