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This is a harrowing, totally gripping British TV mini-series in which Michael Kitchen gives what is probably the finest performance of his career. It is based on a true story, of a respectable solicitor and magistrate's clerk, a pillar of his community and of his Masonic lodge, Major Herbert Armstrong, who poisoned his intolerable and domineering wife with arsenic which he had originally bought to poison the dandelions on his lawn. Michael Kitchen shows a supernatural ability to become this character. He is a perfectly amiable and beautifully mannered gentleman of the Old School. Throughout the entire tale, no matter what pressure he is under, no matter how intolerable his situation, he never cracks. His manners never fail him. He is true to his manners to the very end. I cannot reveal the end, but believe me, most people wouldn't have kept their manners under those circumstances. The story is set in the small town of Hay-on-Wye, near the border of Wales, and the year is 1921. The screenplay by Michael Chaplin is absolutely brilliant, but the direction by Mike Hodges is even more so. The way Hodges captures every nuance of atmosphere of this past age is simply amazing. The art direction, sets, costumes, props, are utter perfection. Location filming really took place on the Welsh borders, where the relatively deserted aspect of the beautiful scenery has not changed all that much in a hundred years when seen from the right angles. After all, Shropshire is desperately under-populated even now, and Herefordshire is far from populous either. The cinematography by Gerry Fisher is outstanding, possibly the best work of his which I have ever seen. I first got to know him when he was operator for Freddie Francis. He is a truly delightful fellow. It is difficult to imagine that he is now 86. He retired five years after shooting this, and if he had never shot anything else, he would have laurels aplenty to rest upon, looking back at this absolutely beautiful job of capturing the spirit of the place and the magic of the time. He was always particularly sensitive to green locations, soft light, and real interiors, and was a true artist in his work. He knew how to draw the most from the most attractive aspects of the world around him. Gerry, I salute you for the magic you have brought to the screen on countless occasions! As for the other actors, Robert Stephens is astoundingly good in a cameo role as an impoverished local squire who drinks too much but is as hearty and good a chap as can be, though hopeless, irresponsible, and lets down his oldest friend. He is perfect in the role, and he cannot but remind many of us of certain such friends of yore, endearing but never to be relied upon. Apart from Kitchen, the outstanding and dominant presence in this production, though only in the first half (because then she dies), is Sarah Miles as Mrs. Armstrong. My God! Such a scary performance! She is too, too real. We have all hoped never to meet such a person, we know they exist, we may have met some, but to see one revealed raw on screen, her bile dripping from her maw, vitriol oozing from her every look, is a positive terror. And like all really ultimately terrifying persons, she can be quiet, calm, and focused in her destructive sarcasm, puts-downs, and horrifying dominance. It is a magisterial depiction of an impossible woman, all steel and no heart. David Thewlis is, as usual, magnificent as the stiff antagonist of Armstrong, and eerily portrays a man uncomfortable in his own skin, knee-capped by self-doubt, shy, but rigid. Lesley Sharp is just right as the chemist's daughter who complains that there are no men left because of the War and when she sees one, namely Thewlis, wraps him up in a parcel and carries him off to the wedding feast as rapidly as she can. Diana Quick is touching in her cameo role as Armstrong's lost love. Everyone is good. Bernard Hepton is a master of looking censorious when the time comes, his joviality disappearing in a flash when things get serious. Chloe Tucker is truly outstanding as the elder daughter of Armstrong, Eleanor, who is forced to grow up too soon and cope with big grown-up situations with courage and sad resignation. One wonders why such a talented actress has disappeared from our screens and not appeared in anything for ten years. This is a tragic, beautifully-observed tale, every detail attended to with a perfect touch. The ultimate tragedy is that of Major Armstrong himself, a man true to his manners and social ideals to the very last, and a jolly good fellow and loving father, who just has this one fault, that instead of losing his cool and dropping his manners when things get too tough, instead of shouting or lashing out, he copes instead by reaching for the arsenic, since he does not know what else to do. It does seem the best and most elegant solution to him when he is in extremis. After all, what is a chap to do, one can't be angry or impolite, so best to deal with things quietly, and perhaps everything will turn out all right, with just a little touch of murder setting things to rights. What a brilliant, subtle, and sophisticated mini-series this is.
Oct
The revival of interest in Mike Hodges prompts another look at this 1994 mini-series, directed while he was in the feature-film wilderness. Like nearly all he touches, it is about desperate violence. However this is no 'Get Carter' but a well-mannered, low-key account of the sort of cause celebre Orwell lamented in 'Decline of the English Murder' as a casualty of the Second World War. Major Armstrong's murder trial gripped Britain. The Attorney General himself conducted the prosecution, and the famous 'Daily Express' editor RD Blumenfeld narrowly escaped imprisonment for contempt when he published a photograph of the defendant's eyes.Herbert Rowse Armstrong ('Major' was a temporary Great War rank, snobbishly retained) was a pillar of the remote community of Hay-on-Wye, a market town on the England-Wales border. He was a churchwarden, master of the local Freemasons lodge, a Cambridge law graduate, the district's leading solicitor and clerk to three magistrates' courts. In April 1922 he was convicted of poisoning his wife and hung: the only British solicitor ever to suffer such ignominy.During war service Armstrong-- a doting but henpecked husband of a neurasthenic wife and a father of three-- had met a charming widow, named in the film but not when she was a witness. Armstrong had also contracted syphilis in France, though not from her. Returning to Hay, he had developed a strong resentment of Oswald Martin, a younger rival in the law who had set up literally opposite Armstrong's somewhat rundown premises over a shop. The prosecution alleged that Armstrong poisoned both his wife, for her money, and Martin for harassing him over the payment of monies owed to a client.The film does not adjudicate on Armstrong's motives or his guilt; it allows Michael Kitchen, in a bravura display of restraint, to plead his cause or incriminate himself as the viewer judges. Kitchen had always been a little too intense for any given role, but here he achieves the consummate screen actor's gift of conveying much with very little: a raised eyebrow, a twitch, pursed lips, the slight contortion of a frail frame. (Armstrong weighed only seven stone and was 5 feet 5 tall.) His buttoned-up demeanour is matched by a voice which protests mildly or pleads gently: a sinister mockery when asking after a victim's health, or merely the politesse of a gentleman attorney?Hay is a fading backwater, admirably designed by Voytek in shades of brown and black, lightened by Armstrong's escape to the hills with his lady love or interludes of uncertain happiness at home with his three children. In the narrow streets neighbours peer, gossip and nurse growing suspicions. The pace is relaxed, the expected moment when Armstrong is either caught in the act or proved innocent never arrives, and the four hours' traffic ends on a note of irresolution which may leave some feeling cheated.It is pleasant to record that one detail the audience might suspect was a bit of scriptwriter's trimming was true: Armstrong really was arrested on New Year's Eve, and had to see 1922 in from a cell.Other, more material facts are also largely respected. Emphasis in Michael Chaplin's screenplay is on the events, not on the trial at Hereford Assizes. As Curtis Bennett (Denys Hawthorne), the defending counsel, argued, Armstrong's motives for the alleged crimes were thin indeed. He was said to have murdered his wife for her money and to be free to remarry; yet he was solvent, her legacy to him lay untouched for a year till he had to draw on it for his lawyers' bills, and he never proposed to his inamorata. And would he have fed Martin a poisoned scone ("excuse fingers") just because of a business dispute? Against that, why did the Major divide the arsenic he claimed he bought to kill weeds (hence the film's title) into small packets, and why was he still carrying one around when he was arrested, instead of leaving it safely locked up at home? The high point of the trial came when Sir Charles Darling (Ralph Nossek), one of the most famous judges of the day, effectively took over the prosecution and grilled Armstrong, who briefly lost his iron composure.The jury took three minutes to decide that he was a wife murderer. The Major protested his innocence to the end. The Martin charge lay on the file; Martin died only two years later, depressed and showing signs of continuing damage from poison. But in 1988 a solicitor who lived in Armstrong's old home wrote a book exonerating him and seeking to show how Mrs Armstrong might have committed suicide.Connoisseurs of 'Inspector Morse' will have no trouble identifying the composer whose long chords and piano plinks punctuate 'Dandelion Dead'. Among supporting performances, Chloe Tucker is outstanding as the Major's owlishly bespectacled and gawky eldest daughter Eleanor, oscillating between love and suspicion. But it is Kitchen's film. He found the right register for the first time, enabling him to rise from the showiness and petulance of his young-man performances towards the calm authority of 'Foyle's War'. He may be the next Jason or Thaw.
Hans C. Frederick
This story,if it is really based on truth,suggests one of the greatest miscarriages of justice imaginable.But,not,you might think,for the same reasons most people would imagine.I happen to have my own points of view.Consequently,in my opinion,Sarah Miles is one of the biggest catastrophes to every appear on screen.She can't act,looks like a horror,and has no sex appeal at all.I can't understand what anybody sees in her.And hanging a man who poisoned her is a true crime.He should have been declared a hero,been awarded a medal,had stamps struck in his honor,and had a holiday declared for his gallant action.
