Kenneth Branagh's new film is a delightful contemporary romantic comedy that celebrates the acting profession with all its passion, humor, drama, naiveté and zest for life.
"It's a comic look at the actor's eternal despair" says Branagh, who wrote and directed the film but does not appear before the cameras.
"The film's central character is an actor who loves what he does but is at a crisis point about why he does it and that's a situation which, in my experience, is common to every actor in the world" he explains.
The ensemble comedy takes as its starting point the efforts of an out-of-work actor to salvage his pride by mounting a low-budget production of "Hamlet" in which he will take the leading role. He assembles a troupe of misfits and eccentrics and together they tackle both the Bard's greatest play and their own inadequacies and fears. The result is a surprise to everyone involved.
"It's a romantic and comedic look at the theatre and at actors, with a plot that owes much to the kind of romance and silliness of the old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies," says Branagh.
"The film uses actors as a kind of microcosm for all sorts of other situations - family, work, life in general. Because actors tend to make everything just that bit more dramatic, you get a heightened version of reality which can become a funny way of observing human behavior in general."
Branagh originally conceived the idea for A MIDWINTER'S TALE some four years before he had the opportunity to write and direct it but the film's lengthy gestation gave him the chance to inject some of the most telling comic details and characterizations from the lives of the actors for whom he was creating the roles.
A large portion of the cast have worked with Branagh before and several of them have known him since they all studied at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) together. Branagh and those of the cast who recognize something of themselves in the characters they play happily admit to art imitating life to some extent in the film and all of them recognize in the script the desperate and often hilarious struggle to mount a production with too little time and not enough money.
For Branagh the film is a complete change of pace after "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." "It was good to work on a different scale," he says. "I enjoyed the challenge of shooting quickly and making the film work on a very low budget."
It is also Branagh's first feature film as a director in which he does not also act. "After Frankenstein' it felt natural to just direct something and in my next film, Othello,' I will just act," he says. "After that I will probably act and direct again. I did find it exhausting during the making of Frankenstein' because I was creating a role on screen for the first time whereas in the Shakespeare films I have taken roles that I have already played on stage."
A MIDWINTER'S TALE premiered at the 1995 Venice International Film Festival where it was awarded the prestigious Osella d'Oro Award. The film then screened at the 1995 Boston Film Festival where Branagh was awarded the Filmmaker Excellence Award for his work on the film.
The film was shot on location outside London. The interior of the elegant church in which the actors both live and work was St. Peter's Convent near Woking in Surrey. The disused church with the nuns' cells and common rooms attached made a perfect location, providing more than adequate space for dressing rooms and equipment storage. Church exteriors were filmed in Hampshire and shooting was completed at Shepperton Studios.
The film was written and directed by Branagh. The producer is David Barron.
Last modified 02-Feburary-1996.
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