A Touch of Love │ StudioCanal
Courtesy of StudioCanal
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
I have always been aware of the 1969 British film A Touch of Love, but I knew relatively little about it other than it starred Sandy Dennis and Ian McKellen. The title is misleading, to say the least, and the author of its screenplay, Margaret Drabble, was not happy with it either – the title, that is. Neither was she wild about the American moniker, Thank You All Very Much. Neither really sums up the content or the tone of the film, which was adapted by Dame Margaret from her own 1965 novel The Millstone, the name of which the producers, horror tycoons Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, were none too happy with, either. Being a restored title as part of StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics Collection, it does though offer considerable historical merit and had a significant impact on changing the attitude and practices of the NHS.
I suppose I was expecting a love story, but A Touch of Love is anything but, being a searing slice of social commentary in the vein of Ken Loach. The only commercial note is the casting of the Oscar-winning actress Sandy Dennis – which helped to raise the money for the budget – who plays an English academic working on a philosophy thesis, first seen buried among the shelves of London’s British Library. The film is actually a very English reunion of sorts as Margaret Drabble (long before she acted as an understudy for Judi Dench) was at the University of Cambridge at the same time as the director Waris Hussein and two of the film’s leads, Ian McKellen and Eleanor Bron (both of whom are terrific). Dame Margaret and Sir Ian are both interviewed for the new Blu-ray and DVD release and offer great insight into the making of the production. It was the first screenplay that Margaret Drabble had written, and she did feel rather out of her depth. It was also the first feature helmed by Waris Hussein, who had previously directed the first series of a sci-fi BBC show that he thought would stop his career in its tracks, something somewhat unworthy for a director who had graduated from Cambridge with honours. But the show, called Doctor Who, was a success and Waris Hussein went on to make films with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Shirley MacLaine and Gene Wilder.
A Touch of Love is a real time capsule, set in and around Fitzrovia in London with the Post Office Tower always very much in evidence, along with the marvels of the time, such as household items like Radox, Omo washing powder, Ajax and, in one scene, what was known then as “a television set”. The film makes the most of its London locations, an area I was personally very familiar with at the time, while the opulent apartment of our protagonist – Roz, played by Sandy Dennis – was modelled on the flat of the RSC director John Barton, which is where Margaret Drabble happened to have written the original novel.
From the opening logo of the distributor British Lion, I felt whisked back in time, along with the locations of Regent’s Park, Marylebone station and the old British Library, and the block of mansions off Edgware Road (where I once interviewed the filmmaker Nicolas Roeg at his London home). Initially, with Michael Dress’s irritating background music played on flute, I thought A Touch of Love was going to be a stilted, dated affair, and one thing did bother me enormously. When Roz and her best friend, Lydia – delightfully played by Eleanor Bron – visit a bar, Lydia generously applies salt to a boiled egg with an olive-green salt shaker. In the next scene, at an up-market restaurant with John Standing, I noticed the same green salt cellars on their table, and then again at another cafeteria. But once the story starts to cast its spell, and we enter the unstable mindscape of its protagonist, the film swept me away. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that for no particular reason I watched Sandy Dennis in another 1969 drama, That Cold Day in the Park, where she played another slightly unbalanced spinster, and nobody does unhinged better than Sandy Dennis. But here she is perfectly credible as an English singleton who discovers she is pregnant and then has to suffer the consequences. At one point, Roz states that, “I think the National Health Service is one of the finest attributes to a civilisation ever created,” before she is forced to let out a primal scream in order to get her way. The scenes where she is regarded as a second-class citizen by the NHS nurses – including a young, uncredited Penelope Keith – and has to wait in insalubrious waiting rooms, is the stuff of nightmares. Having recently reacquainted myself with the NHS of late, I have nothing but praise for the institution, but it hasn’t always been so and it is films like A Touch of Love that reminds us how incredibly lucky we are today. And for that we owe enormous gratitude to Margaret Drabble and to this film in particular.
STUDIOCANAL’s release of A Touch of Love is now available on Blu-ray
STUDIOCANAL is Europe’s leader in production, distribution and international sales of feature films and series, operating in all nine major European markets - France, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Spain, Denmark and Benelux - as well as in Australia and New Zealand. It owns the largest library in Europe and one of the most prestigious film libraries in the world, boasting more than 8,000 titles from 60 countries, which span 100 years of film history. 20 million euros has been invested into the restoration of 750 classic films over the past 5 years. Known for releasing a stunning roster of incomparable vintage classics titles, StudioCanal’s releases include outstanding thrillers, heart-rending masterworks, horror favourites, war dramas, Ealing comedies, and plenty of lesser-known gems. The collection boasts some of the greatest and beloved stars of British cinema.
