Today’s Wideo is not going
to be the series of nostalgic short subjects that I usually link to, but a
single full movie that might very well fit in among my old memories without any
fuss, so redolent is it of a certain era and genre. As it is, I only watched it
yesterday evening on a whim.
It is The Amazing Mr.
Blunden (1972), directed by Lionel Jeffries, an actor most familiar to me
as Cavor from The First Men in the Moon and the eccentric Grandpa Potts
in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Indeed, the eponymous character Mr. Blunden
(Laurence Naismith) might well have been played by him, with his balding head
and extravagant moustache.
The time is 1918 and the end
of the First World War. The mysterious Mr. Blunden engages the widowed Mrs.
Allen, along with her three children, to be caretakers of an abandoned (supposedly
haunted) mansion in the country while a firm of lawyers try to find the legal
heirs. While there, the two elder children, Lucie and Jamie, become engaged in
a story of time travel and redemption and a desperate attempt to set right the
wrongs of the past.
I’ve known this film existed
for years; I’ve run across rather enigmatic references to it in such books as The
100 Fantasy Movies or Fantasy of the Twentieth Century, where
they could not go into much detail lest they spoil the mystery. Indeed, I feel
it would have been better titled The Mysterious Mr. Blunden
rather than The Amazing Mr. Blunden; with a title like that you expect
someone rather like Mary Poppins of Willy Wonka to show up. And perhaps it was
not best served by its “groovy” poster.
As it is, it fits in rather
well with other 1972 fantasy memories, like Alice in Wonderland or Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, as well as more modern fantasy film offerings
like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or From Time to Time or
Tom’s Midnight Garden. I find it was remade in 2021 as a TV movie
with Simon Callow in the title role, no doubt to cash in on a certain Harry
Potterish vibe, and (shudder) updated for modern audiences. But, in fact, the 1972 film fits in with that holiday fantasy British family
film tradition I was talking about, which may be why I’ve suddenly found it so
congenial. Tain’t the season, but almost ‘tis!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNI9i_jTBHY
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