Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 3: Sat Jan 3

A Private Function (Mowbray, 1984): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.20pm


This film, part of the Maggie Smith season at the BFI Southbank, also screens on 9 January. Full details here.

BFI Southbank preview:
Alan Bennett’s brilliant Yorkshire comedy deals with a civic ‘do’ to celebrate the Queen’s wedding in 1947, and the habits of an incontinent pig smuggled away for the banquet. Michael Palin’s chiropodist uncovers a conspiracy while Maggie Smith, the Lady Macbeth of Ilkley, aspires to her rightful milieu: ‘Put me in a long dress and surround me with sophisticated people, and I’d bloom.’

Here (and above) is the trailer.

There is some choice dialogue in Bennett's script. Here are a couple of favourites:

Joyce Chilvers (Maggie Smith): 'I think sexual intercourse is in order, Gilbert.'

[the pig has been abducted]...
Grand Hotel Manager: 'I can put my hands on two turkeys in Bradford.'
Frank Lockwood the Solicitor: 'Two? TWO? We've got a hundred and fifty people coming! And Jesus isn't one of them!'

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