Murder By Death

Murder By Death (Robert Moore, 1976) Neil Simon was busy in 1976. He'd seen a successful film made of his The Sunshine Boys, his play "California Suite" was opening on Broadway, and he was re-tooling an earlier scrapped screenplay "Bogart Slept Here" (that was to star Marsha Mason and Robert De Niro and be directed by Mike Nichols) to ultimately be released as The Good-bye Girl.

 

Why, in God's name, he would write a parody of the typical country house mystery during this time is a mystery in and of itself.

 

However, I suspect the motive was money. Not only that, fellow comedy writer Mel Brooks was making a mint with genre parodies (such as Young Frankenstein), so why not? And if could it generate income as an original work, all the better.

 

The material is a bit weak, the jokes sometimes thudding, and Simon is at his best doing observational comedy as opposed to sketch-writing, which this essentially is. But, he does have a fine time making fun of some basic mystery tropes, characters and mystery writers, specifically Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett.

"You are cordially invited to Dinner and a Murder at 22 Lola Lane, Saturday evening 7 P.M." says the invitation sent to many prominent detectives. The host is millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote). Using the photo above as reference, the invited guests are socialites Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith), P.I. Sam Diamond and his secretary Tess Skeffington (Peter Falk and Eileen Brennan), amateur detective Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), Belgian detective Milo Perrier (James Coco)—with chauffeur Cassette (James Cromwell's first movie!)—and Inspector Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers).* The blind butler, Jamessir Bensonmum (Alec Guinness) assists with the help of deaf and dumb kitchen-maid Yetta (Nancy Walker).

It's a wonderful cast. One wishes it was just a better movie, starting with the premise: at dinner (after various attempts on their lives) Twain appears and challenges the detectives to a sort of duel: he has come up with a mystery that he believes they cannot solve—a murder is going to occur in the house at midnight and both the killer and the victim are in that room. If the mystery is solved, that sleuth wins $1 million. The group then finds a couple of victims, disappearing bodies, disappearing rooms, and many courses of unchewable dialog and rather stale jokes.

But, it also has conflicting stories, made-up alibi's, mutually exclusive excuses, and a double-cross that should have been clever, but is only saved by Alec Guinness' sheer brio in his willingness to get laughs.

Oh, there's a couple of things that work. The mansion's door-bell is Fay Wray's scream from King Kong and that manages to be a consistent laugh just as the horse-scream whenever "Frau Blücher's" name is mentioned worked in Young Frankenstein. There's a nice gag when Nancy Walker's deaf-mute maid runs into the dining room and screams...in total silence. And the cast is uniformly game, but the stand-out is Peter Falk's Sam Diamond, evoking Bogart's gumshoes to a tee.**
 

Ultimately, Murder By Death merely kills a couple of hours.

* The inspirations for these characters are (of course) Nick and Nora Charles from Hammett's "The Thin Man", Sam Spade from Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and Earl Derr Biggers' Charlie Chan.

 

** Falk would get his own sequel of sorts—The Cheap Detective—from the same writer-director team.

Tea with the Dames

Tea with the Dames (UK Title: Nothing Like a Dame) (Roger Michell, 2018) Sometimes it's nice to look behind the curtain. To look past the artifice and see the real, and meet the illusionists who create the illusions. What they think and feel informs the art and can sometimes one can glimpse the individual choices made to produce it, what the priorities are in making it, and it can even change how one subsequently views the art.

 

And, let's face it, it's fun to get "the dish," the gossip, the dirt, which is fun and facetious and is the spoonful of spice that makes the "educational purposes" go down a little easier.

 

The late director Roger Michell had the idea to film a little ritual he'd heard about. Of how four ladies of the theater: Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench would regularly get together at the West Sussex home of Plowright and her husband Laurence Olivier, when he needed a place close to where he was directing theater. The four saw the place as a bit of an idyll to unwind, talk shop, and as a means to get away with their families. Michell wanted to film the actresses, all named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, talking in a shared space of community.

But, it could hardly be called intimate. Proving that the mere act of observing changes the outcome, the actresses are beset by make-up artists, proper lighting, weather, staging—"have you ever sat like this in your life?"—and a flurry of crew—at one point, Maggie Smith chides a set photographer for taking too many pictures in her field of view and at another, they express shock that it's the first day of one of the crew-members. One is sure that one is watching real conversations—prompted, of course—and the actresses are very forthright, but one gets the sense that they're being honest, they're holding things in reserve for good behavior.

Plowright, nearly completely blind, is imperious, but chummy, Smith is hilariously tart, Dench completely honest, and swearing like a sailor, while Atkins is unafraid to be vulnerable.

—At one point, Plowright mentions that "none of us was ever in the front ranks of great beauties" Atkins recounts hearing an overheard conversation between producer-director in an early stage role: "She's not very pretty, is she?" "No, but she's sexy." "That saved me," she confesses.

—All of them recount stage jitters, with Atkins saying that "On the way to the theater I always think, would you like to be run over now? Or in a massive car accident? And I only just come out on the side of no."

—Michell asks what it was like to work with their husbands and Smith immediately replies "Which one?"

—commenting on their physical frailties, Maggie Smith asks Plowright if she wants to borrow one of her hearing aids (as Plowright's batteries have worn out) and Dench cackles "...and we have three working eyes between us!"

—During her stage run in "Othello" with Olivier, Smith recounts how a slap delivered by him connected and she wryly comments "It was the only time I saw real stars at the National Theater" and how Olivier was always criticizing how she said her vowels, and upon walking in on Olivier applying his Moor make-up "schmudge" said "How now, brown cow?" and noting her vowels, he said "Much better!"

—Dench is forced to recall her questioning director Peter Hall to play Cleopatra: "Are you sure you want a menopausal dwarf to play this?"

Interspersed with the interviews is much archival footage and photographs in their roles throughout their careers, both on stage and in film, as well as the ceremonies where they received their respective British honors, and it's a trip to see them through various stages of their lives doing comedy, drama, even Dench's turn as Sally Bowles in the 1969 staging of "Cabaret." There's some tart chiding of Dench's seeming to now get every part in Hollywood films. The conversation is lively, but, as the documentary nears its end, one can see energies starting to flag, and silences punctuating the conversation. It's a reminder of fragility even for the grandest of dames, even at the highest of teas.

"That's RUDE!" says Dench, outraged.

They're Americans." says Plowright. "That's how they talk!"

Downton Abbey: A New Era

The Very British Art of Pre-Crying

or

"Oh! How Musical You Make It Sound!"

Well, if it is to be my fate to be addicted to SOME soap-opera, it might as well be "Downton Abbey." After all, I'm of the age for it—elderly and impatient with commercials.

 

Plus, it always was impressively cast, performed, and smartly written (by creator Lord Julian Fellowes), with enough intrigues amid the family (while also negotiating historical events) to keep the considerable cast going for six seasons of episodes.* Yes, it's soapy, and far too nostalgic for the past while also acknowledging that the way of life is, without a doubt, past its sell-date and will be replaced with less familial trappings and a more (Lords help us!) egalitarian sense that would be self-evident if one didn't live in a huge estate with a peerage and a schedule that wasn't filled with breakfasts, lunches, dinners, tea, and high tea that one can barely squeeze in a cracking round of croquet. Why, it's so precious that one could even forgive Fellowes for writing The Tourist.

 

No. No. There are SOME things that just shouldn't be allowed...even in the most liberal of households.

So, as change is inevitable, one notices that things are quite a bit different in Downton Abbey: A New Era, since the first movie which was derived from the series a couple years ago. The first thing I noticed was that the film opens on a bloody hectic "drone" shot, not the quaintly hovering aerials taken from hot-air balloons as previously. I suppose there's so much plot in this one that one felt the need to rush into it a bit with a jarring anachronistic approach with a shot through a stained glass church window. We're attending the marriage of Tom Branson (Allen Leech) and Lucy Smith—née Bagshaw—(Tuppence Middleton). Once doesn't want to get too far into the weeds here (one can attest from looking at the lingering shots of lawns that Downtown Abbey doesn't HAVE weeds) but Tom is the Irish former Downton chauffeur who married the youngest Crawley daughter (who died, leaving him with a legitimate Crawley heir) and we left the last movie with him promising to write to Lucy—maid to Imelda Staunton's Maud Bagshaw (Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen), but actually Maud's illegitimate daughter. Those letters must have been some hot stuff as, in the time one can do pre-production of a sequel, they've gone from admiring flirtation to walking down the aisle.

Oh, dear me. We ARE in the weeds, aren't we? And so soon. This is what happens when one tries to explain soap-ish operas to any level of understanding. One is conflicted between trying to be informative while also employing brevity. One can't have one without the other without appearing devoid of either. Shall we move on? To the Cliff's Notes version?

There are two plot-threads in ...A New Era (a quite neat little title), one involving the revelation that the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Grantham (Maggie Smith) has been bequeathed a villa in the French Riviera by an acquaintance from her past—a past that brings up many questions that go unanswered but much speculated on—and that comes with it an invitation to visit by many of the Grantham's to see what's what and why, while, at the same time, (in a move that surely seems "meta" to the Lord and Lady Carnarvon, who own Highclere Castle, which serves as Downton Abbey) the family has received a request to use Downton as a film location which, although on the surface feels distasteful, comes with it a generous sum that would aid in much needed repairs to the estate's leaky roof. So, while some members go off to the south of France, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), the Earl's oldest daughter, remains behind to oversee the prevention of chaos by the invading film production.

The Dowager Countess herself is too frail to travel, but is resigned to stay at home, leaving the past in the past, and the villa in the future hands of her great grand-daughter, both of whose parents are now not of her blood. It's a legacy to a family member who would otherwise receive nothing.

Her son, Robert (Hugh Bonneville) is curious to learn what the story is and begins to worry about his actual parentage, all the while being soothed by his American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), who may have medical issues of her own.

Back at the Abbey, the staff is all agog at meeting the stars of the film, a silent pot-boiler called "The Gambler," primarily dashing Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and the porcelain Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock)—who, it must be said, is something of a diva. Her manner is in stark contrast with her background, for though she is, indeed, a beauty, her accent reveals her to be a Cockney. This causes complications as the film is canceled mid-shooting as the studio is no longer interested in making silent pictures, as the market is now demanding "talkies."

Yes, they use the Singin' in the Rain gambit, where the starlet has a voice completely unsuitable to her image and post-production "dubbing" is used to temporarily solve "the problem." This is such a minor plot-point in the movie that I don't think I'm spoiling anything by mentioning it. Certainly, there are other bombshells that I won't reveal as mentioning them would surely rankle.

There is one little thing that popped into my head hours after the film, stemming from this film showing Bonneville's Lord Grantham breaking down into tears, not once but twice. It is always done in private and always in anticipation of some heart-wrenching event. And then it occurred to me—"Ah! That's how he does it!" With all the vagaries that life bestows upon him, Robert has always been something of a rock, although able to appreciate humor and irony, and quite capable of taking umbrage. But, he gets his weeping done out of the public eye, so that when disaster strikes and he must be the "7th Earl of Grantham," he can keep a stiff upper lip and present a stoic facade to the public. Jolly good show, Earl!

And Downton Abbey: A New Era is a jolly good show. It all goes down like comfort food, with just enough spice to make it memorable, but not too much to make it unpalatable. And it provides a good repertoire of memorable "catty" lines that one can use to sound snarky while appearing high-toned. There may be some continuity jumps a couple times—I think that is due to cramming so much material into a little over two hours that some connective tissue hit the cutting room floor—but, all in all, the Empire of Downton Abbey remains strong and may the sun never set on it.

* Just to show how well-cast—and inhabited—these roles are, I always find it a shock to see pictures of the actors on the red carpet in contemporary fashions. So many of them seem unrecognizable out of period clothes.

Death on the Nile (1978)

Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978) The success of the 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express—and author Agatha Christie's favorable view of it—almost guaranteed another all-star production by producers Brabourne and Goodwin and their choice for story was Christie's "Death on the Nile" to be scripted by Anthony Shaffer, who had done re-writes on the film version of Murder..., plus had written The Wicker Man, Sleuth, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, so he knew his way around murder and had a wicked sense of humor.

 

But, plans called for extensive location shooting in Egypt where noon temperatures would soar to 130°F. Albert Finney, who barely tolerated the make-up process that turned him into Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot under studio conditions, balked at having to go through the same thing in the African desert. Producers turned to the versatile double-Oscar winner Peter Ustinov to take over the sleuthing duties, and surrounded him with fading Hollywood glamor and some noteworthy youngsters.

Heiress Linnett Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) has everything she wants in the world and is a loyal and magnanimous companion. When her friend Jacqueline de Bellefort (Mia Farrow) asks Linnett if she could take her fiancé Simon Doyle (Simon McCorkindale) on as an assistant until he can get on his feet, Linnett takes one look at him and is only too happy to oblige. This she does by starting an affair with him—that's quite a benefits package she offers—then the two get married and take off for an Egyptian honeymoon.

But, they're not alone. Wherever they go, no matter how remote, they encounter Simon's jilted fiancé Jacqueline, who vows never to let them forget and who is determined to ruin their their married life. Two's a honeymoon, but three's a scandal—and possible enemy action, so the two lovers plot to ditch her by pretending to take a train at the Aswan station, but, instead, book a Nile cruise on the paddle steamer, the S.S. Karnak. Coincidentally, also sailing on the cruise is the master detective Hercule Poirot. And if you believe that, you've never read Agatha Christie. 

The honeymoon couple seem to be surrounded by acquaintances on the trip: there's Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy), who is keeping an eye on her because he doesn't want to know he's stealing from her legacy; author Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury) is being sued by Linnett for basing a character on her—she's accompanied by her daughter (Olivia Hussey); Dr. Ludwig Bessner (Jack Warden) is a psychiatrist who had treated some of Linnett's friends in the past and she'd threatened to expose him. 

Then, there's the Communist (Jon Finch), who considers the Doyle couple parasites; the socialite Mrs. van Schuyler (Bette Davis), who merely covets Linnett's jewels (as she's a kleptomaniac)—her nurse Miss Bowers (Maggie Smith) blames Linnett's father for bankrupting her father. Then there's Colonel Race (David Niven), Poirot's old friend and confidante. He's the only one who doesn't have some sort of animosity towards Linnett—and they're all on the same boat.

Then, Jacqueline joins the cruise, carrying a derringer and a marksman's ability with it. As if by clockwork, Jacqueline gets drunk the first night, confronts Simon and shoots him in the leg, and is immediately taken to her cabin and put under heavy sedation. With Jacqueline out of the way, maybe the passengers—and especially the honeymooners—can expect some peace and quiet.

Fat chance of that! The next morning, Linnett is found dead with a bullet-hole in her head, and the letter "J" written in blood within her reach. It's murder alright. And SOMEONE's responsible! But, who? And with so many ties to the dead woman among the passengers, it could be anyone, and the most likely suspect was in a morphine stupor and looked after all night by Nurse Bowers. It's up to Race and Poirot to untangle the connections and sort out the clues to determine who did what. One things for certain—no one's getting off the boat without a splash.

If only the movie were a little splashier. Oh, it has its amusements—the location work, shot by the estimable Jack Cardiff, full-on scenery-chewing by Lansbury and Davis, as well as an amusing turn by Smith. Everybody else hits their marks and don't bump into the masonry. And then there's Mia Farrow...with a performance so over-the-top that you know she's got to be the murderer even though everything points away from her. Hysterical and manic, you just know she's got to be involved somehow. Just because of a person is scheming and jilted doesn't mean the character-actor has to double-down to get the point across. 

 

And ultimately, that's the film's biggest flaw. Because if the actress is so concerned that she appear crazy, it must be pertinent, or else they'd try to appear normal.  It's as if Farrow saw the limelight falling off her and onto Lansbury and Davis and decided to overcompensate. It throws the story and the movie out of whack.

 

It will be interesting, then, to see what happens when a new version of Death on the Nile is released in February of 2022, directed by Kenneth Branagh (again, after Murder on the Orient Express) and starring himself, Gal Gadot, Emma Mackey, Armie Hammer, Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright, Annette Bening, and Russell Brand. We shall see.

Young Cassidy

Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff, 1965) The titles say "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents a John Ford Film." But John Ford only completed five minutes of it. Ford was 71 when he tackled what would be his last "Irish" film, based on "Mirror in My House", the autobiography of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (Ford had directed a film of his The Plough and the Stars in 1938—the result of which, due to studio interference, neither the director or author liked—and Hitchcock directed Juno and the Paycock the same year). For the film's purposes, the author's name is changed to John Cassidy (O'Casey was born John Casey, but Gaelicized his pen name to Seán Ó Cathasaigh), but it's O'Casey's story, and first, Richard Harris, and then, Sean Connery were in line to play him in a cast that also included Julie Christie (ever so briefly, despite her prominence in the release poster), Edith Evans, Sian Phillips, Michael Redgrave (as W.B.Yeats), Maggie Smith and previous Ford players Flora Robson and Jack McGowran. Connery, however, was in the midst of his Bond commitment (between Goldfinger and Thunderball) and barely had time to squeeze in Hitchcock's Marnie. So Rod Taylor, an actor too under-appreciated for his consistently good work, took the role instead (and probably contributed a more accurate accent than Connery's Scottish burr), turning in what may be his best performance.

It's a good film with a great cast, and an unconventional script, and one wonders what it would have looked like if the septuagenarian Ford had not fallen ill and been replaced by The Archers' favorite cinematographer Jack Cardiff.* Ford prepared the film, after all, doing the location scouting all in advance of shooting, so there are touches here and there—shots of mourning women, lots of colorful townsfolk, a brutally rapacious pair of undertakers, and a subtle death scene all feel like Ford, even if the painterly framing is missing, replaced with something a little more fussy: for example, there's a worker's strike that Ford would have probably shot using a few master shots, whereas Cardiff's style is all inserts and quick shots ala Eisenstein. Still, the man got it completed at a moment's notice, something of a miracle. And as some of the film is centered around The Abbey Theater—whose company Ford used when casting his Irish films, the film is steeped in Ford's sense of Irishness.

The film follows Johnny Cassidy (Taylor)—laborer by day and pamphleteer by night, caring for his elderly mother (Robson) trying to improve their lot through hard work and political action, training with revolutionaries in the hills, but leaving when the concern is more about uniforms than tactics in fighting the British. Pubs are the center of activity for drinking and for the airing of grievances which can result in fisticuffs. At least it's in the neighborhood, as in the streets, the fighting gets serious and deadly. Cassidy takes solace in books, though his rough appearance is out of place in book-stores, which leads to a relationship with a clerk, Nora (Smith), who finds a living example of a book worth more than its cover indicates.

Through it all, Cassidy writes, both to celebrate and inspire the Irish working class, from pamphlets to newspaper articles and poems, getting published and then turning his attention to theater-plays, where he attracts the attention of The Abbey Theater and its artistic director, W.B. Yeats (Redgrave). But, Cassidy is conflicted: he wants to be a success as a writer, but as his world and his ambitions grow, they take him further and further from his roots. And that conflicts with his romance with Nora, who sees Cassidy's true spirit, but fears she may never be a part of it...not in a lasting way. 

The story, the cast, the locations are amazing. There is just a slight lack of lyricism to the enterprise that might have been readily apparent if things had been different on-set. There's just that element of magic that's missing that would have made this a must-see, instead of a pleasant movie-watching experience.

* Ford would complete one more film, the studio-bound 7 Women (featuring Anne Bancroft in a gender reversal of "the John Wayne role"), before Hollywood put him out to "Awards Pasture" where they say they honor you, but don't hire you ("We love ya, Pappy, and you made us a lotta money and Oscars, but we don't think you should make films anymore. Have a plaque.").

Ford said after this scene: "You son of a bitch Aussie," he said. "You made me cry. That's a wrap!"

Downton Abbey

You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody
or
"Will You Have Enough Cliches To Get You Through the Visit?"

There has always been a dramatic tension about "Downton Abbey". Not the tensions between upstairs and downstairs, the privileged and the privileging, that's been done before. 

No, what makes "DA" different is its acknowledgment that the very life its depicting is going to go away, there is a built-in tension of time, that maybe these old ways are unrealistic and "we" should sell the place and get on with our lives, after all, who are we doing this for, if not ourselves. It makes all the fussing and fustiness precious—in the valuable way, not the sarcastic way.

At the same time that writer Julian Fellowes (whose conceit this is) is celebrating the old ways of the past, he is also focusing on the "becoming." Things are changing, there is the usual hesitancy, a bit of grousing (usually from matriarch Violet Crawley played by Dame Maggie Smith), but no filibuster, no stonewalling, the future is welcomed, not feared, and, who knows, something good may come of it. Carry on.

Pip. Pip. I'm not sure there HAD to be a Downton Abbey The Movie, but it's nice to see it's there and be able to partake of it, rather like observing the hoity-toityness of the British upper-class. Nice to see SOME-body's doing it, even if we don't have to participate. Sounds like a lot of work. As Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) laments: "If I know one thing about Royal visits, we will never stop changing clothes!"

What all the fuss is about...

And that is the hub of Downton Abbey the Movie: King George V and Queen Mary are visiting Downton Abbey and everyone is atwitter. It is 1927,and the King and Queen are visiting folk, and it throws the family into a position where they must serve someone, just as their staff must serve them. It is an honor, of course, but a grave responsibility and nobody is immune to the pressure. Thank goodness, the Crawley daughters, Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Edith are finally married off, so they can focus on the disruptions without dithering about their suitors.

Sure, the visit just entails a lunch and dinner (with a parade and a crowning ball), but it still throws things into a lather: everything must be cleaned and polished, the kitchen staff must be at the top of their game, despite being Royal-struck and time is short. So, of course, there must be complications. Lady Mary Crawley Talbot thinks things aren't as ship-shape as they could be, and so she recruits retired butler, Mr. Carson (the incomparable Jim Carter) to return, which puts new butler Thomas Barrows (Robert James-Collier) into a passive-aggressive snit; the cooking staff learns that meals will be prepared by the King's chef (Phillipe Spall), which turns them rebellious; the matriarch Violet Crawley is miffed that her son, Robert, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is being left out of the will of her sister, Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton), the Queen's lady-in-waiting, and is intending to have it out with her, which puts her—again—in conflict with distant cousin Isobel Crawley Merton (Penelope Wilton) who urges peace.

Then, there's the little business of an assassination attempt on the King by Irish Republicans, that involves Crawley son-in-law and former footman Tom Branson (Allen Leech), a little bother of missing pieces of finery, a conspiracy formed by the husband-wife team of Bates and Anna (Brendan Coyle and Joanne Froggatt), a potential scandal involving Barrows; and some personal problems involving specific members that does and does not threaten the future of Downton Abbey. 

And chairs. Are there going to be enough chairs?

Now, I managed to miss the entire of the final Season 6 of the series, but, as with any good soap opera, things don't move so fast that you don't pick up on the missing transitions between visits. One is merely comforted that the characters are acting just the way you left them; no matter what's happened since, they have not matured past their failings or been corrupted out of their better natures. They are constants in their tendencies and the small little bumps in the road have not altered them too much.

The presentation has changed, and changed quite a bit. The widescreen format of the film allows for more cast-members to crowd into the frame, which is always nice in an ensemble piece. The movie run-time of slightly over two hours allows for such luxuries as held reaction shots after frame-exits, and a slightly more leisurely pace. This, however, is compensated for by something that was somewhat implied in the series, but a bit limited by its format. That is something called "sweep." 

One notices this early on, as a gentler version of the series theme plays over the theater credits and one is given to rather amazing aerial shots of "the" Abbey, accomplished (if one judges by the credits) not by helicopter and not by drone, but by aerial balloon. How thoroughly precious is that? They're not even betraying the time-frame behind the scenes. And it gives those shots a serenely bold feeling as hover over the estate, presaging a camera that is constantly in motion, constantly wheeling for fear that if it stopped the whole thing might fall apart.

It gives the movie a marvelous rondeau-esque quality, reminding one that it is in the grand movie tradition of manner dramas that show the clash or new and old and the sacrifices those clashes demand. In this, we're dealing with three tiers of Class structure and the demands that each set upon the other, and how, if we all mind our manners, each supported by the other, lest the whole things collapse. And, if weakness or temerity is shown, well...there is always some one out of frame who might see things from another angle off-stage to lend assistance.

The conspiracy of support extends even farther it seems. At one point after a torrential rain soaks the Abbey at an inopportune time—the chairs!—on the eve of the grand parade, the clear skies evoke the comment "The day has dawned and the weather proves conclusively that God is a monarchist." Make that four tiers of support. God save the King, indeed.

Precious it is. But, in a world where one looks at History and one can see the inevitable march to reality where everything that can go wrong does so, the world of Downton Abbey—where everything goes right—is a comfort, a fine re-past where everything is just so...and everything is just so right. Where people of good intention have their intentions fulfilled. 

It is a fine soufflé that does not fall, a tea that is not bitter, comfort food that warms the soul and raises the spirit.

And more importantly, it isn't followed by someone asking for your support for your local PBS station.

Thank you.