Sunday 22 January 2012

Another Tme Another Place 1958

Another film set in the 1940 and 1950 also released in 1958 is Another Time, Another Place starting a young Sean Connery as the male lead who plays an international journalist and radio broadcaster who at the start of film reports on the dismantling of a bomb. He has an affair with Lana Turner who is also a Journalist from America covering the war in Europe and engaged to her employer who travels to the UK and France to cover the allied invasion as well as the creation of the United Nations.

Sid James plays the personal assistant to the boss in Europe with whom Turner confess that she has decided to break the engagement with the boss because of her affair with Connery. However coinciding with this intention Connery who is about to leave for Paris, has decided to break with Turner because he has a wife and child in Cornwall who he also loves. Earlier in the film we see Connery declaring his eternal love for his future wife promising to be always together. We also witness him saying as much to Turner during their love affair. The wife is played by the excellent actress of my childhood and youth, Glynis Johns, who has take her son to live in a Cornish fishing port to get away from the bombings in London. Connery also has a Journalist/BBC colleague who is also a family friend and has been against his relationship with Turner persuading Connery to remain with his family.

When the boss arrives he senses relations between them has cooled and presses James to reveal what is going on. Turner admits the relationship but also the irony of the situation because she has been rejected. The following day the boss calls on Turner when she is about to listen to the next broadcast of Connery from Paris. He attempted to stop her listening but understandably she insists only to learn this way that the plane Connery travelled in had crashed and he had been killed. She is devastated, has an emotional breakdown is and admitted to a residential clinic headed by John Le Mesurier. The boss visits after about six months when she is ready to leave although still in a state of shock. The boss played by Barry Sullivan arranged for her take a cruise back to the USA from Plymouth Devon. She agrees but arranges to go for the day to Connery’s hometown on the day beforehand. Finding that with the peace the local hotel is fully booked she leaves her overnight case with the rest of the luggage sent on to the ship and goes on a walkabout until the evening train.

She visits the outside of his home where she meets his son out playing and is invited in for a cuppa and then because the boy takes to the American and wants to know all about the USA, she stays for an evening meal and then missing the train is asked to stay overnight. She is overcome by the situation and the following morning goes off a panic. I am not clear what happens next except that she is brought back in a collapsed state and is cared for by the wife until she recovers. She agrees to stay on and write a book about the life of Connery with the help of the wife much to the horror of Connery’s former colleague who survived the crash and who now also lives in the same community. He is understandably concerned that the looking back will arouse concerns which the wife had expressed to him about the fact that Connery’s letters to her shortly before his death had become brief as if something had changed or was wrong. Lana’s boss also arrives to take her back to America but too late to prevent the widow realising what had happened and then the woman was Lana. Lana is asked to immediately leave but at the station Glynis and the longstanding friend come to say goodbye with Lana leaving for the USA able to move forward.

According it a brief Wikipedia article during the making of the film the gangster boyfriend of Lana Turned arrived on set with a gun to warn Connery not to get involved with the actress. There was a struggle with the gun firing but fortunately no one was injured. The film looks as if there was some location shooting in Cornwall although it could have all been created in a studio .is is a pleasant film full of nostalgia for Cornish fishing ports. I do have a Newlyn Pottery vase bought from the pottery shop in St Ives..

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