Director: Waris Hussein
Screenplay: Margaret Drabble
Based on a Novel by: Margaret Drabble
Starring: Sandy Dennis, Ian McKellen, Michael Coles, John Standing, Peggy Thorpe-Bates, Kenneth Benda
Country: UK, USA
Running Time: 107 min
Year: 1969
The thing about the 1960s British film boom is that there was so much made, that things have fallen through the cracks. 1968-1969 was in particular a time when so much was made, just as the rats were leaving the sinking ship. By 1970, most of the US studios’ British arms had been closed. So in that time, there is so much that has been forgotten.
A Touch of Love is an interesting and historic film for several reasons. Based on Dame Margaret Drabble’s novel The Millstone, it was an attempt at prestige by Amicus’ Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg to do something other than horror anthologies and sci-fi adventure films. Directed by Drabble’s college pal Waris Hussein, in his film directing debut (after years of TV work including the first episodes of Dr Who), it is one of the first British films to be directed by a non-white director.
Made for Palomar Pictures, at the time a subsidiary of the American Broadcasting Company, the film made its money back via sales to Columbia Pictures, but never did much business. Despite the presence of Sandy Dennis, then the recent Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winner for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), the film is now best remembered as a footnote. It is the first film of Drabble and Hussein’s university classmate, one Ian McKellen, in one of several films he made between 1968 and 1970, before he decided to focus on his burgeoning stage career, and aside from a few TV jobs, it would not be until the 1980s that he would start on his eventual path to belated screen stardom. Watching this film, you can perhaps see why it took until middle age for Sir Ian to become a regular in pictures. While still not publicly out, McKellen plays a bisexual newsreader/continuity announcer for the BBC. (The film makes an interesting double feature with The Killing of Sister George, another film made the same year by Palomar/ABC about an LGB BBC TV star). On screen, McKellen reads as a twink, but also looks at times like a scary butch lesbian. That slight androgyny might have been seen as too uncomfortable for some people at that time, and perhaps made some people doubt Sir Ian’s versatility.
However, the film is a vehicle for Dennis. She plays Rosamund, a young Englishwoman who loses her virginity in a tumble with McKellen’s George Matthews, and becomes pregnant. Thus the film is about Rosamund deciding to become a single mother and fighting the establishment. Though at thirty-one, slightly too old (especially for the sub-St. Trinian’s schoolgirl flashback moment), Dennis, always a captivating if sometimes slightly hammy performer, manages to convince as British. The rest of the cast is solid. Eleanor Bron plays her friend, Margaret Tyzack and an uncredited Penelope Keith nurses, while Amicus veterans John Standing, Michael Coles (resembling an if wet David Warner) and Maurice Denham feature. However, the film feels a bit lacking. It feels a bit ordinary. Hussein’s later films like Quackser Fortune Has A Cousin in the Bronx (1971), Melody (1971) and The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972) all have things going for them and quirks that make them memorable little pictures. A Touch of Love doesn’t. While all those films delve into worlds rarely seen in films (70s working class Dublin, working class London school kid romance, the Puerto Rican New York Santeria community), A Touch feels ordinary and is a rather inconclusive film.
While decent, one can see why this film sank into oblivion. However, like so many films that flopped, it is a time capsule of 60s Britain (especially anything that features the slanted BBC logo).
A Touch of Love is available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital on 17th March, courtesy of Studiocanal.
Blu-ray/DVD SPECIAL FEATURES
• NEW A Woman’s Right to Choose: An Interview with Waris Hussein
• NEW Adapting the Millstone: Interview with Dame Margaret Drabble
• NEW Sir Ian McKellen: A Touch of Love
• Q&A with director Waris Hussein and actor Sir Ian McKellen recorded at the BFI Southbank in 2018
• US Theatrical Trailer
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