Cider with Rosie

Cider with Rosie (1998)

This adaptation of Laurie Lee's autobiographical novel follows a young man's maturation in the country town of Gloucestershire near the end of World War I. As young Laurie comes of age under the protective eye of his mother, he learns to live with an eccentric collection of friends, neighbours, and relatives. As he enters his teenage years, Laurie discovers women.

Date of release
1998-12-26
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Drama, Romance, TV Movie
Director
Charles Beeson

Casting

Interesting facts

Cider with Rosie is a British television film of 1998 directed by Charles Beeson, with a screenplay by John Mortimer, starring Juliet Stevenson, based on the 1959 book of the same name by Laurie Lee.

Production

John Mortimer and Laurie Lee had been friends from the 1950s on. Soon after Lee's death in 1997, Mortimer spoke at a memorial service for Lee and then turned his friend's autobiographical book Cider with Rosie into a screenplay, persuading Carlton Television to produce it. Charles Beeson was appointed as Director.

Lee's home village of Slad was found to have changed too much since the 1920s to be used as the main film location, with conservatories added to cottages and other modern alterations. In its place another village, Sapperton, near Cirencester, was used for filming most of the outdoor scenes, with the main street gravelled to overcome the out-of-character 1990s road surface.

Juliet Stevenson was cast to play the pivotal character of Lee's mother, Annie, and she read the late Mrs Lee's letters in preparation for the role. Laurie Lee's own voice, recorded in 1988, was used for the narration, which gave the film extra impact, and the scriptwriter's daughter Emily Mortimer was cast as the mad Miss Flynn.

Casting director Pippa Hall gave a small boy, William Moseley, a walk-on part in the film, and seven years later she remembered him and cast him as Peter Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005).

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