his three-part miniseries begins with elderly Lady Slane (Wendy Hiller) sitting watchfully by the deathbed of her husband. Tended by her equally aged French maid Genoux (Eileen Way), who has served her faithfully for a lifetime, Lady Slane deals with a succession of advice from her large flock of middle-aged children. The family is chagrined by, but honors, her choice to live a modest country retirement at some distance, in Hampstead Heath. Lady Slane competently comes to terms to lease and restore a crumbling house, aided by an aging land agent Gervase Bucktrout (Maurice Denham). Once settled, an acquaintance from 50 years past, Mr. Fitzgeorge (Harry Andrews), visits the cottage to rekindle memories of their brief, deep, but unfulfilled brush as soul-mates in colonial India when Lady Slane was a devoted young wife and mother. Great-granddaughter Deborah (Jane Snowden), who has been trapped by a socially desirable but passionless engagement, regularly visits to confide and seek wisdom.
At the turn of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo (Mark Frankel), Raphael (Andrea Prodan), and Leonardo Da Vinci (John Glover) create their masterpieces, while dealing with religious persecution, political turmoil, and the discovery of America.
Based on a true story, this film depicts the life of Ted Bundy, the serial killer. In 1974, after having murdered several young women, he leaves Seattle for Utah, where he is a law student and where other girls disappear.
The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune.
Something very common in our days, an adolescent who does not find communication with her mother or stepfather falls into a depression that drags her down paths of difficult return.
This film deals with the contrasts of the Wilhelminian era in Berlin: the splendor of the monarchy, the economic and intellectual vitality of the up-and-coming imperial capital on the one hand, and the misery of the proletarians in the tenements on the other.
What are Ilona Herfurt and her boyfriend Dietmar Freistrath doing in the old mine? Where does the money come from that her son Jimmy finds under the newspaper? Where have the unique and intricately carved works of art, often passed down for generations, disappeared to from the village in the Ore Mountains? What do the carver Gerlach and his foster daughter llona have to do with it? Questions upon questions that are burning under the detective's nails.
Plumber Martin and his younger colleague Frank are on call on Christmas Eve of all days. Frank's girlfriend Regina, who is expecting her first baby at any moment, is anything but thrilled.
Writes Viola: "Sodium Vapor was recorded over a period of several weeks in the hours between one and five in the morning on the streets of an industrial area in lower Manhattan.
Comments
Have you watched All Passion Spent yet? What did you think about it?
