The Pleasure Garden is a 1953 short film written and directed by James Broughton, starring Hattie Jacques, Lindsay Anderson, and John Le Mesurier.[1]
Plot
Filmed among the ruins of the Crystal Palace Terraces, The Pleasure Garden is a poetic ode to desire, featuring a bureaucrat determined to stamp out any form of free expression.
Cast
- Hattie Jacques as Mrs Albion
- Diana Maddox as Bess
- Kermit Sheets as Sam
- Jean Anderson as Aunt Minerva
- John Le Mesurier as Colonel Pall K. Gargoyle
- Maxine Audley as Lady Ennui
- Derek Hart as Lord Ennui
- Jill Bennett as Miss Kellerman
- Lindsay Anderson as Michael-Angelico
- John Heawood as Mr Nurmi
- Hilary Mackendrick as Miss Wheeling
- Gladys Spencer as Mrs Jennybelle
- Gontron Goulden as Doctor Hemingway
- Victoria Grayson as Miss Greaves
- Mary Lee Settle as Mme Paganini
- Daphne Hunter as Girl in Grass
Reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This light extravaganza by the Californian poet James Broughton, whose 16-mm films (Mothers' Day, Loony Tom, etc.) have been seen over here, was financed by private subscription and shot entirely on location in the Crystal Palace Gardens, a perfect setting. It is a highly personal mixture of lyricism, mime, whimsy and caprice; some may find it too tenuous, but those who like it will like it very much indeed. It has a freedom all too rare in the cinema, and it is all freshly, unassumingly imagined: a real, a genuine lark. Professional and non-professional actors blend homogeneously under the director's eccentric guidance, Stanley Bate's music is full of entirely appropriate gaiety and invention, and Walter Lassally's photography is resourceful and attractively framed."[2]
Accolades
The film won the Prix de Fantasie Poetique at Cannes in 1954.[3]
Home media
The Pleasure Garden was released on DVD in the UK by the BFI on 15 February 2010.[4] The release also includes The Phoenix Tower (UK, 1957, 39 min.), a short documentary charting the construction of the BBC's Crystal Palace Television Tower, plus a fully illustrated booklet with film notes, an original review and a history of the Crystal Palace.
See also
References
- ^ "The Pleasure Garden". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 22 July 2024.
- ^ "The Pleasure Garden". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 21 (240): 166. 1 January 1954 – via ProQuest.
- ^ "The Pleasure Garden". Festival de Cannes. Retrieved 22 July 2024.
- ^ Foster, Dave (10 February 2010). "BFI in February". Home Cinema @ The Digital Fix.
External links
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