DVD/150: WIDOWS (Ian Toynton, 1983, tv)

Accept no substitute: there's only one WIDOWS. 

A security van heist goes disasterously wrong, leaving the three robbers dead.  The ringleader was known criminal Harry Rawlins so his widow Dolly is harrassed by the vengeful Inspector Resnick and by the Fisher brothers who were her husband's rivals.

Dolly finds her husband's ledgers and decides that she will attempt the robbery again with the two other gang members' widows: headstrong Linda and insecure Shirley.  Dolly - and Resnick - realise there was a fourth gang member who obviously escaped.  Dolly recruits Linda's friend Bella, a cool-headed stripper to complete her gang. 

Can the widows keep ahead of the police, the criminals and the mysterious surviving gang member - and still trust each other?

Debut writer Lynda La Plante's idea was nurtured by producer Linda Agran and Verity Lambert of Euston Pictures and WIDOWS has the trademark gritty London realness of Euston's finest work.

Shelf or charity shop? You 'avin' a larf?  There is a reason why WIDOWS attracted audiences of 18 million viewers and it still grips like a vice thanks to Ian Toynton's spare direction, La Plante's memorable characters and the terse performances from actors of the calibre of David Calder, Kate Williams and Maurice O'Connell among others.  Fiona Hendley and Maureen O'Farrell's performances as Shirley and Linda are over-shadowed by Eva Mottley's gimlet-eyed Bella and Ann Mitchell as Dolly Rawlins - one of the great television performances of the 1980s.  Watching WIDOWS now is bittersweet as in 1985, Mottley pulled out of the filming of the WIDOWS sequel citing racial and sexual abuse from the production team and was later found dead of an overdose aged only 31, a tragic waste of a real talent.

DVD/150: THE SOUND BARRIER (David Lean, 1952)

It shows how good a director David Lean was that a film that should make me run a mile - ex-WWII RAF pilots attempt to break the sound barrier - is, in fact, an involving drama.

It's popularity here and in America was reflected at award time: Terence Rattigan was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay and it righly won for Best Sound with it's excellent use of silence, echoes and the sudden whoosh of jets.  At the BAFTA Awards it won Best Film, Best British Film and Best British Actor for Ralph Richardson.

Richardson - I think playing a Yorkshire man but going a bit Gorbals at times - plays John Ridgefield, the owner of a jet building company who, while obsessively developing a jet to break the sound barrier, remains emotionally distant from his daughter and son.

Father and daughter are reconciled but at a high cost to them.

Shelf or charity shop? THE SOUND BARRIER is part of a David Lean box-set but I am happy to keep it for Sir Ralph's Ibsen-like Ridgefield and the performances of Nigel Patrick as his son-in-law pilot Tony, Joseph Tomelty as his over-worked jet designer and I even like Ann Todd who, although glacial as ever, finally proves effective as Ridgefield's daughter Susan.  A special mention too for Jack Hildyard's excellent cinematography; his striking visuals really lift the film out of the ordinary.