God Rot Tunbridge Wells!
United Kingdom
1985
119 Min
Color
1.78:1
English
Synopsis
Shortly before death, George Fredrick Handel (1685-1759), old, blind, portly, sometimes raging and usually reflective, narrates a look back over his life. As he tells his story, his music plays as background or is performed on screen. As a youth, he is Buck, a prodigy, attractive to women and to patrons. He travels from Halle to Italy then to London, where he finds himself completely at home. He composes constantly. He pleases princes and dukes; he displeases prelates and critics. He’s in court to defend his copyright. He makes and loses money; he engenders a cat fight between two divas. At the end of his life, he observes that he helped the English with their religion. —IMDb
Director
Tony Palmer
Tony Palmer is a British film director and author. His work includes over 100 films, ranging from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to his classical portraits which include profiles of Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, John Osborne, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Yehudi Menuhin, Carl Orff, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He is also a stage director of theatre and opera.
Among over 40 international prizes for his work are 12 Gold Medals from the New York Film Festival as well as numerous BAFTAs and Emmy Awards. Palmer has won the Prix Italia twice, for A Time There Was in 1980 and At the Haunted End of the Day in 1981. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary citizen of both New Orleans and Athens.
From Cambridge University (where he was also President of the Marlowe Society), he joined the BBC. Following an apprenticeship with Ken Russell and Jonathan Miller, Palmer’s first major film, Benjamin… read more
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Stu Witmer
15Jul11
OK presentation of G. F Handel's personal memoirs ("almost"). With Trevor Howard doing a fine job chewing through a script by playwright John Osborne. Summed up nicely by the phrase "It was always my policy, even as a small boy, never to willingly fart in front of ladies." Not that there's anything wrong with the visuals but it may have been better as a radio play.
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