Product Details

• Actors: Matthew Pidgeon, Rebecca Pidgeon, Gemma Jones, Nigel Hawthorne, Lana Bilzerian
• Directors: David Mamet
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: August 15, 2000
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000372I2
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,663 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Many thought The Winslow Boy was an odd choice of material for David Mamet. It was originally a Terence Rattigan play from 1946, taken from a true incident in England in 1908 about a boy, 13, discharged from Royal Naval College for allegedly stealing and cashing a five-shilling postal order. The boy's father, Arthur Winslow (Nigel Hawthorne), mounts a lengthy and expensive legal campaign to clear his boy's and by extension his own name, with the rallying cry, "Let right be done!" The resultant notoriety, the dwindling fortune of the Winslows, as well as the punishment this pressure exacts on them, form the surface action of the story. Yet underneath the staid manners of the dialogue there roils a whole emotional life hardly hinted at in the actors' faces. The famous lawyer engaged to defend the boy, Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam), makes a suitable sparring partner for the Winslows' daughter, Catherine (Rebecca Pidgeon), a suffragette whose suitors are scared off by the family's legal battle. The unspoken romance between these two is more the point than whether right is done or not. Pidgeon brings the same inscrutable countenance that complicated her role in Mamet's previous film, The Spanish Prisoner, to this film--but here everybody seems to have it. As the differences between appearance and actuality reconcile themselves, Mamet builds bridges to his other works, House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, for instance, for the ways in which dialogue is a cover for someone's true nature. The Winslow Boy is masterful in its quiet treatment of human mysteries. --Jim Gay

From The New Yorker

Before the First World War, an English naval cadet, accused of forging and cashing a five-shilling postal order, is expelled from school. His father (Nigel Hawthorne) believes him innocent and empties the family coffers in an attempt to clear the boy's name. David Mamet has adapted and directed Terence Rattigan's 1946 play, which was based on a true story, with a fidelity so profound that one doesn't know whether to be amazed or depressed by it. Like Rattigan, Mamet ignores the question of the boy's guilt or innocence, and he reduces the public agitation surrounding the case to an off-camera rumble. The movie concentrates on Rattigan's specialty-the intense self-control of the boy's upper-middle-class family. Every scene is a tense struggle between anger and reticence, between love and self-suppression, and after a while the entire enterprise seems slightly mad. Is British reserve really such a superb moral achievement? With Rebecca Pidgeon and Jeremy Northam. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let Right Be Done, December 10, 2003

By 

Margaret Magnus (Francestown, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Winslow Boy (DVD)

I have probably watched this one 15-20 times. It's based on a true story, and there was evidently a play about it which preceded the film.

I saw it the second and the third time because the tenor was so appealing to me, the heroism of the father so compelling and the love story so masterfully executed. It could be the best ending I've ever seen on film. Furthermore, Mamet's grasp of that time and place was solid enough, that I was convinced he was born in England before the Second World War. And the acting was incredible -- particularly that of Jeremy Northam who admittedly had the best part, but also all the other major parts were played very, very well.

And then for a time with each new viewing, I saw things I hadn't seen before. The plot is so complete and well conceived, that I'm left a little breathless.

The central theme of the film, it seems to me, is "Let Right be done." Everybody gives up everything for Right. Only the incompetent maid doesn't observe any loss, though it is her unswerving faith that makes her impossible to fire. If she must go, then the point is lost somehow. So the entire ship sinks or floats as one. The father spends all the family money and sacrifices his health. The wayward older brother must leave Oxford. The daughter gives up her marriage. . All of it reasonably cheerfully. And for what? For Right. Yet on the surface, it seems "such a very trivial affair". A kid is accused of stealing a couple bucks. The discrepancy between the triviality of the case and the forces brought to bear upon it suggests something very powerful.

And then in the final sentence, everything is restored. It's beautiful.

All aspects of this problem of Right are addressed. It's not only about the comfort of the boy, whose life would be easier without the publicity. Nor is it about his honor. "The case has much wider implications than that." The father describes himself as fighting for `justice'. But it's not even about that.

It's about Right. The only thing that has the power to cause Sir Robert to show his emotions is when Right is done -- "very easy to do Justice, very hard to do Right." And I think it is because Sir Robert sees the distinction, that he is able to play the trick without losing his moral ground. He plays the trick to take control of the House of Commons, to discredit a witness, to determine whether the boy is telling the truth, and even to trip up Edmund Curry so he can seize the girl at a distance. Kate initially mistakes this trickiness for simple avarice, and although she lays into him for being so `passionless', she shares his capacity to keep a level head. Though they both do have their knee-jerk emotional responses. She falls for some guilty radical just because he takes on the establishment. And he's wrong about women's sufferage. But he shows his eligibility for her by sacrificing his career for Right. And she also demonstrates her eligibility for the big league by sacrificing for the cause of Right her only hope of a decent marriage. They make a very convincing pair.

64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let Right Be Done, July 22, 2000

By 

James Dill (Lansing, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Winslow Boy [VHS] (VHS Tape)

One of the most interesting films of '99, The Winslow Boy may not be for everyone. No cars careen around corners and explode, no guns are fired. Instead David Mamet (House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, Glengarry Glen Ross) in his movie adaption of Terrance Rattigan's ever popular British play, based on a true story, creates an English world of 1910 on the eve of WWI, women's sufferage and the rest of the modern age. With dramatic, precisely crafted dialogue he raises such questions as: the standing of the least before the highest, justice vs. moral truth, the costs of the pursuit of truth and the difficulty seperating truth from lies. Featuring Jeremy Northam (Emma, The Net), Nigel Hawthorne (Madness of King George), Rebecca Pigeon (Spanish Prisoner, and also David Mamet's wife), her brother Matthew Pigeon, Gemma Jones (Sense & Sensibility), Colin Stinton, and thirteen year old Guy Edwards as Ronnie Winslow, the accused. They all do fine job, but particularly outstanding are Northam as Sir Robert Morton, Hawthorne as the father Arthur Winslow, Jones as Grace Winslow and Edwards. Benoit Delhomme's John Singer Sargeant like cinema photography brings to life end of Victorian England. As Mamet wrote in Three Uses of the Knife: "During the O.J. Simpson case..it occurred to me that a legal battle consisted not in a search for truth but in jockeying for the right to pick the central issue."

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A quietly brilliant gem, February 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Winslow Boy [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The Winslow Boy is easily my favorite movie experience of 1999. There are too few films like this with its superb (and profanity-free!) dialogue and thought-provoking characterizations. I believe this new version's omission of the final courtroom dramatics (mentioned by an earlier reviewer) was a brilliant decision of director Mamet's. Here, the out-of-court dialogues and polite parlor interplay tell the story in crafty, ultimately revealing layers... Yes, there is a touch of ambiguity in some of the characters' motives which, for me, makes all the undercurrent discoveries more exciting and personal. These people are very real and express their feelings only to the point that real people tend to air their souls... which is to say, not that much! The subtle ambiguity reminds me of the novels of master-author Henry James. Intelligent, psychologically fascinating, detective-y almost, and romantic. It's beautifully directed -- Mamet excels at twisty, mind-bending plots and I think his trademark touches weave very well into a multi-character study like this one. The actors are universally charismatic and memorable. It's certainly Jeremy Northam's and Rebecca Pidgeon's best work... and when isn't Nigel Hawthorne amazing? He's brilliant here. And for such an elegant, mannered period movie, it gives off unexpected electricity. There's nothing like great dialogue to create great chemistry!