FROM TIME TO TIME was the directorial debut of Julian Fellowes with a cast that includes Alex Etel (Cranford), Maggie Smith, Dominic West, Timothy Spall, Eliza Bennett, Carice van Houten, Hugh Bonneville, Harriet Walter, Pauline Collins, Christopher Villiers, Elisabeth Dermot Walsh
Now available on DVD
In this second video profile found on Youtube (Ealing Studios), director Julian Fellowes discusses the challenges of working with children. In FROM TIME TO TIME, Alex Etel plays the part of Tolly, a young boy sent to live with his grandmother when his father goes missing during World War 2. He appears in almost every scene of this haunting mystery spanning two worlds, centuries apart. It was adapted from Lucy M Boston's children's classic, The Chimneys of Green Knowe.
Trubridge was delighted by Fellowes’ choice of Maggie Smith to play Mrs. Oldknow. As she explains: “Julian wrote the part for Maggie, because it was very important for us that the character wasn’t twee. Maggie has the perfect combination of a steeliness which also melts. She just breaks your heart in the end, as she and Tolly learn to love each other. Maggie was the absolute perfect casting for it and it was fantastic for us when she wanted to do it.”
Alex Etel, who plays Tolly, was excited, though nervous at first to perform with his on-screen grandmother: “Maggie has been really nice to me and shown me stuff that I’ve never seen before because she’s been in the business a lot longer. So she knows where to stand, what kind of emphasis you have to put on words, so I could always ask her how to say things – she’s always been there to help me. Also, she’s really funny and always making jokes.”
Pauline Collins, who plays Mrs. Tweedie, adds: “He’s a real old soul. Alex has a very strong centre and I think he acts with truth and that’s all that you can ask. You don’t have a sense when you’re working with him of working with a child. You’re working with an actor.”
Timothy Spall, who plays Boggis, explains: “Boggis’s family has been part of the furniture for many generations. He’s very stoical, a typical country yeoman who slowly explains to Tolly certain mysteries of the house and he talks about the people as if they’re still there. He’s very much a person who I think understands and is in tune with what Tolly’s experiencing, even though he doesn’t experience it himself.”
something gorgeous – it’s so cleverly done.”
frees her because he helps her to do things that she could not manage before.”
Fellowes adds: “The key factor of Susan is that she’s blind. It’s about freedom – Jacob’s an ex-slave who’s got away and he’s now free and he is brought to help this blind girl become free. He releases her, really. Captain Oldknow (Hugh Bonneville) spots him and knows that this is the way to bring his daughter a proper life, instead of making her dependent on nurses and nannies, and so in that sense he brings his freedom to her and they are then free together.” He continues: “It’s about empowering yourself – Jacob is empowered by Captain Oldknow and he in turn empowers Susan – so their relationship is core to the film.”Diana Boston shares details about her mother-n-law Lucy M. Boston:
She had written a couple of ghost stories and then at the beginning of the 1950s started to think about writing in earnest, mostly for financial reasons, and partly to people the house with a family. The Green Knowe books are based on the house and garden and were illustrated by her son Peter (my late husband) on whom she based Tolly. Lucy wrote about what was here and Peter drew or painted what was here. This makes it very special for visitors to the house and garden who have the chance to walk into the books. It is sometimes difficult for them to separate fact from fantasy! 
The house is a character in itself, and to this end, it was important to find the best possible location in which to shoot. Therefore, three main houses in addition to Ealing Studios were used, in order to depict various aspects of Green Knowe.
The main house where filming took place was Athelhampton House in Dorset. All the exteriors of Green Knowe are shot there, in addition to the Library and the Great Hall.
The house was built in the late fifteenth century by Sir William Martyn and it remained in his family for four generations, at which time it was passed on to four daughters, none of whom lived at the house. The four shares of the house were finally re-united in 1848, and in 1891 the house was purchased by Alfred Cart de Lafontaine who restored the house back to its former beauty. The house is now owned and run by the Cooke family, in particular Patrick and his wife Andrea, who have opened the beautiful house and extensive gardens to the public.
Julian Fellowes believes that the reason the house is so perfect, especially for this story, is because it was not touched for several hundred years while it remained as four shares. He explains: “If it had remained a gentleman’s house at the centre of the estate for a single family it would have been modernized in every period, and because the demands of what a drawing room or dining room should be, it would have been changed to meet the differing requirements of each generation. Obviously, with some houses that’s very charming, and it’s how they evolve. But in this instance it wasn’t touched until the end of the nineteenth century so here is this incredibly romantic fifteenth century house in its completely original form. These are the rooms that the subjects of the Plantagenet kings walked in. That in itself is extraordinary.” He 
continues: “I’m sure it has its own ghosts. It’s wonderfully creepy, but in a good way, with slightly cramped passages and a sense of dark, ancient nooks and crannies where strange things might take place.”
Luciana Arrighi adds: “I wanted it to feel, visually, that there’s always something just round the corner – I felt that whilst shooting at Athelhampton in any case. Athelhampton is wonderful. It’s perfect for us, because not only is it a wonderful Elizabethan house, but it looks as if it lacks one wing and so we’ve put the Georgian wing on it as in the story. Inside, it’s a wonderful house, too and we could dress it as we wished.”
Douglas Booth, who plays Sefton, found inspiration through the building: “Athelhampton is really beautiful and going into each room you can really get into your character because you can feel how people lived there. There’s so much history in the house and it makes it very interesting.”
However, although it was perfect as the ‘hero’ house for the film, it was necessary to find various other locations, as Liz Trubridge explains: “Athelhampton was perfect, but inevitably, there are some rooms and some corridors which were small and narrow, and due to some of the complexities of technical filming, we had to find a composite house, partly at Ockwells Manor in Maidenhead and also at Nonsuch Mansion in Cheam.”
Built in the mid fifteenth century, Ockwells Manor served as numerous passages, the 1944 dining room and Tolly’s bedroom in the film. It is privately owned.
Julian Fellowes explains the history of Nonsuch Manor in Cheam: “Henry VIII built the enormous Nonsuch Palace and it gradually fell into disrepair until finally Charles II gave it to one of his mistresses who sold it to builders for materials. The whole palace has therefore almost vanished. But quite nearby, still within the grounds, and built with some of the stone from the original Tudor palace, is this Regency house. It was actually built by a merchant. So there is this quite romantic but now absolutely desolate house, where once the rich laughed away the summer nights, which is now empty and falling to pieces. What we were able to do, however, was to photograph an exterior section to use as the wing that was added to Athelhampton.” In addition, the Service Wing of the Mansion has been restored and opened to the public, so all the kitchen sequences were shot there as well as the Regency dining room.
Finally, due to the complexities of trying to film people crawling through chimneys, there were a number of chimney sets built at Ealing Studios.
Julian Fellowes discusses the cinematography and production of FROM TIME TO TIME:
“I had a fantastic team on this. Really, what we were trying to achieve was a contrast between the Regency, where there’s quite a lot of money, servants and wonderful clothes, all in brilliant colours, with marvellous lighting – all tremendously romantic, in permanent summer – with Christmas 1944. There you have the war when it’s winter and there isn’t much money and everything’s rather faded and muted. Normally within a film, you establish a palette and work within that, but in this film we’re working with two contrasting palettes. It’s been interesting for me, but of course it was a challenge, because in a way the production team was designing two films. Alan Almond, our director of photography, has reflected that in the way they have photographed the whole thing. I’m thrilled with what they have come up with, I think it’s terrific.”
Producer Liz Trubridge adds: “Alan Almond has done the most beautiful job for us. He’s not scared of letting actors walk into the shadow and for this story that’s absolutely right. It’s exquisite lighting.”
Production designer Luciana Arrighi was hugely inspired by her visit to the Manor at Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire. She explains: “I had not read the books, so I immediately did so, after which we visited the original Green Knowe house, where Lucy M. Boston lived. The house is enchanting and a great inspiration for us. It’s Norman, with a Georgian façade, and it had a wing which burned down, just as in the book. Lucy M. Boston has written of the objects in the house and you see them when you visit. For me, that was wonderful, as we’ve been able to incorporate many of them into the film. For those that have read the books, they will notice there are lots of little touches that I’ve brought into the sets. We saw the original gramophone and in the film it’s there in the music room. There’s a rocking horse, Russian dolls, birdcages – all things that Lucy Boston wove into her stories. They are all incorporated and I hope it all adds a little magic.”
Arrighi continues: “For me the interesting thing was that the film goes back and forth between two eras. We decided on two looks; the bleak, cold, wartime look, in contrast to the Regency, which was full of vibrant colours in the costumes and sets. To me, that’s a very interesting part of the filming process - to keep experimenting with these looks. For example, the kitchen we have in 1809 is bustling, full of wonderful china, shining copper pots on the shelves, great baskets of foods coming in – it’s abundance galore and there are great dinner parties for twenty people being prepared every night. Then you come to 1944 and you know they’ve just been shopping and they’re bringing out the Camp coffee, the ration books are being ticked off and the kitchen is bleak. Even so, in one little corner there’s a little stove and there is a little warm corner where the housekeeper has got her magazines and radio. So it’s a very different life.”
Costume designer Jane Robinson was enticed by the challenges of the script: “It’s a beautiful script and a designer’s dream because you have the total contrast of the 1944 period with the 1809 period and Julian had some very strong ideas about the colours and tone and how to contrast the 1944 sequences, which would be gloomy, compared to the Regency period, which he wanted to be very lush and lavish and glamorous.”
She continues, on the Regency period: “Because the whole story is about the wealth of the family and the jewels, you couldn’t really dress Maria in a simple muslin dress and then have her wear big diamonds, rubies and emeralds, so we decided to notch it up and use some very strong colour for her, rather than what everybody is used to seeing from this period.”
An element of the Regency story is the theft of Maria’s fortune in jewels and Robinson very artfully met the challenge of designing realistic jewels. She explains: “Julian’s biggest concern was that we needed a large volume of jewels, but that they needed to look real and not, as Julian would say, as if Maria got them out of a Christmas cracker. I did manage to find a few really good pieces, but for the main necklace of the story I found a painting of Empress Josephine wearing a huge ruby, diamond and pearl necklace and we had that copied and that’s the feature necklace and it’s huge and hopefully outstanding.”
In terms of the Second World War story, Robinson says, “we wanted to make 1944 a little more subdued, a little sadder. A lady is losing her house, her son is missing in the war, she doesn’t really much care for her daughter-in-law. It was muted and quiet and it makes a marvellous contrast with the household in the earlier period. In addition, Julian did not want Maggie to look frail; he wanted her to look lovely. She has always been an elegant and aristocratic lady and we thought she’d have had some excellent clothes from the pre-war years.”
Currently playing in theatres in the UK,
The Genesis of the Film
Oscar for his writing of ‘Gosford Park’ that he was able more easily to raise the finance and start moving forward with the film.
to be made. Julian was so willing and had wanted to make it for so long. It just seemed like it was the right time.”
grandmother/grandson relationship, or great-grandmother in the original, is in a way rather bland; they get on very well, everything is fine and she tells him this story. That doesn’t really work in a film, as they have to have their own life.”
intrigued by the strange concept that whenever you live in a house there will be many, many people who have lived and died there before you.”
Timothy Spall (shown on right), who plays Boggis in the film, was enormously interested in the multi-layered aspect of the narrative: “It’s a beautifully told story about more than one thing. It’s a ghost story, a mystery and a very entertaining family film. But it’s also a journey about coming to terms with loss from war – the loss of a father for Tolly and the loss of a son for Mrs. Oldknow – but then being able to carry on seeing that person, or being with them and feeling them. It’s glorious.”
read-through I had tears in my eyes. I’ve never experienced that before at a read-through, but it’s very touching, especially the story between Tolly and Mrs. Oldknow.”
Julian Fellowes discusses the challenges of directing From Time To Time, his own adaptation of Lucy Boston's family favourite, Chimneys of Green Knowe. Tolly is a young boy sent to live with his grandmother at the end of the war. He discovers the secrets of the past as he pursues a mystery across time to 1809.
Julian Fellowes reveals how he reinvented the relationship between Tolly and Mrs Oldknowe (played by Alex Etel and Dame Maggie Smith) to create 'a dissonance, an electricity' that allows the cinema audience to be drawn into the film.
The film is in cinemas now. For screening details please visit http://fromtimetotimemovie.com/
