This overlooked gem of 1960s filmmaking is a beautiful, bittersweet story about newlyweds Jenny (Hayley Mills in her first adult role) and Arthur (newcomer Hywel ‘Shelley’ Bennett). Their honeymoon to Majorca was cancelled, they are frustrated by their too-close-for-comfort in-laws, and their marriage has not been consummated due to Arthur’s inability to “perform”.
Hayley’s real-life father, John Mills plays Ezra, her beer-drinking, ballad-singing gasworks-working on-screen father-in-law (the greatest frustrator of all), and the wonderful Marjorie Rhodes is Ezra’s wife, Lucy, who is left to manage the household by default and is the only one to appreciate the young couple’s desperate need for privacy..
Best known for its fine, Paul McCartney-penned score and Hayley’s brief flashes of nudity (and her scandalous off-screen romance with director Roy Boulting, 33 years her senior), The Family Way is a film that straddles two eras.
Set in a tight-knit, working-class Lancashire community, it harks back to 1950s British cinema.
There are characters here (such as Wilfred Pickles’ Uncle Fred) who wouldn’t look out of place in an Ealing comedy.
Yet it deals with certain subjects that Ealing would never touch – namely, the sex lives of its protagonists.
Director/producer team Roy and John Boulting never quite fulfilled their potential. In the 1940s, they made such ground-breaking films as Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. In the 50s, though, they seemed to lose their ambition, turning to light comedy.
Jenny Fitton Hayley Mills
Arthur Fitton
Hywel Bennett Ezra Fitton
John Mills
Lucy Fitton
Marjorie Rhodes Uncle Fred
Wilfred Pickles
Geoffrey Fitton
Murray Head
Molly Thompson
Liz Fraser
Mrs Rose
Diana Coupland
Liz Piper
Avril Angers
Joe Thompson
Barry Foster
Mr Phillips
Robin Parkinson Mr Hutton
Colin Gordon Mrs Lee Helen Booth
Director
Roy Boulting
Video
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Hayley’s real-life father, John Mills plays Ezra, her beer-drinking, ballad-singing gasworks-working on-screen father-in-law (the greatest frustrator of all), and the wonderful Marjorie Rhodes is Ezra’s wife, Lucy, who is left to manage the household by default and is the only one to appreciate the young couple’s desperate need for privacy..
Director/producer team Roy and John Boulting never quite fulfilled their potential. In the 1940s, they made such ground-breaking films as Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. In the 50s, though, they seemed to lose their ambition, turning to light comedy.
Ezra Fitton
Uncle Fred
