Director's Comments

Film making is never easy, and I thought I had seen everything until the cheques started to bounce during the second week of shooting. The day after the bouncing cheques, one of the producers remarked rather ruefully, that if I hadn't found such an ideal location the film would have been abandoned there and then. But it wasn't just the location that helped, it was the generosity of our two leads and the willingness of most of the crew to stay on, which saw us through a very difficult time and helped complete the film in just under 6 weeks.

The location in question was Stanway House, the splendid home of Lord and Lady Neidpath, which I found after a long, and up until then, rather fruitless search. One day I happened to glimpse on television the owner of an 18th century house talking about the possibility of restoring an old cascade, fountain and canal. The house looked ideal to me, so on finding out where it was my wife and I set off to Gloucestershire the following day.

Jamie and Amanda Neidpath were very welcoming from the start, and showed us round and described their plans to restore the great cascade, lake and fountain that had long ago ceased to work, and was not even visible then. The interior of the house was perfectly in keeping with Garrick's period, even the drawing room with its Chippendale Day-beds and portraits were untouched and historically correct.

Amanda Neidpath by one of the Chippendale Chinese Day-beds

During that visit the canal and fountain were under a century of earth, but Jamie Neidpath assured me restoration work would begin very soon - we had a bet that all would be restored by the time I found the finance for the film - he won …. just.

The covered canal in winter, the pole marks the fountain.  Restoration a year later

'The Clandestine Marriage' was first performed in 1766 at Drury Lane Theatre and was written by the famous actor/manager David Garrick and George Colman the Elder. The idea came from one of William Hogarth's paintings in his series of "Marriage à la Mode". The painting hanging in the Garrick Club is of the same date.

Scene from 'The Clandestine Marriage' by Johan Zoffany c.1766  oil on canvas

I first saw the play in Bath prior to its successful London run; the cast were excellent, and Nigel Hawthorne's performance as the impoverished roué Lord Ogleby, superb. Having recently moved to Wiltshire, Garrick's pithy wit at Londoners arriving in the country, their obsessions with gardening, stocks and shares and marrying off their sons and daughters, all seemed to ring just as true today as it did then. The play also had wonderful observations on the foibles of vanity and the human condition, not least of which are the people who still insist on showing you their gardens when you've only just arrived for lunch.

I contacted Thelma Holt, whose production it was, and she was very helpful in not only suggesting Trevor Bentham to the adapt the play, but also with Nigel himself, as the film 'The Madness of King George' had not yet been released. I arranged for contracts to be drawn up and commissioned a screenplay. Trevor agreed that Stanway was perfect for the film, and when I suggested that the newly arrived Mr Sterling could be a clock-and-time fanatic, new strains of comedy were added, as many new visual possibilities arose.

Trevor Bentham in the Great Hall and the Neidpaths by the disused water tower

After six months of struggling to raise the finance, Nigel Hawthorne had a chance encounter with a producer/financier, whom he later introduced to Tim Buxton, the CEO of Portman Productions, whom I had known since our success with 'Alternative 3'. Now with the money apparently in place, work could begin to prepare the film.

Both Joan Collins, who was courageously keen on playing the plain Mrs Heidelberg, and Cyril Shaps, who was wonderful as Canton in the play; had worked with me before, as had Mark Burns. This our third film together, was sadly his last. The talented Timothy Spall, Tom Hollander and Emma Chambers, were to my delight soon on board, and I chose three new comers, whose first film this became, Paul Nicholls and Natasha Little, as they were ideal Clandestine Lovers, and on Mary Selway's suggestion, I saw Ray Fearon, who was terrific in the RSC's production of 'Romeo & Juliet', for the role of Brush.

Deidre Clancy, who started her film career with me on "The Virgin & the Gypsy" was luckily available as was Martin Childs, who had been on the project from the start. Denis Crossan, a cameraman I had not worked with before, but whose lighting I liked, especially his candlelight (an obsession of mine for a period film) joined the crew. Among whom was George Akers as editor, whom I was pleased to see again after his work on "Priest of Love". The rest of the crew, camera and directing assistants, and all who worked hard on the set, and those behind the scenes - all 164 (counting the extras) proved to be very capable when tackling this very tight schedule, which was rather fortunate as events turned out.

 
Camera tests by candle-light and daylight for make-up, wig and costume colours

Two weeks into shooting the producers' cheques bounced - and the film ground to a standstill, right in the middle of a complex scene I was shooting with Joan Collins and Tom Hollander. What happened next was been widely reported in the press -

- so I won't go into it all again, but it was mainly due to Joan and Nigel, and others who later came to the rescue, that the film was saved.

However stopping a film dead in its tracts is like stopping a huge express train, there's a lot of steam and squealing of brakes as all energy is dissipated. The person responsible for then getting it all up to speed again is the director. I can still remember the agony and strain, but never again, if I can avoid it, with producers whose finances cannot be guaranteed to complete a film.

All film making is a learning curve, especially with comedy; the most difficult and underrated of all the genres. So its understandable why producers loose confidence on seeing what looks like similar rough-cuts time and again, as by the sixth viewing even the good jokes seem to wear thin.

Film comedy, especially away from the canned laughter of television, proves elusive to many; and taking the funny guys from the tele, is rarely the answer. Few comedy films win Oscars, you have to believe in your material. As Laurel and Hardy and my old friends the Boulting Brothers knew, quick zany cutting doesn't help that final joke either, certainly Woody Allen knows that…

Although no money was spent on prints and advertising, it lasted a couple of  months in the West End, and was later much enjoyed by those who managed to catch it during distribution. This, despite some of the ceiling falling down on the head of one of my friends, Mrs McAlpine, during a performance at the Odeon Haymarket, so closing the cinema for good from that day on!

Before he died in 2005, Professor Michael Gearin-Tosh said to a mutual friend, David Ambrose, whom he had known since Oxford, "Christopher Miles's 'The Clandestine Marriage' is by far the best film of a Restoration comedy I have ever seen. It captures to perfection the tone and texture of the period."

Michael was senior English Fellow at St Catherine's College, Oxford, as well as a visiting professor at Stanford University, and considered a world expert on Restoration plays. He told David later that he used the film in his lectures to explain Restoration Comedy - you either have a 'restoration' sense of humour...........



……….……… or you don't.

PS  On the 5th June 2004 the Neidpaths invited friends over to  re-launch the fountain with a new 2 inch bronze nozzle. His Lordship has every reason to smile, as at over 300 foot, it is now the tallest gravity fountain in the world.

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