The Darkest Hour, last Tuesday evening, played to the biggest audience we have witnessed since Films4Tenby began (writes J.H.). It was certainly the first time I’ve heard an audience burst into spontaneous applause as the credits went up. I suppose there is a certain demographic reflected in Tenby’s film-goers, some of whom actually lived through the events of 1940, and not many of them would say anything bad about Winston Churchill. So, what is there left to say about a film featuring a war-time Colossus, already in receipt of buckets of awards, and world-wide acclamation?

Well, I can only reiterate that Gary Oldman was absolutely superb as Churchill, and as fan of Kirstin Scott-Thomas, I have to condone the casting director who got her on board as Clemmie. I do love to see an accomplished actress - no longer in the spring of her first youth - given a role worthy of her talent. There were always whispers of the Churchill’s marital strains, and this film gave us just enough; Clemmie in her dressing gown and hair in rollers, pleading with her exhausted husband to get some sleep; berating him for shouting at, (among others), his typist, (Lily James). I liked her exhorting him to ‘act himself’ before he goes off in trepidation for his first P.M.’s audience with the king. Ben Mendelsohn, as George Vl, deserves a mention for underplaying the king’s speech defect, and for expressing regal shock and dismay over his P.M’s outbursts, until, slowly, his opinion changes, and he offers Churchill his full support. In this film, director Joe Wright has the King purporting to be frightened of Churchill, which made me wonder if it was based on any crumb of truth. I certainly did NOT think there was any truth in the London tube train scene! If Winston had sought the public’s opinion, I’m sure he had other ways, apart from riding the tube, to discover it. Dreaming it would have been equally powerful - and quite fitting for a man suffering from sleep-deprivation.

I liked the ominous tones in the music by Dario Marianelli, and the almost monochrome shots of the House of Commons - men in black waving their papers - (and one woman, as far as I could see). I liked Ronald Pickup and Samuel West as, respectively, Neville Chamberlaine, frail and fading, and Anthony Eden, in his ascendancy. Together they epitomised the politician’s lot: how fickle is an electorate which idolises its leader one moment, and casts him aside, the next, as was Winston’s fate after the war.

So director Jo Wright, (Pride and Prejudice and Atonement) got it mostly right. Would it be fickle of me to say I preferred Churchill, which Films4Tenby screened a few months back - or am I just spoilt for choice?

Our next exciting choice of film is The Sense of an Ending, a mystery drama based on the novel by Julian Barnes, 7.30 pm on Tuesday, July 3. New members welcome to join us for a pre-film drink at the bar, or why not book a meal in Fuchsias Cafe.