Swallows and Amazons Film

Isn't it great that the bbc are going to do a swallows and amazons film!!I just typed in on google and there is also an article on the times' website.Also there is a bit about it on :

http://allthingsransome.blogspot.com/2008/06/swallows-and-amazons-movie.html

I hope that the film will be as close to the books as possible,because although the 1974 film was good,it wasn't great. But then again,books are always better than the film version.I wonder which book they'll do.I hope they do winter holiday or peter duck (they're my favourites).Which one do you think they'll do?

Alastair

Alastair -

I'm really looking forward to a new film. It would be great if they covered more of the books, perhaps say all five Lakes ones. The problem to do all 12 books is that they are actually spread only over three and a bit years which makes it diffciult to fit all that filming in with young actors.

However, I haven't heard anything about the film for a few months. And if they were filming we would get to know - I remember seeing locations in use for a film with the geeky one from The office playing a London Tube driver - someone Mackenzie? - around the Lakes (no, the Tube hasn't extended up here yet); or Miss Potter where the filming became an attraction itself! So I hope it does happen.

My hopes for any film would be that it is laden with period 1930 detail; that it is all filmed on Coniston rather than moving around within even one scene as the 1974 film did; and that the children talk 'normally' rather than with plummy 1930 accents - "we've been coming here for yars and yars" says Peggy. The key would be good casting of the adults as well. However, if they want a Captain Flint...

Rob

However, if they want a Captain Flint...

I Hope they do a better job than last time.

Of course you Rob would make a good one, just lose some hair and put on a fair bit of weight.

Robin

Robin -

I'm working on both those!

But he could have been the younger brother of someone the mother of a 12/13? year old, and so perhaps only 38/39 herself making Jim Turner only 36! I personally reckon that she would have been about 16 the time she went up the Matterhorn with her boyfriend but still with her brother in tow, in 1902. So in 1930 she'd be 44 and Jim Turner maybe 42 or maybe 46/47 if older than her. As a minimum I reckon she must have been 12 in 1902, so 40 in 1930.

Whatever, I'm too old by a long way! But then, modern artistic make-up etc. Let's practice those lines: "It did, rather" "Look har, that won't do" "I say!"

Actually, if she was 16 in 1902 but didn't have Nancy till 1917, that was a long engagement or walking out. Where's Brian Hopton when you need him to fill these gaps in?

Rob

I shouldn't reply to my own posting, but its more about the plummy accents bit. I wonder if in this day and age the film makers might make more of the Altounyan's Syrian background to present the Swallows as mixed race. That would be an excitingly different take on the usual image! And since the surname Walker is clearly English or western, it would have to be Mother who is Syrian.

Though was Earnest's mother English? Change it to his father to explain the English surname,  making Ted Walker still half Syrian, and Mary Walker could still be - well, she could be Australian if she learnt to sail in Sidney harbour. She would have an Australian accent and so the children might have at least a hint of one too, mixed with a Syrian one. Great, and much more modern!

Rob

Previously Rob Boden wrote:

I shouldn't reply to my own posting, but its more about the plummy accents bit. I wonder if in this day and age the film makers might make more of the Altounyan's Syrian background to present the Swallows as mixed race. That would be an excitingly different take on the usual image! And since the surname Walker is clearly English or western, it would have to be Mother who is Syrian.

Though was Earnest's mother English? Change it to his father to explain the English surname,  making Ted Walker still half Syrian, and Mary Walker could still be - well, she could be Australian if she learnt to sail in Sidney harbour. She would have an Australian accent and so the children might have at least a hint of one too, mixed with a Syrian one. Great, and much more modern!

  

Rob

I thought that it was quite clear that Mary Walker was Australian.  Goodness knows we have a plethora of excellent but lesser-known actresses from which to choose for the role.  There's no indication of any Syrian or Armenian heritage in Ted Walker's character, though.  I think that you can only take the Altounian connection just so far.  I recall that AR said that while the Walkers were inspired by the Altounian children, the whole project took on a life of its own, so that they became independent characters, less dependent on their original inspiration.

David.

I think I'd have to agree with David on this: yes, it seems clear that AR began Swallows and Amazons with the Altounyans in mind, making use of names, relative ages and arguably some character traits, etc. But AR was writing creative fiction, and like any good novelist his characters were ultimately created within his own mind. He may have drawn on apects of the Altounyan children for initial inspiration, but he'll also have added elements from other people he knew, from his own life, and also simply from his imagination. His skill surely lay in building all those disparate elements into a group of believable and vivid characters. Perhaps an early indication of this process lies in John's character, which varies from Taqui Altounyan's from the very start in two very obvious ways, name and gender. And in John I think we can see elements of AR's own childhood emerging from the very start.

I don't suppose it is impossible that a man with a Syrian or half-Syrian background could have aspired to, or achieved, a career as a Royal Navy officer in the 1930s. (As an aside, I recall reading somewhere that the Corsican-born Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to do exactly that when he was young, and that there is some evidence his later emnity with Britain was at least partly fuelled by the RN's rejection). And the RN has always been a relatively egalitarian organisation where careers could be built on merit by men of modest background. However, I don't see any evidence within the SA novels to suggest that Commander Walker was anything other than English, and probably from a "standard" middle-class RN background (I'm not sure we're ever told what Ted Walker's father did, but the fact that both his sons see the RN as their natural profession at least suggests this is family tradition). And, as David says, all the signs are that Mary Walker was Australian, or at the very least, brought up in Australia for most of her childhood.  

David and Geraint -

I wasn't giving my views of the children's backgrounds so much as suggesting what a modern day film-maker might make of them. Presumably they would want to make a new film different from the 1974 version, and while there are lots of ways of doing this,  my thoughts were that one  modern twist, and one tenuously supported by facts, would be to give the children a half Australian, quarter Syrian, quarter English background! Partly I'm suggesting this because I find the accents of most of the child actors - well, Captain Flint too -  in the 1974 film to be off-puttingly upper class,  and that this is something any film maker would strenuously try to avoid nowadays I'm sure. 

Dare I suggest that another way they might  make a new film more 'exciting' to current audiences is somehow to weave in some of AR's background - Bohemian, Russian/British spy ! This would  of course then be a very different film from a straight adaptation of S&A.

Rob 

Hi Rob

Yes, I'm sure you are right and the new film makers will want to treat the subject in their own unique way, partly to differentiate it from the previous versions, and partly to appeal to contemporary audiences. It'll be interesting to see how they do this. As you say, there are many apporaches they could take and "developing" the character's from the originals in the book might well be one of these. I suppose they could give some of them different accents. Indeed, if I recall correctly, there was a radio adaptation produced a few years ago in which Nancy and Peggy were played by local actresses with strong Cumbrian accents.

My point was really that a change like that is explicable internally, within the novels themselves: AR tells us that Nancy and Peggy were born and grew up at Beckfoot, so local accents make sense in that context (arguably more sense than "middle" or "upper class" ones). What I'm not so sure about is the lack of any references to Syrian parentage in the fictional Walker family, as opposed to the Altounyans upon whom they were partly based. That seems to have been an element of the real Altounyan's characters that AR chose not to transfer into his fictional ones. Instead he gave them an Australian mother. So perhaps, if the new film makers were thinking of moving away from stereotypical "middle class English" accents, it would be more in tune with the novel to give John, etc, a hint of Australian? 

Of course, they could decide to adapt the Walkers by introducing a Syrian background. But equally they could make them all Cockneys, or virtually anything else. Anything is possible, it is just that some things are developments from within the fictional original, whereas others would be inspired by facts or ideas from outside AR's fictional world. It may of course be that you are right, and the new film producers feel they ought to do that to connect more effectively with modern audiences who don't know the novel, or are not particularly bothered by the degree to which it has been adapted.

Whatever, it'll be interesting to see how they do choose to develop the story in their new version.

Geraint commented "AR tells us that Nancy and Peggy were born and grew up at Beckfoot, so local accents make sense in that context (arguably more sense than "middle" or "upper class" ones). "

It seems obvious to me that if they keep the setting in the 1930s, they would have to have Nancy and Peggy speaking with "Received pronunciation" accents rather than local Cumbrian ones. They are obviously (at least) middle class, no one in the Blackett-Turner family seem to have a regular job yet they are able to keep a servant and a cook and a house. Based on my own parents who would have been about the same age as the Blacketts, back then no respectable English family with that sort of background would have spoken with a regional accent. While Nancy and Peggy could well have learned one from a nanny or locals as infants, they would have been taught to use "proper English" very quickly. The Great Aunt would have had a fit if she had heard them talking with a local accent.

If they move it to more modern times, then regional accents would be more in keeping with reality.

Of course, when did reality have anything to do with film making?

A very fair point, Adam, and I expect you are correct. My previous post was really trying to focus on the difference between adapting the original story by developing/exploring something that is already present within it, as opposed to adapting it by introducing a completely new element. At least with the introduction of Cumbrian accents in the radio adaptation, the producers were reflecting AR's chosen setting for the books and the fact that N & P would have grown up hearing those accents. So there is a link, even if (as on reflection you've convincingly argued) it is actually less likely that the Amazons would have had local accents, rather than "middle class" ones. That's quite different to introducing a completely new background for the Walkers (such as Syrian parentage) which AR doesn't include within his fictional world.

It is quite possible for children to have several accents depending upon to whom they are speaking. My mother was a Liverpudlian and I spent holidays in Liverpool. But I soon had a clip round the ear if I used a scouse accent or words when I spoke to her.

Similarly at school, I expect mant of us spoke in different tones and accents when we spoke to our masters (or mistresses) than when we spoke among ourselves.

I think - when thinking about which films are most cinematic - Winter Holiday is one that leaps out (despite the obvious difficulties with trying to film that). 

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of special effects...

I agree with those who suggested that a mild regional accent might be acceptable for the Blacketts (it's not even totally unrealistic).

I can't agree with the suggestion that it should all be filmed on Coniston.  Apart from the inevitable difficulties of the islands off Rio (and Rio itself) it raises those various difficulties we have: the lake has always been mostly Windermere with bits of Coniston to me (just as the island has always been mostly Ramp Holme to me, with rocks and and harbour tagged on from the wonderful Peel Island).  That's an entirely personal thing, of course.  But it's the sort of entirely personal thing which is bound to make no film version of Swallows and Amazons perfect for all of us.

I can see what you mean about "brain washing": each of us builds up our own image of the characters, places, scenes, etc, and however good a movie is, it is likely to be "different" to our personal interpretations of the original book. Perhaps the thing to do is enjoy the book and the movie as separate versions of the same story, rather than hoping that one will fulfil all expectations from the other?

As for the planned movie, the current development plans are for a film of Swallows and Amazons by Harbour Pictures (a UK film company) together with BBC Films. They both announced their involvement some time ago. Will it show in the US? I don't think anyone knows as yet - presumably that will depend on the producers finding a US Distributor, if and when the movie is completed.