England Made Me

(UK)

Atlantic. Director Peter Duffell; Producer Jack Levin; Screenplay Peter Duffell, Desmond Cory; Camera Ray Parslow; Editor Malcolm Cooke; Music John Scott; Art Director Tony Woollard

Peter Finch
Michael York
Hildegard Neil
Michael Hordern
Joss Ackland
Tessa Wyatt

England Made Me is the symbolic title for a tale of moral conflict set in prewar Germany, circa 1935. Based on an early Graham Greene novel, the film is also a well-observed evocation of time, place and mood, directed and co-authored by Peter Duffell with evident intelligence and sensitivity, if not optimum success.

Michael York plays an innocent idealist ultimately snuffed out by the intrigues and ruthlessness that marked Nazi Germany. The title is a reference to his character, his fairness and morality as shaped by a society where they were and are esteemed. Superficially he runs afoul of rascally Peter Finch's great financial empire based in Germany, but his goodness is in wider conflict with the coarsened values of decadence and nihilism.

Finch plays the ruthless financier with competence and physical presence while Hildegard Neil scores well as York's dominating older sister and Finch's mistress.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1973. Running time: 100 MIN.

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