2008-10-12 18:19:49Amarantine

The Far Off Place

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=eIu5Luh7JNA


A special request from a Korean viewer. Though this is originally an LP recording, I think it is worth for uploading.

Dana, an irish singer who won the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest with "All Kinds of Everything", sings a song for a 1971 UK/Irish film, "Flight of the Doves".

The film’s story told of two orphans: Dervel (Helen Raye) and her brother Finney (Jack Wild), who live with their cruel guardian, Uncle Toby/Tobias Cromwell (William Rushton).

One night, Cromwell receives news that the kids’ mother, Cromwell’s late sister, has left the kids a fortune, which they will inherit when they come of age. However, if anything should happen to the children, the entire legacy will go to the only other surviving members of the family, Cromwell and his evil and equally abusive half-brother Hawk Dove (Ron Moody), a struggling magician and mimic who works in the seamy nightclubs and theaters on London’s West Side.

Seeing a chance to get rid of the kids and unjustly claim their fortune, Cromwell plots to do away with the kids and get their inheritance. Fearing for their lives, Finney and Dervel pack up and run away from home. They take the ferry to Ireland, so that they can get to their maternal Grandmother, Bridget O’Flaherty (Dorothy Malone).

Seeing his meal tickets running off, Cromwell calls in the Police and sends a false arrest warrant against his sister-in-law, claiming that she kidnapped his children. Adding to their problems, Uncle Hawk also gets a letter from the solicitor about the Dove legacy and he also tries to do away with the kids, so that he can get the monies from the estate.

Luckily for the two kids, they finally make safely to their grandma’s home, Uncle Hawk is captured by the police and Cromwell is exposed as a bully and unscrupulous opportunist. The fate of the two children is decided by tough but kindly Judge Liffy (Stanley Holloway, best remembered as Alfred P. Doolittle in the stage and screen versions of MY FAIR LADY). He turns the two children over to their grandmother. Cromwell is sent to jail and Uncle Hawk escapes without ever being arrested.

I saw the film about five years ago, and although the film itself was only a mixture of Clichés, this song really appeared haunting to me. This recording was from a Japanese Columbia pressing of the original OST LP album.

It is little bit scratchy than ordinary LPs, but I hope you will enjoy this.