Wales on the Big Screen
Picture credit: WalesOnline
AMERICAN INTERIOR (2014)
In 1792, John Evans, a farmhand from Snowdonia travelled to America to discover whether there was a Welsh-speaking Native American tribe walking the Great Plains. Over 200 years later, distant relative Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) retraces the explorer’s route through the continent by means of an investigative concert tour. A unique project that blurs the boundaries of music, literature and film and investigates what really happened in the heart of the new world.
A RUN FOR YOUR MONEY (1949)
The Welsh answer to Ealing classics such as Whiskey Galore! and Passport to Pimlico – both of which were released the same year – this silly romp follows two Welsh miners on their misadventures in London after winning a newspaper competition to watch Wales play rugby at Twickenham. A bit patronising, but worth tuning into for cameos from late greats such as Alec Guinness and Hugh Griffith.
AUGUST (1996)
Russian playwright and master of misery Chekhov got the north Wales treatment courtesy of Anthony Hopkins, who directed and starred in this Victorian adaptation of Uncle Vanya. It’s somewhat stagey and gets a little bogged down by the heaviness of the source material, but at least the Port Talbot legend has fun, larking about like a proper old ham or ranting and raving like a lunatic.
A WAY OF LIFE (2004)
Leigh-Anne is 17, and the mother of a six-month old baby, Rebecca. She lives in a run-down council flat in Cardiff and her life is filled with bleakness and insecurity. She is convinced her neighbour Osman is trying to get Social Services to take her daughter away. Enlisting the help of three friends she aims to ensure Osman does not undermine her. Little does she realise the consequences of her actions. Former child star Amma Asante’s first movie as writer and director, A Way of Life won her numerous awards, both in the UK and internationally.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (2011)
The fifth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, based on the Marvel Comics superhero character Captain America and starring Chris Evans, is filmed almost entirely in the UK. The big outdoor scenes of arctic wastes and rugged mountains were filmed using impressive green screen techniques in the studio, while London, Manchester and Liverpool all stood in for ‘Brooklyn’. The Marvel Studios production also dropped in to Wales and the village of Caerwent, between Newport and Chepstow, where an old military base was transformed into the ‘Hydra’ compound where Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is held, and from which Johann Schmidt/Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) escapes in his proto-helicopter.
CARRY ON UP THE KHYBER (1968)
Producer Peter Rogers said he had been thanked by an Indian living in the UK for showing them the ‘old country’, India, in this classic Carry On. Rogers did not have the heart to reveal that the film was shot in Snowdonia, where the Watkin Path played the part of the real Khyber Pass in Afghanistan.
The 1968 picture stars Carry On regulars Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims and Peter Butterworth. Cast and crew lodged at the Royal Goat Hotel in the Gwynedd village of Beddgelert and at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Llanberis for the shoot.
A plaque was unveiled in 2005 in the area to mark the spot where most of the filming took place. Angela Douglas, who played Princess Jelhi, unveiled the tribute to the film, the 16th in the pun-laden series.
A little known fact about Carry On Up The Khyber is that the soldiers’ costumes were borrowed from the 1964 war classic, Zulu, which recounted the battle of Rorke’s Drift, one of the most famous episodes in Welsh military history.
CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010)
The Dinorwic slate quarry in Snowdonia is a fairly popular shooting location in north Wales, as it can be transformed to look like almost anywhere, including, in this case, ancient Greece. The mythological tale of Perseus was retold, with Liam Neeson playing Zeus and Sam Worthington portraying his son, Perseus. Shooting took place in both the slate quarry and Newborough Forest on Anglesey, which doubled as the movie’s volcano scene. The Hollywood blockbuster was reported to have boosted the local economy by more than £1.25m.
First Hydro, owners of the Dinorwic site, were paid £50,000 for the use of its land, which was earmarked for community grants. The company’s Tony Thomas said: “We stipulated that Warner Brothers hire cars, Portacabins and security from local companies and use local hotels and food suppliers. We get lots of requests to film here, but we normally say no unless we can see there’s a benefit to the area.”
The quarry, home to the National Slate Museum, also appeared in Willow (1988) and Street Fighter (1994).
In 2011 Trefil Quarry, Tredegar, provided a barren rocky landscape, with added derelict temple, for the filming of the Warner Brothers production of Clash of the Titans 2: Wrath of the Titans.
COLIN (2009)
Reportedly shot for a mere £45 on borrowed kit and utilising a cast of mates, Swansea-born Marc Price’s ultra-rough zombie movie incredibly managed to get a screening at the Cannes Film Festival and a selected national cinema release. An obscure must-see for gore aficionados.
COMING UP ROSES (1986)
Shot in Aberdare and screened at the Cannes Film Festival, this low-key comedy sees two employees of a dilapidated valleys cinema try to save it from the wrecking ball. The second Welsh-language film ever released in UK cinemas, it’s a warm nostalgic hark back to days when the picture house was the hub of the local community, before the ’80s advent of VHS and recession.
DARK HORSE (2015)
The epic tale of a racehorse whose tumultuous life journey became a symbol of hope for the Welsh syndicate who invested their hearts (and their last penny) in him. Selected for Sundance 2015.
DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)
Penbryn Beach in Ceredigion serves as a stand-in for North Korea in the 20th Bond film, directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Pierce Brosnan. The celebrities may have long since moved on but this beautiful beach, owned by the National Trust, is still a great spot for the other kind of stargazing – it’s almost completely unspoilt by light pollution.
FLICK (2008)
An undead rockabilly out for revenge is hunted down by a female American cop with one arm. This skewed low-budget shocker – shot around Pontypool, Newbridge and Caerphilly – managed to get Tinseltown legend Faye Dunaway on board to play the handicapped US cop. Acclaimed crooner Richard Hawley also pops up as a DJ whose tunes prove that rock ‘n’ roll really is the devil’s music.
GRAND SLAM (1978)
Despite being thrown together on a minimal budget, this rugby comedy about four men who fly to Paris to see Wales play France in a Five Nations Championship match that will decide the Grand Slam title, still commands a great many Welsh people’s affection more than 40 years later.
That’s largely due to great naturalistic comic performances from the cast, including the great Windsor Davies, and breezy direction from the late John Hefin. Indeed, anyone who’s ever urinated en masse against the side of a coach bound for an international match will – to paraphrase the film’s Maldwyn Novello Pugh – feel it “get them right where they live, kid”.
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, Parts 1 & 2 (2010/2011)
The Harry Potter series of films chronicles the adventures of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the final film instalments of JK Rowling’s fantasy epic, our wizards are transported to a beach from Malfoy Manor which was filmed on location at Freshwater West, within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. In Deathly Hallows Part 1, Harry, Ron and Hermione escape to the beach from Malfoy Manor to Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour‘s safe house, Shell Cottage. Complete with three-storey attic, shell-tiled roof and crooked chimneys, it was built on the sandy dunes behind Freshwater West beach in April 2009 and deconstructed after filming finished. Although the house was a temporary set, it is possible to visit the beach to see where the action happened, including the emotional scene where Dobby the house-elf was buried (see picture below).
HEDD WYN (1992)
The story of a young poet in north Wales who is competing under his bardic name of Hedd Wyn (Welsh for ‘blessed peace’) for the Chair, the most coveted prize of all in the National Eisteddfod, but is called to war. Produced for the Cardiff-based Welsh-language television channel S4C, Paul Turner’s anti-war biopic holds the honour of being the first Welsh-language film to be nominated for the best foreign language film at the Academy Awards. The English-born Welsh director, Turner, has long been a proud advocate for Welsh nationalism, and his moving portrait of the life and tragic death of poet Ellis Humphrey Evans (Huw Garmon) makes much of the central character’s unease at the fervent British/English nationalism prevalent at the time of the Great War.
Evans was renowned and adept at penning verses in which faith and nature were prominent themes. Having composed a number of poems relating to the First World War, he was subsequently killed during the Battle of Passchendaele, thus robbing Wales of one of its most distinctive, sensitive and intelligent voices. Evans was posthumously honoured at the 1917 National Eisteddfod.
HIGHLANDER (1986)
Highlander is well over 30 years old yet still enjoys a very strong cult following, with fans loving the fantasy storyline and the action-packed movie. The film stars Sean Connery, Chris Lambert, Clancy Brown and Roxanne Hart. The final climactic scene was filmed in Sychnant Pass, which winds through the Snowdonia mountain range in the beautiful Welsh county of Conwy.
HOUSE OF AMERICA (1997)
Throughout his eclectic 20-year directorial career, which has included the IRA thriller Resurrection Man (1998) and the undervalued horror movie My Little Eye (2002), Cardiff-born filmmaker Marc Evans has periodically focused on tales set in his Welsh homeland. The documentary Beautiful Mistake (2000), musical Hunky Dory (2011) and the British-Argentine co-production Patagonia (2010) have all revolved around issues pertaining to his fellow countrymen from various walks of life.
Evans’s downbeat but impressive first outing, House of America – which scooped four awards at the 1998 BAFTA Cymru ceremony and won Evans himself the best directorial debut gong at the Stockholm International Film Festival – is a dour tale of a dysfunctional family living in a run-down mining town. National identity, and the inherent pride or lack thereof in being Welsh, is a key theme in a tale in which an absent father, American pop culture and diminishing opportunities also play important roles in shaping the lives of the characters.
HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941)
The winner of five Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, John Ford’s adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley is one of its legendary director’s most captivating human dramas. Though a fictional tale, Llewellyn’s source novel was drawn from the author’s memories of summer visits to his grandfather’s in the south Wales mining village of Gilfach Goch.
Recounted in flashback, with a voiceover narration by the older Huw Morgan (voiced by Irving Pichel), this tale of the hard-working, close-knit Morgan family and the changes forced upon them and their local village community’s way of life over a number of years is seen through the eyes of the young Huw (Roddy McDowall). Stirring, sentimental and performed by a strong cast including Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara and Donald Crisp, this is a working-class drama that was an early eulogy to an industry 40 years before Margaret Thatcher put the final nails into its coffin.
The outbreak of World War II prevented Ford filming on location in the Rhondda, plumping instead for a replica mining village being built in California’s San Fernando Valley.
HUMAN TRAFFIC (1999)
Five friends spend one lost weekend in a mix of music, love and club culture. A landmark film covering the British club culture scene. A low-budget, turn-of-the-millennium tale of a drug-fuelled wild weekend in Cardiff, Justin Kerrigan’s saucer-eyed cinematic calling card helped kick-start the careers of everyone from John Simm and The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln to Danny Dyer. Sadly, it would be over a decade before Kerrigan made good on its promise with a follow-up, I Know You Know.
HUNKY DORY (2011)
Like Glee on the Gower, this Bowie-inspired high-school musical is a sentimental treat for those old enough to have grown up with Grease and remember the asphalt-melting summer of ‘76. It was written by Laurence Coriat and directed by Welsh director Marc Evans. Minnie Driver’s accent is great as she plays a teacher in a Welsh comprehensive school, coaching her pupils through life and an upcoming sixth-form production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Retro fun all round.
I KNOW YOU KNOW (2010)
Shot in Port Talbot, the second film from Human Traffic’s Justin Kerrigan – which won a Welsh Bafta – saw Trainspotting’s Robert Carlyle play a jobless Welsh dad whose Walter Mitty-esque stories of being an MI6 spy lead his young son to suspect he’s slipping into mental illness. Carlyle would later call the bittersweet coming-of-age tale the best thing he’s ever done.
IRONCLAD (2011)
The first film to be shot at Dragon International Film Studios – aka Valleywood – near Bridgend, this medieval swashbuckler saw the three-month construction of a gigantic castle set in nearby countryside. Starring Paul Giamatti, Brian Cox, Derek Jacobi and Aneurin Barnard, it told the tale of a small band of rebel warriors under siege from the might of villainous King John and his mercenary armies. Critics dubbed it “The Dirty Dozen, but with dungeons”.
JABBERWOCKY (1977)
Featuring an ensemble of British small screen sitcom favourites like Harry H Corbett (Steptoe and Son), John Le Mesurier (Dad’s Army), Warren Mitchell (Til Death Us do Part) and Rodney Bewes (The Likely Lads) and Monty Python cohorts Michael Palin and Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam’s imaginative, blood and mud-soaked Dark Ages fantasy paved the way for Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Poor apprentice Dennis Cooper (Palin) determines to prove himself in order to win his love, Griselda Fishfinger (Annette Badland), and eventually finds himself pitted against the titular monster which is terrorising a whole community.
The medieval locales are conjured up from two separate castles in south Wales. One is Chepstow Castle, the other is Pembroke Castle, renowned as the birthplace of King Henry VII. Dennis finally confronts the terrifying Jabberwock at Bosherston Quarry, about seven miles south of Pembroke.
Gilliam would return to Wales for his 1981 epic fantasy Time Bandits, where Napoleon (Ian Holm) would watch little people hitting each other from Monmouthshire’s Raglan Castle.
JOURNEY’S END
Set over four days during World War I, this feature-length version of the play by RC Sheriff stars Paul Bettany and Sam Clafin and uses a litany of Welsh locations as evocative war-time backdrops. National Trust property, Tredegar House in Newport was transformed into a military base for the film. With 90 acres of parkland surrounding the grand 17th-Century house, the expanse of green proved the ideal choice for the garrison scenes. Pinewood Studios, Cardiff, Old Beaupre Castle, Cowbridge and Neath Abbey also stand in for northern France throughout the film.
JUST JIM (2015)
Caerphilly actor Craig Roberts followed up his big break in the US – starring in the likes of Red Lights with Robert De Niro and Seth Rogen comedy Bad Neighbours – with this directorial debut in his home town. The Newport-born 20something plays a lonely teen whose life is transformed by the arrival of a mysterious new American resident, played by Emile Hirsch.
KELLY & VICTOR (2012)
Director Kieran Evans, from St Davids, won a Bafta for this gruelling drama about a young couple’s doomed and destructive affair. Unflinchingly explicit and disturbing, this adaptation of Aberystwyth author Niall Griffith’s 2002 novel is certainly not for everyone, but as first features go it’s an impressive piece of work.
KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD (2017)
In April 2015, filming for this big-budget epic fantasy action-adventure took place in Snowdonia, where locations used were Vivian Quarry near Llanberis, Tryfan, Nant Gwynant, near Beddgelert, and Capel Curig in Conwy.
Director Guy Ritchie chose the north Wales region for his interpretation of the King Arthur legend, which starred Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law and Eric Bana.
Originally, the film, which grossed $148 million worldwide, was meant to be the first in a six-film franchise, but the planned sequels were cancelled after it underperformed at the box office and made a loss for Warner Bros and Village Roadshow Pictures.
LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER – THE CRADLE OF LIFE (2003)
Another one of the many action films shot in Wales, Snowdonia played a starring role in this epic sequel based on the popular video game series. Angelina Jolie, playing Lara Croft, spent 10 days filming in the region, joining an impressive list of Hollywood A-listers – such as Richard Gere, Sean Connery and Ingrid Bergman – who have been attracted to north Wales.
Main filming locations included Pen y Pass, Ffynnon Llugwy and the Alexandra Slate Quarry near Carmel, where a 100ft drop down a cliff was filmed. A motorbike race was filmed at Pen y Pass, which posed as the Great Wall of China (with a little help from CGI). At least 50 hoteliers, restaurateurs and suppliers were reported to have benefited from the shoot.
The producers had previously been denied permission to shoot the $100m movie in China, where the story is set, so a mock Chinese village was created at Llyn Gwynant, near Beddgelert, and Chinese extras were hired to play farm labourers.
This was not the first time Snowdonia had been used as an alternative China – Swedish Hollywood legend Bergman famously filmed The Inn of the Sixth Happiness in the area, based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, a Cockney British maid who became a missionary in China.
Jolie herself would later return to north Wales to film The Fever which was released in 2004. Scenes for the movie, starring Vanessa Redgrave, were filmed at Penmon on Anglesey.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life was a box office hit, making $156.5m.
LOCKE (2013)
A film about a concrete specialist driving through the night from Birmingham to London – and set entirely in said car – doesn’t exactly sound enthralling. However, Tom Hardy excels as tortured Welshman Ivan Locke, facing up to the consequences of his recent actions and the ghosts of his past.
MONSTERS (2010)
Gareth Edwards, who hails from Pontypool, shot this indie sci-fi road movie on a micro-budget, creating all the special effects on a laptop in this bedroom. Telling the tale of a couple’s desperate dash across a Central America now overrun by crash-landed alien life forms, it saw Edwards courted to later direct massive box office hits like Godzilla and Star Wars: Rogue One.
MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
Monty Python’s controversial religious satire – which remained banned in Aberystwth for 30 years – was directed by and starred Colwyn Bay’s own Terry Jones. The Welshman also stars as both Brian’s hideous mum – “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!” – and the ill-fated ‘hermit in the pit’ whose 18-year vow of silence is broken when Brian jumps down to escape a crowd of unwanted disciples and lands on his foot. Sublime subversive silliness, even today.
MR NICE (2010)
Based on the book by Howard Marks, Rhys Ifans takes on the title role. Ifans portrays Marks, a Welsh marijuana smuggler who ran one of the biggest global cannabis smuggling operations from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, mostly while on the run. Like Marks’s 1997 autobiography on which it is based, the film polarised critics.
MY BROTHER THE DEVIL (2012)
Set in London’s East End, Swansea-born writer/director Sally El Hosaini’s gritty urban drama about one young man’s submergence in a life of crime and its ramifications on the sibling who hero-worships him, is a scrappy but energetic affair. Not many, if any, Welsh films have dealt with the issues of Muslim culture and machismo in such a frank fashion, and coming a year after the London riots gave it extra oomph.
ONLY TWO CAN PLAY (1962)
Peter Sellers plays a frustrated small-town librarian from south Wales who idles away his days dreaming of bigger things and ping-ponging between his put-upon wife and a glamorous other woman. With a rather forlorn feel, this Kingsley Amis farce sees the ex-Goon at his most impressively restrained, his accent pretty much nailing the sing-song cadences of the valleys locals.
ON THE BLACK HILL (1987)
Subsequent to the publication of his novel On the Black Hill in 1982, author, journalist and travel writer Bruce Chatwin was of the impression that his sprawling tale of 80 years of life for a family living in rural Wales would be too difficult to adapt for the big screen. Having met Cardiff-born television and film director Andrew Grieve, and heard his passionate ideas for a filmed version, however, Chatwin gave his blessing to Grieve’s proposed project and even travelled around to view locations and converse with the locals during pre-production.
On the Black Hill is an engrossing and evocative tale set in the Welsh borderlands of Herefordshire and Radnorshire. The region’s stunning landscapes, beautifully photographed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, provide the backdrop to the trials and tribulations of the Jones family. Headed by puritanical farmer Amos, performed with committed intensity by Bob Peck, the Jones family experience feuds, romances, estrangements and two world wars, all the while tending to matters on the previously vacant farmstead ‘The Vision’. Grieve’s personal ties to the land and its people shine through in a film that matches its source material for insight, emotional heft and poetic beauty.
PATAGONIA (2010)
Starring Matthew Rhys and marking pop star Duffy’s acting debut, Marc Evans’s visually arresting road movie tracks two very different couples’ move from Wales to Argentina and vice versa. A bit ponderous, but the stunning cinematography and little-seen exotic settings carry the film through. Selected for both the London Film Festival and the Seattle Film Festival.
PREVENGE (2016)
Shot in and around Cardiff, comic actress Alice Lowe’s dark pre-natal horror – a pregnant woman becomes convinced her unborn child is commanding her to kill – walks the same queasily funny tightrope as her other best-known role as a murderous caravaner in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers. It may not be for everyone, but this critically-acclaimed hidden gem is worth checking out by those with a taste for the twisted.
PRIDE (2014)
This heartwarming culture-clash comedy tells the little-known story of the bond that formed between striking Welsh miners during the 1980s and the London-based gay and lesbian group which fought their corner and helped raise them much-needed funds. Aiming, and largely succeeding, to evoke the same winning formula as The Full Monty and Brassed Off, Pride benefits hugely from a cracking all-star cast, from Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton to Paddy Considine and Dominic West.
REBECCA’S DAUGHTERS (1992)
Referencing the incident in 1843 when Welsh labourers turned cross-dressing avengers to overthrow the setting up of much-hated toll-gates on rural highways, this sees Peter O’Toole have a ball as the perma-tipsy and money-grabbing Lord Sarn, while rugby legend Ray Gravell gives a rare display of acting chops in this adaptation of a Dylan Thomas short story.
RESISTANCE (2011)
Michael Sheen and Andrea Riseborough star in the moving adaptation of Owen Sheers’ acclaimed novel, set in the aftermath of a Nazi invasion of Britain. Women in a Welsh farming community in the Black Mountains develop a tense relationship with their invaders after waking one morning to find all their husbands have vanished. Cold and bleak, it’s a stylish and poetic look at how things might have been.
ROBIN HOOD (2010)
Directed by Ridley Scott, the story follows Robin Longstride, played by Russell Crowe, who is a common archer in the army of King Richard the Lionheart. A veteran of Richard’s crusade, he now takes part in the siege of Chalus Castle. When invited to give an honest view of the war, Robin and his comrades find themselves thrown into the stocks. The film’s beach-based fight scenes depicting the French invasion of southern England were recorded over two months at Freshwater West, on the Pembrokeshire coast. Crowe reportedly loved his time on the Welsh coast so much that instead of being helicoptered back to his London hotel after filming, he opted to camp on the sand for several nights.
SECOND BEST (1994)
Quite what attracted Oscar-winning Kiss Of The Spider Woman actor William Hurt – here disguised by tight corkscrew curls and NHS specs – to this gentle indie drama about a Welsh sub-post master trying to adopt an emotionally disturbed foster child is anybody’s guess. Unkind critics believe, however, that an even bigger enigma was Hurt’s accent, which was described as sounding like it came “from Aberystwyth via Cork by way of Minsk”. Filming took place in Knighton, Powys.
SEPARADO! (2010)
Super Furry Animals’ frontman Gruff Rhys takes a tour across Argentina in search of long-lost family. Eccentric and offbeat, as may be expected of the oddball performer, this low-budget, fish-out-of-water road movie/documentary is a treat for fans and non-fans alike.
SET FIRE TO THE STARS (2014)
Elijah Wood plays John Malcolm Brinnin, the US academic who curated Dylan Thomas’s sozzled sojourn in America in the 1950s. That Swansea manages to double up as New York is a miracle in itself, while the striking black and white photography and jazzy Gruff Rhys score really help to bring it to life.
SHOW DOGS (2018)
The filming for this controversial live-action canine comedy saw Hollywood stars Will Arnett and Natasha Lyonne descend on Cardiff Bay, where the city’s historic Bute Street doubled up as a setting for a New York police station for some exterior scenes. The film follows a Rottweiler police dog and his human partner who go undercover at a prestigious dog show to stop an animal smuggling activity. Shortly after its release, the film came under fire when some critics and parents’ groups accused it of including a scene normalizing child grooming. The studio apologized and recut the film, quickly re-releasing it. Despite this false start, the film grossed $39 million against its $5.5m budget.
SLEEP FURIOUSLY (2008)
Gideon Koppel’s poetic, elegiac documentary portrait of the ailing Dyfed farming community of Trefeurig. Similar to mining, agriculture and the communities for which the farming industry is its lifeblood have undergone many crippling and/or fatal changes over the years and Koppel allows these points to emerge from his film with an unforced subtlety. The seasons pass, the mobile library makes its monthly visits and the local school faces closure as the lure of urban life and the lack of local opportunities threaten to extinguish Trefeurig’s way of life for good. The weight of time, the bonds of history and the resilience of the locals emerge as key themes in one of modern British documentary film-making’s finest achievements, dubbed the anti-blockbuster of the 2008 summer release schedules.
SLIPSTREAM (2007)
The cinematic equivalent of Tarantula – Bob Dylan’s compendium of experimental poetry – this vanity project saw Anthony Hopkins take on both writing and directing roles. A surreal stream-of-consciousness head-scratcher with no discernible plot, Hopkins called it simply a “bit of fun”, and fans of David Lynch’s arch-oddness could definitely do worse than give it a try.
SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (2012)
This dark fantasy film, starring Kristen Stewart, is based on the German fairy tale Snow White. In a twist to the Brothers Grimm rendition, the Huntsman is ordered by Ravennna, the Evil Queen and powerful sorceress to take Snow White into the woods and kill her. The Huntsman however becomes Snow White’s protector and they begin a quest to vanquish the Evil Queen. The horseback battle scenes for the movie were filmed at Marloes Sands, in Pembrokeshire.
STARDUST (2007)
Stardust (no relation to David Essex’s 1974 British musical drama) begins in the English village of Wall, a countryside town which borders a magical kingdom called Stormhold. One night, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he will retrieve a fallen star in return for her hand in marriage. This magical sci-fi/fantasy film contains a scene filmed in the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range in south Wales. In the film, Yvaine and Tristan walk through the National Park above Llyn y Fan Fach (Welsh meaning, ‘lake of the small beacon-hill’).
SOLOMON A GAENOR (1999)
This sombre star-crossed lovers story sees a young Orthodox Jew (Ioan Gruffudd) fall in love with a girl from an impoverished valleys mining family (played by Nia Roberts). A turn-of-the-century take on forbidden love, director Paul Morrison does well to stay away from the usual genre tropes, while the two young leads turn in impressively committed performances.
SUBMARINE (2010)
Having made his name on screen in the likes of The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley and The IT Crowd, and having cut his teeth off-screen shooting music videos for acts such as Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend, Richard Ayoade graduated to fully-fledged film director in confident style with Submarine. Adapted by Ayoade from Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 coming-of-age novel of the same name, Submarine is seen through the emotional, hormonal eyes of 15-year-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) and plays out in 1980s-era Swansea. As much influenced by the French new wave and Wes Anderson as it is by any aspect of British cinema, Ayoade’s film is stylish, funny and touching. Teenage desire, crumbling adult relationships and the spectre of death are addressed in a narrative in which all the characters are refreshingly, recognisably flawed. Both the source material and its adaptation breathe new life into well-trodden themes.
SVENGALI (2014)
Merthyr’s own Jonny Owen’s story of a small-town chancer striving to make it big in the music business first found a loyal fan base as bite-sized ‘webisodes’, and this celluloid version struggles to fully capture that rough-hewn charm. However, Owen’s likeable and energetic central turn as indefatigable dreamer Dixie, alongside cameos from Vicky McClure and Martin Freeman, make this a must-watch for those vinyl junkies for whom Mod was God and the Bible a copy of Melody Maker.
TAKE DOWN (2016)
South Stack Lighthouse on the isle of Anglesey was used as a location for filming in 2014 for a thriller also known as Billionaire Ransom, starring Gossip Girl and J Edgar star Ed Westwick and British actor Ashley Walters.
THE BAKER (2007)
Damian Lewis plays a disaffected hitman lying low in a small Welsh village where he’s mistaken for the new baker by the locals. The Ealing comedy vibe doesn’t really work, although the home-grown cast – Brian Hibbard, Steve Speirs and William Thomas, among others – are good fun.
THE BLUE SCAR (1949)
Known primarily as a documentary filmmaker and screenwriter, Jill Craigie both penned and directed the fictional proto-social realist drama, Blue Scar. Symbolically named after the colour that miners’ wounds would turn upon healing, Craigie’s tale played out in a small Welsh village where the local pit had recently been nationalised. The first British film to feature a score composed by a woman – Grace Williams – Blue Scar threads its evenly balanced questioning regarding the pros and cons of nationalisation through a romantic narrative involving ambitious miner’s daughter Olwen (Gwyneth Vaughan) and the more traditional Tom (Emrys Jones). Performed by a mixed cast of professional and non-professional actors, and partly funded by the National Coal Board (NCB), Craigie’s drama foregrounds verisimilitude and the day-to-day issues facing working-class mining families nationwide at the time. The past, present and future of both the individual characters involved and their community as a whole is explored in what remains a bold, intelligent, but sorely undervalued work.
THE CORN IS GREEN (1945)
Screen siren Bette Davis – who had real-life Welsh roots – reins in her melodramatic leanings to play a schoolteacher determined to bring education to a remote mining village. New York actor John Dall plays the gifted colliery worker (whose accent wanders everywhere from Ballymena to John O’Groats) who inspires her to persevere in the face of great opposition from the local pit-owners. Based on a 1938 semi-autobiographical play by Welsh dramatist and actor Emlyn Williams, who grew up in the impoverished mining town of Mostyn, in Flintshire.
THE CORN IS GREEN (1979)
The Conwy Valley was said to have captured Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn’s heart when the screen star turned up in north Wales for the filming of this 1979 remake.
In 1978, Hollywood icon Hepburn arrived unannounced at an Ysbyty Ifan farmhouse, accompanied by renowned director George Cukor, to ask permission to use the property in their film.
Hepburn seemed to fall in love with Wales, and was evidently very fond of farm’s host family as she mentions them in her autobiography called Me – Stories of My Life.
She wrote: “Hafod Ifan – which was owned by the National Trust and run by a family named Hughes. It was a farm where they raised Welsh Blacks. A very busy working farm.
“The Hughes family consisted of Mr and Mrs Hughes, a very pregnant daughter (Nerys), and her son of about two, who spoke only Welsh.
“The family never riled. Always fun. Bringing out coffee. Tea. Wonderful currant cake – this really was a sensation.” As for Wales, the actress wrote: “If you like real air and every colour of green, Wales is the place to go. Believe me when I say that it was intoxicating. The air pure and so invigorating. The water soft. Sheer heaven. Lifted the soul. The beauty of life. The wonder.”
The Hughes’ pregnant daughter, Nerys, would later recall: “Katherine had no airs or graces, she’d sit on top of the stairs chatting away to me and my mother and asked all sorts of questions about the farm. When my baby was born she sent over a bottle of champagne, and until the end of her life would write letters and Christmas cards.”
THE DARK (2005)
Set in Wales, but filmed on the Isle of Man, this effective horror creepily evokes Celtic myths with its tale of grieving parents who come to fear their missing daughter, presumed drowned, is actually trapped in a shadowy parallel world called Annwyn. Sean Bean spends most of the time running around looking confused, while Maurice Roeves’ familiar craggy face turns up as a local farmhand with a dodgy Welsh brogue and a veritable graveyard of skeletons in the closet.
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)
Wales is home to many rare bat habitats but none rarer or more famous than the home of Batman himself. When Hollywood blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises hit cinema screens the Caped Crusader’s legendary lair would have looked very familiar to many in Wales. That’s because Henrhyd Falls in the Brecon Beacons (south Wales’s tallest waterfall at 88 feet), doubled as the Bat Cave in the big-budget film starring Christian Bale.
Cinemagoers would have seen the movie’s stars disappear behind the waterfall and enter Batman’s incredible hideout. Amazingly that is no camera trick as any visitor to this magical place can do the same and disappear behind a curtain of white water. Once you walk behind the falls you find yourself in space more vibrant than any film set, where darkness glistens, light sparkles and water thunders down like the river’s own heartbeat.
THE EDGE OF LOVE (2008)
Keira Knightley is part of the tempestuous love triangle involving Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) and his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller) in this film set in London and Wales and based loosely on events in the life of poet Thomas.
THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN (1995)
Set in 1917, Hugh Grant stars in this good-natured comedy about an English cartographer tasked with having to tell inhabitants of a Welsh village that their beloved mountain is to be downgraded to the status of hill. Said to be based on a story heard by the film’s director Christopher Monger from his grandfather about the real village of Taff’s Well, in the old county of Glamorgan, and its neighbouring Garth Hill. Due to 20th Century urbanisation of the area, it was filmed in the more rural Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant and Llansilin in Powys. Key scenes were filmed in the charming seaside town of New Quay during 2007. The unit also spent time in Cardigan, Tenby, Laugharne, Betws-y-Coed, Swansea and Cardiff, and stayed at Ty Mawr Mansion in Cilcennin, Lampeter.
THE HALFWAY HOUSE (1944)
A 1944 British drama directed by Basil Dearden and starring Mervyn Johns, his daughter Glynis Johns, Tom Walls and Françoise Rosay. The film tells the story of 10 people who are drawn to stay in an old Welsh countryside inn, The Halfway House.
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (2005)
The $100m grossing sci-fi comedy, from the mind of Douglas Adams, starring Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Anna Chancellor, John Malkovich, and the voices of Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren, Thomas Lennon, Richard Griffiths, Ian McNeice, Bill Bailey and Alan Rickman. The story follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman, but also other major characters such as Ford Prefect; an alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and a researcher for the eponymous guidebook; Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford’s semi-cousin and the Galactic President; the depressed robot Marvin the Paranoid Android; and Trillian, formerly known as Tricia McMillan, a woman Arthur once met at a party in Islington and the only other human survivor of Earth’s destruction. Wales has its claim to fame here as some of the scenes were shot on location at Trefil Quarry, Tredegar.
THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS (1958)
Swedish Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman became a familiar fixture near Beddgelert, in Gwynedd, while filming location shots for this film about a British maid who becomes a missionary in China in the run-up to WWII. Remarkably, the north Wales countryside of Snowdonia and the slopes of Moel Dyniewyd proved a perfect double for the Shanxi province. A Chinese fort was built at Nantmor, near Beddgelert, and a Chinese village appeared on the terraced working of a nearby copper mine. A gold-painted statue of Buddha used on a set for the film is now located in Portmeirion.
During filming, Ingrid Bergman was often spotted at the Porthmadog Snack Bar. Owner Jane Mary Jones told the Caernarfon and Denbigh Herald in 1997: “She’d often come in for a cup of coffee. I remember she had a lovely complexion. She’d just sit there quietly and nobody would bother her. There was a lot of excitement in the area at the time.”
However, the film was the second most popular movie at the British box office in 1959 and earned its director, Mark Robson, an Oscar nomination. Robert Donat and Bergman both received Golden Globes nominations.
THE KEEP (1983)
’80s horror doesn’t come much schlockier that this odd outing from Miami Vice’s Michael Mann, in which a platoon of Nazi officers fall foul of a malignant presence in a deserted citadel in WWII Romania. Oddly, the film was actually shot in a former slate quarry in Llanberis and Llechwedd Slate Caverns near Blaenau Ffestiniog. Less surprisingly, heavy rain blighted the production and caused severe delays to its completion.
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2014)
The movie stars Alexander Skassgard, Margot Robbie and Samuel L Jackson and tells the familiar story of the King of the Jungle. Filming took place for a week at the old Dinorwic Slate Quarry in Snowdonia. Film fans wanting to take a look where the shooting took place can follow the public footpaths, but will probably need a lot more clothes than Tarzan did.
THE LOST WEEKEND (1945)
Neath-born Ray Milland was one of the stars of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ and won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of alcoholic writer Don Birnam in this seminal film noir. One of only two Welshmen, along with Sir Anthony Hopkins, to have won the award, he is probably best-known for plotting to kill his wife in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder.
THE MACHINE (2014)
Not only chosen by major film studios as the filming location of choice for worldwide blockbusters, Wales has also been utilised by many smaller, independent films such as The Machine by Red & Black Films. The Machine, written by Welsh filmaker Caradog W James, is an award-winning sci-fi film set in an impoverished world that has been plunged into a Cold War with a new enemy. Britain’s Ministry of Defence is on the brink of developing a game-changing weapon and their lead scientist Vincent McCarthy (Toby Stephens) provides the answer with his creation ‘The Machine’. The Machine won three BAFTA Cymru awards, Best of UK Film Award at Raindance Film Festival and Achievement Against the Odds Prize by the British Independent Film Awards. Other independent sci-fi films such as Dreck by TSquared Films have also been filmed in Wales.
THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)
Once feared to be a ‘lost’ film, and something of a damp squib at the American box office on its initial release, James Whale’s gothic chiller is now regarded as a formative entry into that particular genre. Atmospheric, possessed of a wicked streak of black comedy and tightly directed, this 71-minute Universal horror can be seen as a blueprint for any and all of the creepy-old-house movies that have followed. Adapted from JB Priestley’s 1927 novel Benighted, and featuring an impressive ensemble cast headed by Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and Gloria Stuart, The Old Dark House sees numerous travellers taking overnight refuge in the titular dwelling during a particularly fierce storm in a remote part of rural Wales. Rather than a restful night, however, the guests of the bizarre Femm clan experience a night of psychosis, obsession and dangerous familial secrets that threaten the safety of everyone present.
THE PROUD VALLEY (1940)
Produced by Michael Balcon for Ealing Studios, the south Wales-set mining drama The Proud Valley would be one of only three films directed by the talented Pen Tennyson before his career was tragically cut short when he was killed in a plane crash in 1941. Shot on location in the Welsh mining heartlands, Tennyson’s tale of resilience and self-sacrifice starred Paul Robeson in his first film after a self-imposed two-year hiatus from the big screen.
Robeson was cast as miner and singer David Goliath; a role loosely based on the experiences of a black American miner whose search for work took him all the way to Wales. Socially conscious and progressive in its depiction of working class and black characters, The Proud Valley focuses on daily hardships, clashes between the workers and management, and the shared pride of those in the male voice choir, before a fatal accident at the pit and the outbreak of the Second World War overshadows all that has come before.
Celebrated bass singer Robeson, who had a deep bond with south Wales’ mining community in real life, makes this worth seeing with a quietly heroic performance.
THE RAID (2012)
What do Hirwaun in Aberdare and ultra-violent Indonesian martial arts films have in common? Gareth Evans, that’s what. The Valleys director made a huge name for himself when he wrote and directed this Asian thriller about a small SWAT team assigned with taking on a tower block filled with bad guys. The stunt choreography put even Far East legends like John Woo to shame.
THE SECRET GARDEN (2020)
The fantasy comedy-drama tells the classic story of an orphaned girl living with her uncle and cousin, then uncovering a secret garden and the tales that go with it. The fourth adaptation of the novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett stars Julie Walters and Colin Firth. The production crew used Colwyn Bay’s world famous Bodnant Gardens, a National Trust site near Conwy, for a few scenes in the film.
THE WOLF MAN (1941)
Another of Universal’s classic horrors to be set in Wales was George Waggner’s hugely influential The Wolf Man. Both commercially and critically more successful than the studio’s initial venture into lycanthropic themes, Werewolf of London (1935), Waggner’s much-loved film saw Lon Chaney Jr cast as the eponymous creature, a role he would subsequently reprise for Universal in four more horrors during the 1940s.
Returning to his ancestral family home in Llanwelly after the death of his brother, John Talbot (Chaney Jr) builds bridges with his estranged father Sir John (Claude Rains) and becomes enamoured of local lass Gwen (Evelyn Ankers). A conflicted and tragically doomed Talbot is pulled apart by desire and psychological torment once a ‘wolf-like’ creature passes on its deadly curse when he intervenes during an attack on a villager.
This Universal Pictures horror classic, which also featured the legendary Bela Lugosi, was followed two years later by the similarly Wales-set Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman. Keeping the Welsh theme, it was remade in 2010 with Sir Anthony Hopkins in full gothic mode as a family patriarch with a penchant for sprouting fangs and howling at the moon.
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)
One of the most famous movies filmed in Wales, the limelight was on Snowdonia National Park (and Pierce Brosnan) for this 19th James Bond film. Snowdonia’s majestic landscape was used to represent Kazakhstan and Cwm Dyli was the exterior of the oil pipeline in the film.
TIGER BAY (1959)
Twelve-year-old Hayley Mills made a Bafta-winning screen debut in this story of a young girl who witnesses a murder in Cardiff’s docklands and strikes up a strange friendship with the killer, a Polish sailor. The grungy, multicultural backdrops of Tiger Bay are a refreshing change from the way Wales had otherwise been portrayed to that point.
TWIN TOWN (1997)
Dubbed the ‘Welsh Trainspotting’, Kevin Allen’s anarchic cult black comedy crime picture has one of its lead characters mockingly refer to the film’s main setting, Swansea, as a “pretty shitty city”. Populated by a rogues gallery of junkies, small-time gangsters, corrupt coppers and pensioners with a fondness for magic mushrooms, Twin Town was never going to be a film that the local tourist board would be banging the drum for.
The movie made a star of Ruthin’s Rhys Ifans as one half of the car-stealing, drug-smoking Lewis twins, the gangly actor headbutting his way into the nation’s consciousness. Real-life brothers Rhys and Llyr Ifans, Dougray Scott and William Thomas take prominent roles in Swansea-born Allen’s feature film debut, which also contained a small but memorable cameo from his older brother, comedian Keith Allen.
The chaos begins when junkie brothers Jeremy and Julian (Rhys and Llyr respectively) unsuccessfully attempt to seek compensation from a crooked local businessman for a workplace accident that injures their father ‘Fatty’ Lewis (Huw Ceredig). A tit-for-tat war rapidly escalates in this joyously scabrous tale.
UNDER MILK WOOD (1972)
More recently given a saucy revamp by Twin Town’s Kevin Allen, this original big-screen version of Dylan Thomas’s perennial radio play may be very much of its time, but the all-star cast make it hard to beat. Despite the presence of Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole, Sian Phillips, Victor Spinetti – and David Jason – it flopped at the box office, but has since built a reputation, a la Citizen Kane, as a film no self-respecting movie-lover will admit to not having seen.
UNDER MILK WOOD (2015)
A radical and surreal version of the Dylan Thomas masterpiece, featuring Rhys Ifans and Charlotte Church. This latest version was filmed largely in the Pembrokeshire village of Solva during the summer of 2014. Two versions of the film were shot, one in English and the other in Welsh (known as Dan y Wenallt). Dan y Wenallt was put forward for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2016 Oscars. The film was first shown simultaneously in Cardiff and Theatr Gwaun in the Pembrokeshire town of Fishguard, before being shown around Wales in December 2014 as part of the centenary celebrations of Thomas’s birth. It received its official UK premiere in June 2015 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
UNDERTAKING BETTY (2002)
It cost £5m, won a Welsh Bafta and had an Oscar-winning cast, but this black comedy about two rival valleys undertakers ended up buried six feet under by distribution wrangles. Originally called Plots With A View, it featured Hollywood’s creepiest character actor, Christopher Walken, as a brash American mortician who muscles in on Alfred Molina’s village business by offering fantasy funerals to the local bereaved. It’s worth watching just for Stan Stennett’s reaction to his wife being given a Star Trek-themed send-off.
VERY ANNIE MARY (2001)
This broad, but likeable comedy from Rhyl’s Sarah Sugarman stars Rachel Griffiths as a klutzy late-bloomer who dreams of finding independence and moving out from under her domineering father (Jonathan Pryce). Unashamedly feelgood, its tonal shifts from physical farce to pathos don’t always work, but its heart is in the right place.
WILLOW (1988)
Although Willow was considered a critical flop, the movie has gone on to gain a huge cult following and effectively launched the career of Warwick Davis. The movie was written by George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard, two of the 1980’s big-hitters in Hollywood. Nockmar Castle plays a large role in Willow and the shooting location for the castle was actually in the Snowdonia National Park.
WONDER WOMAN 1984 (2020)
When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, Diana, an Amazonian warrior in training, leaves home to fight a war, discovering her full powers and true destiny. The latest Wonder Woman sequel, starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine, had certain shots filmed in Snowdonia. The crew filmed in the area during June 2019 and were using the famous Swallow Falls waterfalls for a fight scene, with one of the stuntmen apparently jumping across the fall!
ZULU (1964)
This evergreen Technicolour retelling of the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift – in which tenacious but overwhelmingly outnumbered Welsh troops defend their outpost from legions of African warriors – is undeniably classic fare. It also gave Rhondda-born icon Stanley Baker his most beloved role, as well as kick-starting the career of a largely unknown Michael Caine. Meanwhile, the defiant rendition of Men of Harlech in the face of almost certain annihilation remains one of cinema’s most hair-raising moments.
Sources include: BFI, Visit Wales, IMDb, Sci-fi Wales, National Trust, Wikipedia, BBC, Ffilm Cymru, Film Hub Wales, S4C, Daily Post, Wales Online
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