LEAVE ALL FAIR

Rights Information
Year
1985
Reference
F5726
Media type
Moving image
Item unavailable online
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Rights Information
Year
1985
Reference
F5726
Media type
Moving image
Item unavailable online
Place of production
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Categories
Feature
Duration
1:28:00
Production company
Pacific Films in association with Goldeneye S.A.R.L & Challenge Corporate Services
Credits
John Middleton Murry: John Gielgud
Marie Taylor: Jane Birkin
Katherine Mansfield: Jane Birkin
Andre De Sarry: Feodor Atkine
Young Middleton Murry: Simon Ward
Director: John Reid
Producer: John O'Shea
Associate Producer: Dominique Antoine
Associate Producer: Craig Walters
Assistant Director: Claire Lusseyran
Photography: Bernard Lutic
Cameraman: Allen Guilford
Art Director: Joe Bleakley
Screenplay: Stanley Harper
Screenplay: Maurice Pons
Screenplay: Jean Betts
Screenplay: John Reid
Sound: Robert Allen
Music: Stephen McCurdy
Editor: Ian John

Englishman John Middleton Murry visits his publisher in France to approve a new edition of the works of his late wife Katherine Mansfield. Ever since her death in 1923, Katherine has haunted Murry’s imagination. Murry is startled when he finds that his publisher’s companion, Marie Taylor resembles Katherine and is also a New Zealander. At first fascinated by the old man, Marie grows angry when she learns Murry profited after Katherine’s death by publishing what she termed the “scraps” she asked him to destroy. Gradually she comes to see Murry as a self serving monster who tailored Mansfield’s work to the market and tailored their love story to his own needs.

“A contemporary feminist response to Mansfield and the spirit of this Newish World merge in the script, accentuating the corruption of the old, male and literary world in which the story is set. John Reid’s direction dramatises the issues in the material with flair and authority and serves his exceptional actors well in this haunting and thoughtful film” - Bill Gosden, Wellington Film Festival programme, 1985.