A Voyage Round My Father

TV Movie
1982
Not Rated
1h 20m

IMDb RATING

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Laurence Olivier and Alan Bates in A Voyage Round My Father (1982)

Before creating the beloved courtroom drama Rumpole of the Bailey (1978), writer John Mortimer found inspiration in his own life for this portrait of a difficult but enduring love between fa... Read allBefore creating the beloved courtroom drama Rumpole of the Bailey (1978), writer John Mortimer found inspiration in his own life for this portrait of a difficult but enduring love between father and son in mid twentieth century Britain. Screen legend Sir Laurence Olivier stars as... Read allBefore creating the beloved courtroom drama Rumpole of the Bailey (1978), writer John Mortimer found inspiration in his own life for this portrait of a difficult but enduring love between father and son in mid twentieth century Britain. Screen legend Sir Laurence Olivier stars as the eccentric patriarch, a blind barrister so stubborn and cantankerous that he refuses t... Read all

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.2/10

236

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Won 1 BAFTA Award
- 4 wins & 5 nominations total

Trivia
The house in which the family lived is the house in which author John Mortimer and his parents lived, and where the author lived until his death in 2009. The gardening hat that Sir Laurence Olivier wore belonged to John Mortimer's father.

Quotes
Clifford Mortimer: This coffee's frozen, like a sort of Arctic mud.

Connections
Featured in Great Performances: Laurence Olivier: A Life (1983)

User reviews4

Review

Featured review

8/10

His world went dark

We have it from no less than the author himself that John Mortimer preferred Laurence Olivier's film version of A Voyage Round My Father to what Alec Guinness who created the role for the London stage did back in 1971. I can certainly see Guinness in the part with his own interpretation, but Olivier doing this in the twilight of his career is certainly something to see.

It's staged differently the accident. According to Wikipedia Clifford Mortimer hit his head on the roof of a London Taxi in 1936 and detached the retinas in both eyes. His world went dark permanently after that. In the film Mortimer hits his head on a tree branch. But Mortimer being the irascible iconoclastic sort that he was just never gave into it. Not only did he not acknowledge the blindness, but wife Elizabeth Sellars and son Alan Bates never could either and weren't allowed to. No training in braille, no seeing eye dogs, Olivier only uses a walking stick to warn him of obstacles ahead. He continues the practice of law quite successfully.

Olivier was 77 when he made A Voyage Round My Father and while he doesn't do all that well at a younger age, when he grows into the part where his real age and his character's age blend he's absolutely superb. His scene with Jane Asher when he's "looking" her over as his prospective daughter-in-law is the highlight of the film for me.

Note should also be given to young Alan Cox who plays young John Mortimer who grows up to be Alan Bates. Done for Thames television A Voyage Round My Father is one great television drama.

John Mortimer is best known for creating Rumpole Of Old Bailey which is popular on both sides of the pond. You can see a bit of Leo McKern's Horace Rumpole in what Olivier does.

A must for Horace Rumpole's legion of fans.