Blue Remembered Hills main backdrop
Blue Remembered Hills main poster

Blue Remembered Hills

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6.5/10 • 2

1979-01-301h 12m

TV MovieDrama

On an idyllic summer afternoon in the summer of 1943, a group of children play in the West Country hills, fields and forests. With no adults around, they indulge in spontaneous games and horseplay - sometimes echoing the distant war, at other times revealing their own insecurities and petty vindictiveness.

Directors
Brian Gibson
Writters
Dennis Potter
Editors
David Martin

Top Billed Cast

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  1. Colin Welland

    Colin Welland

    Willie

  2. Michael Elphick

    Michael Elphick

    Peter

  3. Robin Ellis

    Robin Ellis

    John

  4. John Bird

    John Bird

    Raymond

  5. Helen Mirren

    Helen Mirren

    Angela

  6. Janine Duvitski

    Janine Duvitski

    Audrey

  7. Colin Jeavons

    Colin Jeavons

    Donald

Reviews1

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CinemaSerf Avatar

CinemaSerf

Nov 17, 2024

7/10

Anyone else grow up reading Enid Blyton books? Those "Secret Seven" or "Famous Five" stories where young folks had some jolly japes, sometime tempered with a baddie and some ingenious traps and wheezes? I thought for a while that this is what we were going to get here as a collection of youths are playing merrily in a forest in the middle of WWII. There's no sign of the atrocities of the war per se, here, but as the children play their dialogue and attitudes make it clear that their's isn't the innocence we might have initially expected. There are five boys and two girls and for just over an hour we watch their games become, well something just a bit more than that. The playful starts to become the serious, the fun more serious, the constraints of their age that ought to hem in their imagination become much more blurred - there is a realism to the behaviour that shouldn't be quite so prevalent - yet! As with any "tribe" there are leaders and followers, those who are bolder and those more timid - and writer Dennis Potter quite effectively imbues the characters with strengths and weakness that don't always conform to the stereotypes of the biggest, the oldest, or the girls being the "weaker". For me, Michael Elphick's "Peter" and Janine Duvitski's "Audrey" stood out as the complexities of their persona teased and terrorised, but Colin Welland and John Bird also added an huge amount richness to a story that ends up about as far away from Miss Blyton's idyll as it might be possible to imagine. It's frantic at times, the dialogue comes thick and fast and the story has a certain roundness to it that is anything but predictable. Is it wartime that is making those children grow up, is it nature, nurture - all three? It's entertaining, but in quite a provocative and lively manner and well worth an hour.

Media

  • Blue Remembered Hills poster

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Status
Released
Original Language
English
Budget
--
Revenue
--
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