The hint is clear enough: Waugh, and Waugh alone, was of vintage stuff. Now, thirty years later, he would sit in solitude, grasping his glass, bullishly proud that there was nobody present who deserved to share a drop.
At Oxford in the nineteen-twenties, Waugh had chosen his friends on the basis of their ability to handle, or entertainingly mishandle, the effects of alcohol “an excess of wine nauseated him and this made an insurmountable barrier between us,” he wrote of one college acquaintance. In anticipation of the event, he wrote to a friend, Brian Franks, with a description of the menu, closing with the words “Non Vintage champagne for all but me.” Rarely has an edict been issued with such a firm smack of the lips, yet nothing could be sadder.
It does suffer a bit from some of the trappings of an "older" film, but for those who appreciate film and literary history.you're in for a treat.In July, 1956, Evelyn Waugh gave a dinner party for his daughter Teresa. There are also cameo's galore throuhout the film. A young Robert Morse (of Mad Men fame) is superb as the lovable, but bumbling Englishman trying to make sense of it all. This was my first time seeing Jonathan Winters in a (mostly) serious role and he was quite good.
Written as only Evelyn Waugh can write, we are forced to step back and really take a look at the absurdities of certain people, places and social interactions. Thanks goodness he did as the results are hilarious. I find the idea ammusing that the whole concept for the novel on which this film is based, sprung from Waugh's brief experience in Los Angeles while trying to get a film version of Brideshead Revisited put together, Legend has it that he was so taken aback by his experience with the film indurtry and of attending just ONE Hollywood style funeral (with all of it's trappings) that he had to write about it. Evelyn Waugh's clever and at times scathing look at both the film and funeral industries.
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