In 2023 three films starring Barry born Roger Livesey were featured in the BFI Powel & Pressburger season, which played in cinemas UK wide. Chapter have put together a selection of films featuring Roger, along with some specially commissioned notes from historian Mark Fuller.
General Candy (Roger Livesey), who’s overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn’t have the respect of the men he’s training and is considered out-of-touch with what’s needed to win the war. But it wasn’t always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women (all played by Deborah Kerr), and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.
Plucky Englishwoman Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) travels to the remote islands of the Scottish Hebrides in order to marry a wealthy industrialist. Trapped by inclement weather on the Isle of Mull and unable to continue to her destination, Joan finds herself charmed by the straightforward, no-nonsense islanders around her, and becomes increasingly attracted to naval officer Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), who holds a secret that may change her life forever.
British Air Force pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) is on his way home to England from a World War II bombing mission in a badly damaged aircraft. Before he bails out of the plane into the ocean, he contacts June (Kim Hunter), an Allied radio operator with whom he shares what he believes to be his final moments on Earth. But Peter survives, finds June and they fall in love. A problem arises when a divine messenger (Marius Goring) arrives to escort Peter to heaven to rectify his wrongful survival.
Lieutenant Colonel Hyde, who is forced to take retirement, seeks revenge against the system and therefore plans a bank robbery. He is helped by his other discredited colleagues.
Archie Rice, a down-on-luck music hall comic plagued by debts, manipulates those around him in a defiant and selfish attempt to survive against improbable odds.
Ship Capt. Cedric Biddle (Roger Livesey) and his partner, Robert (Richard Burton), run a bootlegging scheme to sneak booze into England by boat. A young journalist named Meg (Honor Blackman) catches the con men in the act, but Robert convinces her to look the other way. Customs officials catch on to the plot when Robert and Biddle bungle their next attempt to unload a shipment of liquor, but the agents quickly reveal themselves to be even more bumbling than the scammers.
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