The Astonished Heart

The Astonished Heart (1950)

A daring experiment in love!

Several years after graduation, best friends Barbara (Celia Johnson) and Leonora (Margaret Leighton) reconnect as if not a day has gone by. But Leonora could do without Barbara's husband, Christian (Noel Coward), whom she finds arrogant and off-putting ... at first. One evening alone together, romance is set ablaze, leaving Christian with a lot of explaining to do to Barbara.

Date of release
1950-03-17
TMDB
4.8 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Antony Darnborough, Terence Fisher

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

The Astonished Heart is a 1950 British drama film directed by Terence Fisher and Antony Darnborough. Starring Celia Johnson, Noël Coward, and Margaret Leighton, the film is based on Coward's play The Astonished Heart from his cycle of ten plays, Tonight at 8.30.

Production

A very successful film, Brief Encounter (1945), had been made from Still Life, one of the plays that made up Tonight at 8:30. In July 1948, Sydney Box, head of Gainsborough Studios, paid £10,000 to Noël Coward to script Astonished Heart from Tonight at 8:30.

Box was happy with the script for Astonished Heart and put it into production with Michael Redgrave in the lead, with Coward's approval. Redgrave wrote in his memoirs that Coward called him personally to offer him the part, saying only he or Redgrave could play the part.

Rehearsals took place at Denham, during which Redgrave says he began to lose confidence. He wanted to alter some of the words, but Coward's contract forbade that. Filming started in June 1949. Coward had been away in Jamaica and the US, arriving back in London on 13 June. The next day, he went to Pinewood and wrote in his diary "Saw rushes and rough cut. Margaret Leighton and Celia absolutely brilliant, but Mike [Redgrave] definitely not right.

Redgrave later said he suggested other actors, including Stewart Granger before Coward's name was mentioned. He reflected "that Noél himself had probably engineered this situation as the most tactful way of replacing me."

Representatives of J. Arthur Rank tried to get Coward to appear in the film for nothing but he refused. He was given a guaranteed £25,000 and a percentage of the profits. Another source says Coward was paid a fee of £15,000.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended