mark-rojinsky

This period drama features stolid BBC production values and what seems to be an accurate account of the life and career of David Lloyd George, a topic which was part of my A-level History course. Welsh actor Philip Madoc is excellent - he really gets the exposition, Welsh eloquence and sense of ''self'' and mission right. I admired the war-time scenes in the trenches of Flanders and public speeches. The Churchill character complements the young sandyhaired English actor Simon Ward's patrician Tory style in the classic 1972 cinematic biopic ''Young Winston'' directed by Sir Richard Attenborough. A terse evocative theme tune by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone was a hit in the UK pop charts.

Joanne Woodward's performance as a maudlin, melodramatic and drunk widow and mother of two young daughters is certainly telling. The film depicts dysfunctionality, a sense of closure rather than opportunity in life and emotional abuse with many comedic touches and records the 'feel' of '71-72 that greyest of hippie years so well. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's young daughter, Nell Potts plays the blonde thoughtful 'Matilda' who shows a keen interest in biology and astrophysics: hence the film's title. Wallach (daughter of Eli Wallach - he was in Leone's ''The Good the Bad & The Ugly'' (1966)) plays the swarthy, lively but epileptic 'Jessica'. Woodward won the Best Actress Award at the '73 Cannes Film Festival. 1972 was an interesting year for Paul Newman: the excellent modern-day western ''Pocket Money'' and revisionist western ''The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean'' were shown in cinemas that year.

An amusing and engaging adventure film from 1973 also known as ''Bar Silver''. This was Kirk Douglas's second adventure film from the early-'70s and is a stablemate to the Jules Verne adaptation ''The Light at the Edge of the World'' (1971). It combines Robert Louis Stevenson's novel ''Treasure Island'' with the western. Produced by Douglas's own Bryna company and Italian backers the film features impressive stunt-work and action shots, evocative sea and landscapes: it was filmed in the Balkans between June and September 1972, a talking parrot, the Douglas family's pet black labrador ''Shaft'', hidden treasure, English youngsters Lesley-Anne Down and Mark Lester ("Oliver" (1968)) plus the chubby diminutive Italian-American actor Danny De Vito (''Flyspeck'') while Douglas sports a striped dark blue-and-white t-shirt and leather jerkin and salt-and-pepper beard and hair. He later remarked that the most effective thing in the film was his pirate character's wooden-leg! The early-'70s were pioneering years.