Blade On The Feather - Dennis Potter

(If you haven't seen it.) Dennis Potter's Blade On The Feather is a 1980 play/film made for television, Philby Burgess and Maclean territory, a former spy might be writing his dangerous memoirs in an isolated house where live his personal assistant, his daughter, and his second wife. A stranger arrives.

(Recommendation.) It's the dialogue in Blade On The Feather isn't it. Dialogue like this, delivered by actors like these, is hard to come by. The ground is bare. Thank heavens surely for Donald Pleasence and Denholm Eliot at their fussy best. The dinner-gong has sounded, Donald Pleasence (Cavendish) is at table acting like an irascible master at a minor English public-school, and his Butler Denholm Eliot (Mr Hill) pours him custard on his baked jam-roll. Donald Pleasence is a man grumpy and always hungry for his pudding. Do hunt it down somewhere.

"Mr Hill!  Hurry up for goodness' sake." ( - )
"Come along Mr. Hill. A little more (custard) if you please! There is no call to be so niggardly. The pudding should float in it. Like Madagascar in the Indian Ocean."

"Certainly sir."
               

And Dennis Potter's scripts are smart. He hated people who don't think before they speak (interview). He hated girls like Phoebe Nicholls' Christabel in Blade On The Feather. Christabel is flirting in the garden with Tom Conti's Daniel. How to write a dialogue that succinctly exposes a person's failure to see the logical consequences of a stupid belief? Many writers can make a vicious point: few of them can make a vicious point wrapped in this kind of eloquence.

(Christabel) "We hate academics (here). ( - ) My father's very right-wing, as you probably know."
(Daniel) "So I'd heard."
(Christabel) "And so am I."
(Daniel) "Why not? It's all the rage."
(Christabel) "I mean some people are tall and some short. Some beautiful (telling glance) and some ugly."
(Daniel) "That's very perceptive of you."
(Christabel) "So we're all different aren't we. I mean if equality is impossible in even the most basic things, then -- "
(Daniel) "And some people are bright, some stupid."
(Christabel) "Exactly."
(Daniel) "And those who aren't blessed with the very best attributes envy those who are."
(Christabel) "(pause) That's it! That's exactly it."
(Daniel) "Which is presumably why you don't like academics."
(Christabel) "(pause) What?"
(Daniel) "Well, thus demonstrating the envy of those who make really stupid remarks, for those who actually think about what they're saying."
(Christabel) "You insolent little oik!"

By writing-in the Phoebe Nicholls character, surely Dennis Potter tilts Blade On The Feather so that it can focus-in the concept of 'care'? All the characters in the tragic episode do care about the manner in which an economy and a society are run (enough to be a traitor to it), do bother about the words others use, and about the problems of class. All the characters except Christabel - who wanders amongst them absorbed in her girlish self-centredness.

She's also a terrific foil in Blade On The Feather isn't she? The others fearful (of discovery) and alarmed - she carefree. The others driven to treachery by their concern for the group and how it organizes itself - she self-absorbed. Donald Pleasence and Denholm Eliot dry and un-sexy - she wet and with slippery lips.

(Recommendation again.) Watch Blade On The Feather again because (along with Cul-De-Sac) surely it contains Donald Pleasence's finest work? Revisit, particularly, his portrayal of abject cowardliness, his craven begging not to be executed in the summer-house, the public school-boy who, at the end, finds the courage to "play the game, old boy; play the game, now."