Graham Greene
Mike Hill, who will introduce the film Twenty-One Days, when it is shown at the 2019 Graham Greene International Festival, writes:
‘On 12 January 1940, a review of the film Twenty-One Days by Graham Greene was published in The Spectator. Greene was by then almost at the end of such reviewing, a period of ‘mornings in the dark’ in which he reviewed over 600 films. He was a pungent and insightful critic, and with Twenty-One Days he pulled no punches. ‘I have no good word to say of it’, he began, and continued in the same vein. Yet the extraordinary thing about the film is that Greene himself wrote most of its screenplay. He vowed, he said in his review, ‘never, never to do it again’. But Twenty-One Days is far more, and far better, than a mere curiosity. Starring Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and a host of fine character actors, it is well worth a viewing, and Greene Festival-goers will have a rare chance to see it in 2019.’
Twenty-One Days will be shown following a meal in Berkhamsted Town Hall on the evening of Thursday September 19. The Thursday film-night is the first opportunity for festival-goers to get together socially in the iconic arts and crafts surroundings of the Town Hall. Tickets for this event are often hard to come by so when the box office opens make sure you book early.