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1. ONLY TWO CAN PLAY (1961, 106min,
b/w)
Filmed on location in Swansea, Only Two Can Play is a farce
starring Peter Sellers as an anxious, lecherous and very bored Welsh
librarian. Married with children, henpecked and living in a gloomy
apartment, his life takes a twist when Liz, the attractive wife
of a local councillor sets her sights on him. Black comedy ensues
as he and Liz try to consummate their affair in this close knit
Welsh valleys town. The film is an adaption of the Kingsley Amis
novel, That Uncertain Feeling.
2. HOUSE OF AMERICA
(1996, 96min)
In an isolated prairie-style house built from corrugated
iron, the Lewis family - mad mam, teenage dreamers Sid and Gwenny,
and their down-to-earth young brother Boyo struggle to cope with
the void left by their absent husband/father who 15 years before
traded the green green grass of South Wales for the wide open spaces
of America. Boyo is powerless to stop his siblings, Sid and Gwenny,
from losing themselves in a drink and drug fuelled fantasy of the
American Dream derived from Kerouac's On the Road. The
UK premier of this film was in Pontardawe Arts Centre.
3. TWIN TOWN (1997, 99min)
Originally billed as Wales's answer to Trainspotting, Twin
Town has become a cult classic in its own right. Bryn Cartwright,
a local roofing contractor and Rugby Club Chairman refuses to pay
compensation to fatty Lewis, a man working for him when he falls
off a ladder. Fatty's twin sons set out to get revenge for their
father. With a history of daily joyriding, solvent abuse and petty
vandalism, the twins wreak havoc in their hometown of Swansea in
this urban black comedy. The film helped to propel Rhys Ifans, who
plays the eldest twin, to international film stardom.
4. SOLOMON AND GAENOR (1998, 104min)
This film was nominated for an Oscar in 1999 for Best Foreign
Language Film. It is set against a backdrop of racial tension and
industrial unrest in the Welsh Valleys of 1911, Solomon (Ioan Guffudd)
and Gaenor (Nia Roberts) tells the moving and passionate story of
illicit love between a Welsh girl and a Jewish boy. Gaenor, born
into a family of strict chapel-goers, falls for Solomon, a young
door-to-door salesman, who conceals his Jewish identity from Gaenor
and her family. The couple, from similar yet very distinctive worlds,
fall helplessly in love. The odds are against them, however, as
the outraged community in which they live conspires to destroy their
fragile happiness.
5. UNDER MILK WOOD (1971, 88min)
This adaptation of Dylan Thomas's famous radio play stars local
boy Richard Burton alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O'Toole.
The storyteller invites the audience to listen in on the dreams
of the fictional small Welsh village of Llareggub (the name is "bugger
all" spelt backwards, but appeared in print as Llaregyb so
as not to offend), and their innermost thoughts and dreams are laid
bare to us. There is Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, relentlessly bossing
her two dead husbands; Captain Cat reliving his seafaring times;
the two Mrs. Dai Breads; Organ Morgan, obsessed with his music;
Polly Garter pining for her dead lover. Later, the town wakes and
we see them go about their daily business, aware of how their feelings
affect whatever they do.
6. HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941, 118min, b/w)
A masterpiece of sentimental human drama by the legendary
director John Ford, How Green Was My Valley is the melodramatic
and nostalgic story of a close-knit, hard-working Welsh coal-mining
family (the Morgans) at the turn of the century as Wales shifts
from a pastoral to an industrialised society. The story, based on
Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, is told in flashback form
by Huw Morgan, an old man who has decided to leave the valley forever.
Huw is the youngest in a family of 6 brothers and 1 sister and the
film centers on his struggle toward manhood amid conflicting demands
of faith, economics, education and family loyalty. The remarkable
outdoor set, with a row of houses sloping uphill toward the mine
colliery, was convincingly realistic, although it was part of a
set built in Southern California (the hills of Malibu). Originally,
20th Century Fox had planned for the film to be a four-hour Technicolor
epic, akin to Gone With the Wind (1939), filmed on location in South
Wales, but the war made that an impossibility. The Welsh tone of
the film, from director Ford's recollections, is buoyed by Welsh
singers (vocalising as themselves) performing much of the choral
work.
7. HEDD WYN (1992, 110mins)
Hedd Wyn received an Oscar nomination in 1994 for best
foreign-language film. It tells the true story of a young poet living
in the North Wales countryside who competes for the most coveted
prize of all in Welsh Poetry - that of the chair of the National
Eisteddfod, a tradition dating back a hundred years. Before the
winner is announced Hedd Wyn gets sent to fight with the English
in the trenches of the First World War. A month later, on the first
day of the Battle of Passchendaele, he was mortally wounded, but
his poem survived and he was awarded the prize he had always coveted.
8. HUMAN TRAFFIC (1999, 95mins)
Human Traffic is to Cardiff what Twin Town is to Swansea
- an offbeat take on urban life in 1990s South Wales. The story
follows half a dozen Cardiff mates who stick to dead end jobs for
the promise of weekend clubbing. The film covers one lost weekend
- from the Ecstasy fuelled rush of Friday evening to the alcohol
fuelled come down and Sunday afternoon hangover. Jip calls himself
a sexual paranoid, afraid he's impotent. Lulu, Jip's mate, doesn't
find much to fancy in men. Nina hates her job at a fast food joint,
and her man, Koop, who dreams of being a great hip-hop d.j., is
prone to fits of un-provoked jealousy. The fifth is Moff, whose
family is down on his behavior.
9. THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL AND CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN
(1995, 95mins)
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
is a 1995 movie written by Ivor Monger, directed by Christopher
Monger and starring Hugh Grant ("Reginald Anson"), Ian
McNeice ("George Garrad"), Tara Fitzgerald ("Betty"),
Colm Meaney ("Morgan the Goat") and Kenneth Griffith ("Reverend
Robert Jones"). The movie is set in 1917 (with World War I
in the background) and revolves around two English cartographers,
the pompous Garrad and his junior Anson, who arrive at the fictional
Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw to measure what is claimed to be the
"first mountain inside of Wales". The locals ared disappointed
and furious when they conclude that it is only a hill because it
is slightly short of the required 1000 feet. The villagers, aided
and abetted by the wily Morgan the Goat and Reverend Jones (who
after initially opposing the scheme, grasps its symbolism in restoring
the community's war-damaged self-esteem), conspire with Anson to
delay the cartographers' departure while they build an earth cairn
on top of the hill to make it high enough to be considered a mountain.
The movie is based on a story heard by Christopher Monger from his
grandfather about the real village of Taff's Well (Ffynnon Taf in
Welsh), Cardiff, Wales, UK and its neighbouring Garth Mountain.
Due to 20th century urbanisation of the area, it was filmed in the
more rural Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant in mid Wales.
10. THE PROUD VALLEY (1940, 77mins, b/w)
Proud Valley was a 1940 Ealing Studios film starring Paul
Robeson. Filmed on location in the heart of the coal mining region
of Wales, Proud Valley documents the hard realities of Welsh coal
miners’ lives. Robeson’s part is based on the real-life
adventures of a Black miner from West Virginia who drifts to Wales
by way of England, searching for work. His character, David Goliath,
initially wins the respect of the very musically oriented Welsh
people through his singing (as did Robeson in real life). He shares
the hardships of their lives, and becomes a working class hero as
he helps to better their working conditions and ultimately, during
a horrifying mining accident, sacrifices his life to save fellow
miners. In Proud Valley, Robeson depicts a kind of black hero never
seen in Hollywood, one who achieves kinship across boundaries of
race and nationality. Years later, Robeson would remark that, of
all his films, this was his favorite because it showed workers in
a positive light. The Welsh actors in the supporting cast, notably
Rachel Thomas, Charles Williams, Jack Jones (who also contributed
to the script) and Clifford Evans, give the film its authenticity.
Rachel Thomas was born in Alltwen, about two miles from our holiday
cottages in the Swansea Valley.
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