Whether you’re a fan of the show under Moffat or not, it offers an intriguing, insightful look at all aspects of the series" 7/10 - Starburst, January 2014

Ahead of its time in some respects, particularly in its placing of a dysfunctional woman at the centre of the drama, Woman in a Dressing Gown at least thematically foreshadows some of the emotional and social concerns of the 'kitchen sink' dramas of the early 1960s even if its stylistic qualities and performance modes bear little in common with the naturalism of such films. However, Thompson crafts a film full of visual surprises that matches Mitchell's own exploration of entrapment and depression. It's a little-known, thought-provoking gem and you have a chance to see this again in cinemas from 27 July as Studiocanal and ICO are re-releasing the film. Here's a full list of play dates. The film concerns a man who is having an extramarital affair and considers divorce, and his wife's reaction to the affair. Scenes compare and contrast the man's relationship with his wife versus his relationship with his lover. These are not only very different in content, but very different in film style, shots with his lover being in extreme close-up and/or unusually framed shots. Shots of the wife are mainly in wide angle, encompassing the chaotic mess of her house. one contemporary viewer who said 'It's done for dressing gowns what Psycho did for showers' although I wonder when that comment was made as Psycho was not for another threeto Thompson's bold visual style and Steve Chibnall notes that Thompson was keen to work with actors who had this sort of range and that her theatrical extremes were a result of his own direction at a time when naturalism and 'method' were beginning to have an impact with emerging young actors. The film is considered an example of British social realism, and a prototypical version of Kitchen sink realism. Modern criticism has noted that it was more progressive in the field of gender politics than the British New Wave. that it's only her that calls him Jimbo in the first place, and when she puts the radio on again at the end and gives her gormless grin you start having doubts all over again. A remarkably fine The opening of the film establishes the family at the centre of the narrative, the scruffy Amy (Yvonne Mitchell) in her stained dressing gown, husband Jim (Anthony Quayle) preparing to shave and son Brian (Andrew Ray) getting ready to go out. There has been no theme music to accompany the titles, only the pealing bells to indicate it is Sunday, the crying of children and a layer of light classical music booming from Amy's radio which, perhaps in an effort to deny her reality, she turns up higher throughout the film. There is no dialogue. Just Amy trying to complete a newspaper competition as she burns the toast, Jim shaving and Brian wanting his breakfast.

Louis Nowra is an acclaimed Australian dramatist, who has written two new plays for BBC Radio 4. He tells Kirsty how a serious head-injury, and being the son of an infamous murderess, have shaped his writing - and why he avoids arty types, preferring instead to have a beer with the labourers in his local bar. It and the films that followed were, as Richard Armstrong notes, "fed by the 'Angry Young Men' of 1950s theatre, the

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gamely and plays their new jazz record, in a scene mildly reminiscent of that bit in Brief Encounter when that interfering busy-body neighbour of Celia Johnson's intrudes on her last moments at her replacement and a husband on the defence. It is consistently good and at some moments finely tuned with a great use of physical tics and body language and as Syms explains, in her interview on the disc, women hadn't really been portrayed like this on the screen before. low the clothes got in your face. Amy is an appalling cook, serving up burnt, greasy food literally swimming in fat, which wisely her husband and son rarely eat anyway. This opening scene

The screenplay was written by Ted Willis, based on his 1956 ITV Television Playhouse play of the same name. The producer was Frank Godwin. Williams, Melanie, 'Twilight women of 1950s British cinema' in: The British Cinema Book. British Film Institute, 2009. mixes the intellectual and the emotional very well...it's proper media criticism" 9/10 - The Medium Is Not EnoughI have recently become fascinated by the minutiae of certain aspects of film; spotting little-known actors who have become familiar to me for example. My father had two things which he always used to comment on in this respect; one was that when people looked in the phone book for a name and number they always alighted on the one they wanted immediately, the Thompson, better known for directing more testosterone fueled movies such as Ice Cold in Alex (1958), The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Cape Fear (1962), directs with flair, a restless camera often prowling around the Preston's claustrophobically cluttered apartment, with swirling, out of focus POV shots introduced to visualize Amy's fraught emotions at times of duress. Willis' prescient, balanced and non-judgmental screenplay offers ample opportunity for the cast to deliver heartfelt, attention grabbing performances, none more so than Mitchell, who excels as the loving but emotionally frustrated wife at the centre of a movie that is in essence a bridging link between Brief Encounter ( David Lean, 1945) and the later, dialogue driven domestic dramas as evinced by Mike Leigh. Devoted housewife Amy is distraught when her husband, Jim, announces he is leaving her for another woman. Show full synopsis

Husband Jim (Anthony Quayle) swerves into the arms of pretty young colleague Georgie (Sylvia Syms) but his request for a divorce wrenches Amy into a dark reflection of what her life has become, in what remains as moving a portrayal of repressed desires as you’ll see onscreen. other was that characters in films could always park exactly outside the place they wanted to be, and never had to drive around trying to find a parking space like the rest of us mere mortals.

Willis and Thompson embraced the notion of independent film production and recognised that working as independents within the ABPC studio system would enable them to test the commercial viability of a film "which has been made because someone really wanted to make it and devoted time and talent and salty sweat to its conception". He and Willis formed a partnership with Frank Godwin, a freelance producer and former Rank production assistant, with the intention to make "socially aware films about the lives of ordinary people". 3 Their involvement in Godwin-Willis and, later, Allegro to produce Woman in a Dressing Gown and another Ted Willis script, No Trees in the Street (1959), was scuppered by ABPC's Robert Clark whose impenetrable contracts allegedly tempered their radicalism when neither of them saw very much of the money that the films made for the studio.