The Long Sunset


The Long Sunset is a 1963 Australian TV movie based on a play by R.C. Sheriff. It starred John Bell and was directed by Colin Dean It was recorded live. Australian TV drama was relatively rare at the time.
The play had been filmed by the BBC in 1958.

Plot

A Roman family during the last days of Roman Britain. Julian Severus lives near Canterbury when he hears the Romans are abandoning Britain.

Cast

It was filmed in Sydney. The designer was Douglas Smith.
The play also broadcast on Australian radio in 1963.

Reception

The critic from the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that "the gingerly stiffness of dialogue and manner that seems to overcome most dramatists and actors when they are playing at history was seldom absent from the" production. He felt that the characters in the original play "are in any case incorrigible cardboard, but Colin Dean's production, despite a few visual ingenuities, seemed to emphasise rather than minimise their creaking unreality. The Romans either intoned phrases of hollow nobility and stoicism or were querulous and fearful; their British allies in the fight against the encroaching Saxons merely slouched and growled. None of them was more than spasmodically interesting." The critic felt Gilbert "seemed to be taking part in a very slow and stately pageant" while Condon was "conscientiously surly and thicktongued" while Bell and Faassen "were largely wasted in dull parts." The critix felt "the play would have seemed better if the performance had shown more evidence of the sort of rehearsal that allows actors to develop characterisations as well as merely learn lines and moves, but even with devoted attention it is not likely to have much more in its favour than the romance of its historical idea."
The Age said Gilbert was "most convincing" and that the play "opened impressively" then "floundered with the Roman settlers left to their own devices" but "concluded with a compelling marshalling of dramatics."