The Crawley English country estate in Yorkshire, England never looked so magnificently elegant.
Downton addicts would expect nothing less.
Adoring fans of PBS’s Masterpiece historical drama, after all, had to wait four long years for Downton Abbey, the motion picture, to hit the silver screen and get reacquainted with their favorite characters.
Downton Abbey ran for six seasons (52 episodes in all) that covered a 14-year period from 1912 through 1926.
The film is set in 1927. And if the wealthy aristocratic Crawley family didn’t have enough to worry about, King George V and Queen Mary (the grandparents of the current Queen Elizabeth II) are planning to drop in on the Crawley’s Jacobethan style country house while touring Yorkshire, the historic county in Northern England.
So far, the film is a smashing financial success, debuting with $31 million in ticket sales and knocking out two competing films, who were counting on a couple of heavy hitters to blow out the competition. “Ad Astra” with Brad Pitt ($19.2 million) and “Rambo: Last Blood” starring Sylvester Stallone ($19 million) fell well behind Downton Abbey at the box office in its first week.
To date, Downton has grossed $107.6 million worldwide (with $58.3 million in domestic ticket sales).
The film reviews, on the other hand, have been a mixed bag.
Arts critic Johnny Oleksinski from the New York Post gave the film one and a half stars, writing, “Julian Fellowes would have been far better off writing another relaxed Christmas special to satisfy fans. But to pump up the film’s flowery, small-screen plot, shots are overly sweeping and every character’s entrance is given a metaphorical drumroll. The sexy intimacy that made the TV show great is destroyed. Fellowes also went way too wild on the zingers, and suddenly every lady’s maid is Oscar Wilde.”
Across the Atlantic, the reviews were a bit more upbeat.
The Sun’s film critic Grant Rollings thought “It would be easy to criticize Fellowes for turning out what is essentially a two-hour long episode.” “But it was certainly wise,” Rollings continued, “not to send the Crawley's on holiday or to have them saving the world. If you long to escape explosions, political intrigue or social issues then Downton is the number one cinematic destination this weekend.’’
After reading a number of film reviews, I’m convinced a great many of these critics were never close followers of the Masterpiece series for six seasons. And some might not have laid eyes on the TV series at all.
I thought the film, given its time constraints, brilliantly delivered what it was supposed to deliver; a reunion with the Crawley’s, giving fans once last look at the magnificent English country house they grew to adore for six seasons.
The film also tied up some loose ends, such as with the once fierce Irish nationalist Tom Branson, 7 years after the tragic death of his wife, Lady Cybil Branson, finally finding (at least we hope) his soul mate (and future bride).
And we also learn that one of the kitchen cooks, the young outspoken Daisy Mason, is finally ready for marriage with, mostly likely, the raging jealous house footman.
There's no point in spoiling any other significant revelations.
Much like the TV series, the movie is well supplied with machinations, devilish scheming, and questions of where one’s loyalty truly lies, to keep viewers guessing, while being splendidly entertained with all the well-tailored regalia and flamboyance, which comes with an early 20th century fictional British aristocratic family.
Considering writer Julian Fellowes historical period drama was up against films like "Avengers: Endgame," "Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker," "Toy Story 4," "Joker" "Fast and the Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw," among other action packed movies with little substance, Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com penned the most insightful review of the film, when he wrote: "films like Downton Abbey" are a different kind of franchise product. And they deliver another definition of action cinema, one that is increasingly ill-served by theatrical films: the opportunity to watch people who are very good at ordinary, non-lethal tasks do those things with skill and imagination, even when they don't feel like it. “
Miss Susan Lawrence, left, Labour Party Vice- President, heads a group of women asking for the right to vote for Women above 21, circa 1920 in London, United Kingdom.
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If there was a disappointment with the movie, it was a minor one, and that was omitting the social history of Britain surrounding their fictional Yorkshire country estate in 1927, when the aristocratic class in the United Kingdom was fading into the thin night air.
There is a brief mention of the General Strike in 1926, a miner’s strike, which sparked fears of revolution in the country when trust between workers and politicians was crumbling. The General Strike and reconnecting with ordinary Britons was supposedly the reason that King George V and Queen Mary were touring Yorkshire.
I was a bit surprised the movie never mentioned an especially historic day in 1927, the year the movie is set in, and that is in April, 1927, when Parliament granted suffrage to women, which added five million voters to the British electorate.
You would have thought Lady Edith Crawley, the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Grantham, and former editor of a magazine publishing company, would have roundly applauded such a momentous milestone in British history.
In a portent of the future and the vile threat of Adolf Hitler just around the corner, Downton could have additionally mentioned Winston Churchill’s visit to Italy in January, 1927, when the British Chancellor of the Exchequer praised fascism and Benito Mussolini as “the right solution for Italy.” “Not only does fascism help to stabilize Italy’s economy,” Churchill reportedly said, “but it is an effective counter to Communism and an example to the world of how to deal with the red menace.”
You would never have known it by watching Downton Abbey, the movie, that in 1927 Britain was being crushed financially by the First World War. By December, 1927, Britain was paying the United States $95.5 million, a semiannual payment on its war debt; with the remaining balance totaling $4.8 billion.
It wouldn’t have hurt either if the film touched on some new trends sweeping Britain in 1927. In August, 1927, for example, The New York Times reported England’s new craze was greyhound racing, with nightly crowds of 50,000 to 100,000 and a total of 2.5 million attending in just 20 weeks. New tracks were reportedly being built and popping up like toasters.
It was in 1927, when Alfred Hitchcock’s haunting silent thriller “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog” (considered by many his true directorial debut) was first screened to the British public on January 17, 1927 at the Marble Arch Pavilion, Oxford Street, London.
Film buffs would be interested to note that this film marked the very first cameo appearance of the British born Hitchcock as he appears with his back to the camera in a newsroom.
And as a sign of how the Church was playing a decidedly diminished role in English life--in December, 1927, the House of Commons rejected the new Book of Prayer (a revised version of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of the Church of England), a book which took 21 years to put together. It was soundly rejected by the House of Commons for a second time, the following year.
The movie barely explains how the institution of household service was on the decline in 1927.
Lidia Plaza, a PhD student in British history at Yale University, tells me “the number of people working as household servants like those who appear in Downton Abbey were on the decline from 1870, and especially after World War I. “
“In part, this was due,’’ Plaza explained, “to the fact that the number of “upper class” people who could afford to or wanted to keep household servants had also plummeted. “
Another reason cited for the rapid decline of residential domestic service centered on young women’s desire for freedom, that is, to meet men in the factories, offices, and other industrialized areas of employment.
David Campion, a Lewis & Clark historian of Modern Britain and Ireland, observed that “generally speaking, in 1927, the aristocracy and gentry (people of high social class) were no more than two percent of the population and had been in steady decline for decades.” “The death tax,” Campion pointed out, “after the war eviscerated inheritances and forced the sale of some of money-losing estates. Some were taken over by the National Trust while others were sold to wealthy Americans or torn down and the land parceled into suburban subdivisions.”
Aside from the missed opportunity of not putting the year 1927 into context as far British social history goes, I thought Downton Abbey, the movie, lived up to its expectations, it didn’t try to do too much; they kept every one of the 20 returning cast members in character with their signature idiosyncrasies.
Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams advised young hitters: “Find a pitch you can hit.”
And that’s exactly what the film’s writer Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler did with dazzling success.
Most importantly, it hand-delivered a valentine to its most loyal viewers on a gold and silver platter.
Very British, indeed!
--Bill Lucey
September 30, 2019
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