Articles/Interviews
Return to ListingMONTE CARLO?... NAH!... LUTON AIRPORT...
Film Review visits an unusually exotic Luton to report from the set of the new Barbara Cartland film, A Ghost In Monte Carlo. And we discover that its star, Oliver Reed, is starting to feel his age a bit
Oliver Reed is seeking to shed his action-man image. He's bored with buckling swashes. And, at 51, he's getting too old for it too, he reckons. Intimations of his own mortality may enter into it as well. For Reed's revelation to Film Review comes only months after the film-fall death of his friend, roly-poly comic Roy Kinnear. And only weeks after Reed, who was working with Kinnear when he died, badly hurt his own back in another film-set fall. "I'm getting too long in the tooth to run around in tights waving a sword," Reed tells me. "It's time to steer clear of film fights. "If you don't look after yourself very carefully, you can get killed." We talk in Monte Carlo. Or rather, we talk in what's meant to be Monte Carlo. For this is the movies, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. In fact, we're in Luton, just a few miles north of London. The making of Reed's latest movie, Barbara Cartland's A Ghost In Monte Carlo, is big news in the town. There's a film crew at the Hoo, my taxi driver tells me, before he even knows that that's exactly where I'm headed. The Hoo is Luton Hoo, a 17th Century stately home on the town's outskirts. Its sumptuous interiors are doubling, for reasons of economy, as the late-18th Century insides of Monte Carlo's prestigious Hotel Du Paris, one of the movie's main sets. Actual Monte Carlo shooting is being confined to a few cost-conscious 'colour' shots. At the Hoo, abuzz from aircraft using the nearby international airport, the usual paraphernalia of location movie-making greets my arrival. Twin canteen trucks, lunch marquees and rest-trailers clog a car park. Work lorries cluster outside private quarters where, away from public gaze, an Hotel Du Paris ballroom scene is being shot. On the steps leading in, begowned and besuited extras stand and sit, talking and reading while awaiting their call. It's a chilly day, and some keep out the cool by wearing modern jackets over their otherwise period clobber. The effect is ever-so-slightly surreal, like two centuries colliding. Inside, film lights ensure it's much, much warmer. At a table at one end of the ballroom, surrounded by cameras and crew, sit two of the film's stars, Oliver Reed and Sarah Miles. They're in the midst of a lengthy dialogue scene. And Miss Miles is having artistic hiccoughs. First, it's some wayward hair strands that demand cosmetic attention. Then, it's a loss of concentration that causes her to fluff a line. Finally, it's a hand-fan which doesn't open properly. "Fuck my fan," she says. Coming from her, the expletive somehow sounds rather more ladylike than the character she's playing. While director John Hough patiently lines the scene up again, I bone up on some A Ghost In Monte Carlo background info. It's the third Barbara Cartland book to be filmed by Lord Grade and the Gainsborough Pictures company. The previous two, A Hazard Of Hearts and The Lady And The Highwayman, both premiered here on video. And the same fate seems in store for this third escapist romance which, in addition to Reed and Miles, also stars Samantha Eggar, Lysette Anthony, Marcus Gilbert, Fiona Fullerton, Joanna Lumley, Jolyon Baker, Lewis Collins, Ron Moody, Neil Dickson and Gareth Hunt. Anticipate a spring 1990 opening. The plot is pure Cartland, pure period toshbuckler. All evil aunts, hunky heroes, virginal heroines and dastardly villains. In 1883, Mistral (Lysette Anthony), a convent-fresh schoolgirl, is taken by her aunt, Emilie (Sarah Miles), a woman with a past, to Monte Carlo. It's the height of the idle-rich resort's season. Emilie's revenge-motivated plan is to marry Mistral off to Prince Nicholas (Jolyon Baker), son of the Grand Duke. But, instead, her niece is drawn to Sir Robert Stanford (Marcus Gilbert), who already has a lady love, Lady Violet Featherstone (Fiona Fullerton). Emilie's plan is further confounded by two dastards who know her true identity, and the nature of her past. One is Henry Dulton (Gareth Hunt), a blackmailer. The other is Jehengar (Oliver Reed), a rotten Rajah who wants his evil way with Mistral. Murder and madness follow as fate conspires to keep Mistral and Robert apart, But not for long. Ultimately, and inevitably, true love conquers all. So, do the actors take all this codswallop seriously? Jolyon Baker, who plays Prince Nicholas, does. "It's easy to be cynical", he snaps, when we talk during a lull in shooting. "And to let campery creep in." "I hate it when that happens. There's nothing in this script that couldn't be said by everyday people - if they had any heart." "It should be genuinely done. There's still room for it. It appeals in the way that old movies still do". Baker admits to never having read a Barbara Cartland book, not even the one on which A Ghost In Monte Carlo is based. "I couldn't find it", he says lamely. It's Baker's first Cartland film. It's a second for Lysette Anthony, who plays Mistral. She also appeared in The Lady And The Highwayman. Her view differs somewhat from Baker's. "We howl with laughter all the time", she confesses. "You can't help giggling at this extremely domineering woman (Cartland) who goes around advocating Royal Jelly and virginity". "But I take seriously the playing of the parts. What Cartland writes is one thing. What I'm able to put into one of her characters during the extensive time that she's on screen is quite another." "There's a girl to pull out of there, and to make real. And, anyway, they're fun films to make - even if these corsets can get a bit nippy". She tugs at her ballgown to emphasise her point, There's a family feel to the films, she tells me, many of the cast and crew having worked together before on the series. "Who knows?", she adds. "These could become the next Carry Ons. But would that make me Barbara Windsor or Hattie Jacques?" "Whatever, I'd like to make another one." "Then, I think I'll tire of playing insipid juveniles." "I'm finally old enough to play vulnerable 18-year-olds. When you're really 18, you're not. You're not distanced enough from it". Talking of age, it's coincidentally Lysette's 26th birthday. Later in the day, there'll be a small on-set celebration, and the handing over of gifts and a giant card. "The Barbara Cartland films are good entertainment," she concludes. "And they don't pretend to be anything more than that. They're well-made material for a video and TV market that doesn't demand anything more taxing." "And I rather believe in their romance, too". But she's never read a Barbara Cartland book either. Nor, more predictably, has Oliver Reed, who's having a whale of a time playing his inevitable cad - in this instance, the rotten Rajah of Jehengar. "Miss Cartland was apparently very keen that I should play him in a turban, baggy trousers and shoes with curled-up toes", he tells me. "But I know a bit about those old Rajahs. They were very English - more English than the real English." "So I'm playing Jehengar as an old Etonian in an MCC blazer". Reed, brown-eyed, and suavely Grecian 2000-ed for the part, is politeness personified - a far cry from his popular image. And that's all it is, he says. An image. A lovingly-nurtured, long-standing image. He first cultivated it, he says, back in the 50s, as a sort of reaction against such clean-cut contemporaries as Jack Hawkins and John Gregson. "They were the sorts of actors that always looked like they'd go down with their ships", he explains. "I kicked off not bothering to cut my hair. And it sort of developed from there". As a physical heavyweight, the one-time Britpack rebel is now reconciled to being pigeon-holed for the playing of heavyweight parts. "I'm certainly not about to go on a diet", he tells me, grinning. "There's plenty of work for me just the way I am." "Which is fortunate, really, as I've had the decorators in at home (on Guernsey) for three years now, and I choke on the plaster and brick dust if I stay there". A Ghost in Monte Carlo is Reed's second Cartland film. He also appeared in The Lady And The Highwayman. "They're hard work and long hours", he tells me. "But they have such wonderful people in them. They're great fun". When he finishes filming, Reed has plans for a fun TV commercial, his second, and, possibly, a film with fellow hellraiser Richard Harris. Entitled The Outlaws, it's the story of Robin Hood's sidekicks as merrie old men. He won't have to buckle too many swashes in it, he reckons.
David Aldridge, Film Review, December 1989
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Oliver Reed is seeking to shed his action-man image. He's bored with buckling swashes. And, at 51, he's getting too old for it too, he reckons. Intimations of his own mortality may enter into it as well. For Reed's revelation to Film Review comes only months after the film-fall death of his friend, roly-poly comic Roy Kinnear. And only weeks after Reed, who was working with Kinnear when he died, badly hurt his own back in another film-set fall. "I'm getting too long in the tooth to run around in tights waving a sword," Reed tells me. "It's time to steer clear of film fights. "If you don't look after yourself very carefully, you can get killed." We talk in Monte Carlo. Or rather, we talk in what's meant to be Monte Carlo. For this is the movies, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. In fact, we're in Luton, just a few miles north of London. The making of Reed's latest movie, Barbara Cartland's A Ghost In Monte Carlo, is big news in the town. There's a film crew at the Hoo, my taxi driver tells me, before he even knows that that's exactly where I'm headed. The Hoo is Luton Hoo, a 17th Century stately home on the town's outskirts. Its sumptuous interiors are doubling, for reasons of economy, as the late-18th Century insides of Monte Carlo's prestigious Hotel Du Paris, one of the movie's main sets. Actual Monte Carlo shooting is being confined to a few cost-conscious 'colour' shots. At the Hoo, abuzz from aircraft using the nearby international airport, the usual paraphernalia of location movie-making greets my arrival. Twin canteen trucks, lunch marquees and rest-trailers clog a car park. Work lorries cluster outside private quarters where, away from public gaze, an Hotel Du Paris ballroom scene is being shot. On the steps leading in, begowned and besuited extras stand and sit, talking and reading while awaiting their call. It's a chilly day, and some keep out the cool by wearing modern jackets over their otherwise period clobber. The effect is ever-so-slightly surreal, like two centuries colliding. Inside, film lights ensure it's much, much warmer. At a table at one end of the ballroom, surrounded by cameras and crew, sit two of the film's stars, Oliver Reed and Sarah Miles. They're in the midst of a lengthy dialogue scene. And Miss Miles is having artistic hiccoughs. First, it's some wayward hair strands that demand cosmetic attention. Then, it's a loss of concentration that causes her to fluff a line. Finally, it's a hand-fan which doesn't open properly. "Fuck my fan," she says. Coming from her, the expletive somehow sounds rather more ladylike than the character she's playing. While director John Hough patiently lines the scene up again, I bone up on some A Ghost In Monte Carlo background info. It's the third Barbara Cartland book to be filmed by Lord Grade and the Gainsborough Pictures company. The previous two, A Hazard Of Hearts and The Lady And The Highwayman, both premiered here on video. And the same fate seems in store for this third escapist romance which, in addition to Reed and Miles, also stars Samantha Eggar, Lysette Anthony, Marcus Gilbert, Fiona Fullerton, Joanna Lumley, Jolyon Baker, Lewis Collins, Ron Moody, Neil Dickson and Gareth Hunt. Anticipate a spring 1990 opening. The plot is pure Cartland, pure period toshbuckler. All evil aunts, hunky heroes, virginal heroines and dastardly villains. In 1883, Mistral (Lysette Anthony), a convent-fresh schoolgirl, is taken by her aunt, Emilie (Sarah Miles), a woman with a past, to Monte Carlo. It's the height of the idle-rich resort's season. Emilie's revenge-motivated plan is to marry Mistral off to Prince Nicholas (Jolyon Baker), son of the Grand Duke. But, instead, her niece is drawn to Sir Robert Stanford (Marcus Gilbert), who already has a lady love, Lady Violet Featherstone (Fiona Fullerton). Emilie's plan is further confounded by two dastards who know her true identity, and the nature of her past. One is Henry Dulton (Gareth Hunt), a blackmailer. The other is Jehengar (Oliver Reed), a rotten Rajah who wants his evil way with Mistral. Murder and madness follow as fate conspires to keep Mistral and Robert apart, But not for long. Ultimately, and inevitably, true love conquers all. So, do the actors take all this codswallop seriously? Jolyon Baker, who plays Prince Nicholas, does. "It's easy to be cynical", he snaps, when we talk during a lull in shooting. "And to let campery creep in." "I hate it when that happens. There's nothing in this script that couldn't be said by everyday people - if they had any heart." "It should be genuinely done. There's still room for it. It appeals in the way that old movies still do". Baker admits to never having read a Barbara Cartland book, not even the one on which A Ghost In Monte Carlo is based. "I couldn't find it", he says lamely. It's Baker's first Cartland film. It's a second for Lysette Anthony, who plays Mistral. She also appeared in The Lady And The Highwayman. Her view differs somewhat from Baker's. "We howl with laughter all the time", she confesses. "You can't help giggling at this extremely domineering woman (Cartland) who goes around advocating Royal Jelly and virginity". "But I take seriously the playing of the parts. What Cartland writes is one thing. What I'm able to put into one of her characters during the extensive time that she's on screen is quite another." "There's a girl to pull out of there, and to make real. And, anyway, they're fun films to make - even if these corsets can get a bit nippy". She tugs at her ballgown to emphasise her point, There's a family feel to the films, she tells me, many of the cast and crew having worked together before on the series. "Who knows?", she adds. "These could become the next Carry Ons. But would that make me Barbara Windsor or Hattie Jacques?" "Whatever, I'd like to make another one." "Then, I think I'll tire of playing insipid juveniles." "I'm finally old enough to play vulnerable 18-year-olds. When you're really 18, you're not. You're not distanced enough from it". Talking of age, it's coincidentally Lysette's 26th birthday. Later in the day, there'll be a small on-set celebration, and the handing over of gifts and a giant card. "The Barbara Cartland films are good entertainment," she concludes. "And they don't pretend to be anything more than that. They're well-made material for a video and TV market that doesn't demand anything more taxing." "And I rather believe in their romance, too". But she's never read a Barbara Cartland book either. Nor, more predictably, has Oliver Reed, who's having a whale of a time playing his inevitable cad - in this instance, the rotten Rajah of Jehengar. "Miss Cartland was apparently very keen that I should play him in a turban, baggy trousers and shoes with curled-up toes", he tells me. "But I know a bit about those old Rajahs. They were very English - more English than the real English." "So I'm playing Jehengar as an old Etonian in an MCC blazer". Reed, brown-eyed, and suavely Grecian 2000-ed for the part, is politeness personified - a far cry from his popular image. And that's all it is, he says. An image. A lovingly-nurtured, long-standing image. He first cultivated it, he says, back in the 50s, as a sort of reaction against such clean-cut contemporaries as Jack Hawkins and John Gregson. "They were the sorts of actors that always looked like they'd go down with their ships", he explains. "I kicked off not bothering to cut my hair. And it sort of developed from there". As a physical heavyweight, the one-time Britpack rebel is now reconciled to being pigeon-holed for the playing of heavyweight parts. "I'm certainly not about to go on a diet", he tells me, grinning. "There's plenty of work for me just the way I am." "Which is fortunate, really, as I've had the decorators in at home (on Guernsey) for three years now, and I choke on the plaster and brick dust if I stay there". A Ghost in Monte Carlo is Reed's second Cartland film. He also appeared in The Lady And The Highwayman. "They're hard work and long hours", he tells me. "But they have such wonderful people in them. They're great fun". When he finishes filming, Reed has plans for a fun TV commercial, his second, and, possibly, a film with fellow hellraiser Richard Harris. Entitled The Outlaws, it's the story of Robin Hood's sidekicks as merrie old men. He won't have to buckle too many swashes in it, he reckons.