Brideshead Revisited (1981) (TV)

Posted By : isabeau | Date : 19 Mar 2008 09:58:00 | Comments : 4 |

Brideshead Revisited (1981) (TV)

5.28 GB | DVDRIP | AVI | XviD 1.1.0 Beta 2 | 720 x 576 | 25 fps | MP3 44100Hz 96 kb/s tot , Joint Stereo | Audio: English
Genre: Drama

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Charles Ryder (Irons) is a melancholy British army officer in 1944. He has been assigned to move his brigade headquarters to a new location, a magnificent castle called Brideshead, the former home of the Marchmain family. Upon seeing Brideshead, he is swept back in time to his youth in 1922 when he was a student at Oxford. While there he meets Sebastian (Andrews), the youngest son of the Marchmain family. Sebastian takes him into the world of the privileged and introduces him to unbridled pleasures and charm. Charles is welcomed into the Marchmain family, despite Sebastian's displeasure. Over the next twenty-two years, Charles plays an integral role in the Marchmain family affairs. He evolves from Sebastian's dearest companion, to Sebastian's sister Julia's (Quick) fiancée. He begins his journey with this family as a modest student and develops into an architectural painter, then to an army officer. Throughout the decades, he battles with his own struggles with being an agnostic as compared to the Marchmain family's devout Catholicism.

This is a compelling epic and an enticing story. Over a whopping eleven hours, you really get to know Charles through his development from a naive student to a dejected and jaded middle-aged man. The locations are incredible! Castle Howard stood in for Brideshead. It is a remarkable palace and is still a pilgrimage site for fans of the series. It was also shot on location in Venice, Malta, Gozo, and throughout the UK. -- Igraine

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Narrator/star Jeremy Irons is initially seen as a grim, middle-aged British Army officer taking charge of a new bivouac site in and around a nearly abandoned mansion called Brideshead, where many of the key events of his life occurred. He retreats into his memories of the place: As a shy, bookish Oxford student in the early 1920s, he meets one of the heirs to Brideshead, a sweet, childish lord (Anthony Andrews) who introduces himself by drunkenly vomiting through Irons' window from the courtyard outside. Putting the awkward start aside, Irons and Andrews become best friends, gradually shedding all their other companions. But members of the latter's family, particularly his charming but domineering mother (Claire Bloom), make their own claims on Irons, and in spite of Andrews' mounting jealousy and depression, Irons permits himself to be seduced by their world of casual privilege, their measured kindness, and the differences between them and his own cold, subtly belittling father (John Gielgud). Andrews' health deteriorates as he lapses into aggressive alcoholism, and he pushes Irons away, but Irons' association with the family continues throughout several decades of social and political upheaval, leading up to WWII and the return of exiled family patriarch Laurence Olivier. Waugh famously commented that fewer than six Americans would understand Brideshead Revisited, and to some degree, he had a point: Class issues, historical pressures, religious concerns peculiar to early-20th-century Britain, and a panoply of unspoken societal obligations and social mores color every quiet interaction. Even during the series' tensest moments, the conversational volume rarely rises above a polite murmur; between the actors' dry, drawling accents and their vocal restraint, the words they're saying are occasionally as much of a puzzle as the complicated subtexts behind those words. Still, the smooth, subdued, masterfully acted series brims with universal themes: love, duty, faith, change, and the mixed pains and pride of family relationships. The comedy is subtle (with John Grillo a particular highlight as an intolerably ingratiating, social-climbing Oxford don) and the drama often even subtler, but the dialogue and characterization are outstanding, and the stars' quintessentially British politeness just emphasizes the seething emotions that social conventions force them to hide. -- Tasha Robinson, August 5th, 2002

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Directors: Charles Sturridge, Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Writers: Evelyn Waugh (novel), John Mortimer (adaptation)
Jeremy Irons... Charles Ryder
Diana Quick... Julia Flyte
Roger Milner... Wilcox
Phoebe Nicholls... Cordelia Flyte
Simon Jones... Lord Brideshead 'Bridey'
Anthony Andrews... Sebastian Flyte
Charles Keating... Rex Mottram
John Gielgud... Edward Ryder
Claire Bloom... Lady Marchmain
Jeremy Sinden... Boy Mulcaster
Mona Washbourne... Nanny Hawkins
Michael Bilton... Hayter
John Grillo... Mr. Samgrass
Nickolas Grace... Anthony Blanche
Jane Asher... Celia Ryder
Laurence Olivier... Lord Marchmain
Stéphane Audran... Cara
Jenny Runacre... Brenda Champion

More info - http://imdb.com/title/tt0083390/

Awards for this series