GB
1970
1hr 35mins
Dir: Christopher Miles
Starring: Joanna Shimkus and Franco Nero
The daughter of a clergyman falls in love with a gypsy fortune-teller
Based on the 1926 D. H. Lawrence novella of the same name, this romantic drama relates the story of two sisters, daughters of an Anglican vicar, who return from overseas to a drab, lifeless vicarage in the post-war East Midlands. D. H. Lawrence set the opening scenes of his short story at Cromford station close to where he lived in Derbyshire, and in a rare effort at continuity, this is the actual railway location used in the film though for some inexplicable reason it masquerades as ‘Colgrave’. Interestingly, the scenes at Cromford featured the rare occurrence of a privately preserved steam train being filmed on BR metals during the ‘steam ban’. Industrial Peckett 0-4-0ST No.1999 North Western Gas Board with a Midland Railway six-wheel coach and a Metropolitan Railway coach were all hired from the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. The loco came by road, but the two coaches arrived by rail, and the train steamed up and down the Matlock line with a BR crew for a couple of days in June 1969.