World acting legend Dame Maggie Smith died recently, so I  wanted to reacquaint myself with some of her work in film.

On Amazon Prime, I saw only Ladies in Lavender and Lady in the Van as being free to me. Lady in the Van, unfortunately,  was too much of a downer for me, so I chose Ladies in Lavender, a film shot in 2003, released in late 2004, and appeared in the United States of America in 2005, to generally lukewarm reviews.

Actor Charles Dance directed. He approached Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith about the film while they were appearing together on stage in London. They immediately said yes, it was said, without ever reading the plot, such was their trust in Charles Dance. 

The reviews were unkind, likening it to a  sleepy, weepy melodrama. Seeing it with kinder eyes, I was impressed by its quiet splendor, with Judi Dench outstanding as Ursula Widdington, spinster sister of  Maggie Smith as spinster sister Janet Widdington. They seemed to be a 20th century pair of Jane Austen’s sisters from Sense and Sensibility. 

Maggie Smith had a beau who was killed in WWI, which we should remember was only about 20 years earlier. According to the plot, the film takes place in 1936 Cornwall, in a small fishing village. Ursula, never had a boyfriend,  and the implication being that she was a virgin. One dark and stormy night we saw a few young men swimming, drowning, actually, underwater during a storm. Very like Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The next morning, the optimistic, lively Ursula runs out to see the sunshine after the tempest to spot a body lying on the beach. Men are called to take the extremely young and handsome stranger into the Widdington home. And thereby hangs a tale of the naive, innocent Ursula bedazzled by the beauty of the youth. It’s a testament to the skill of Dame Judi that she became a live wire, whose emotions were electric and high-strung. Ursula became almost painful to watch as she doted on Andrea, the Polish youth shipwrecked on his way to America. The 40 year (or more) difference in their ages never stopped Ursula’s passionate love towards the youth, a passion that sister Janet frequently reacted to with a skilled blending of fright, admonishment, and pity, as only the great Maggie Smith could achieve.

The true climax of the film was when Andrea, a violinist of great talent, left to meet a famed violinist, without having time to tell the ladies he was leaving. The devastating  pathos of Ursula’s agony was shocking. Dame Judi was amazing in the scope of her grief, while Dame Maggie played the sympathetic shoulder to cry on, at considerable length, which was awesome to behold.

Critical response appeared to be largely ho-hum, a studied potboiler of hysteria, to many a critic, which totally overlooked the towering achievements of both Dames.

As his first directing assignment,  Charles Dance achieved wonders. Joshua Bell, who played the violin that Andrea Morowski supposedly played, was beautiful indeed.

All told, the melancholy story is well worth your viewing, if only to witness two giants in the acting world go for broke, with cascades of emotion.