List of Welsh films
Contents
Silent films
1890s
1898: Conway Castle
1898: Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion, the world's oldest extant soccer film, by Arthur Cheetham.
1900s
1907: Wales, England: Land of Castles and Waterfalls.
1910s
1913: The Foreman's Treachery, by Charles Brabin.
1915: A Welsh Singer, adapted from a novel by Allen Raine and starring Florence Turner.
1918: The Life Story of David Lloyd George.
Welsh-language films
1930s
1935: Y Chwarelwr (The Quarryman), the first Welsh language sound film, directed by Ifan ab Owen Edwards.
1940s
1949: Yr Etifeddiaeth (The Heritage), a documentary by journalist John Roberts Williams.
1980s
1981: O'r Ddaear Hen, directed by Wil Aaron; scripted by Gwyn Thomas.
1986: Milwr Bychan ("Boy Soldier"), directed by Karl Francis.
1986: Rhosyn a Rhith ("Coming Up Roses"), directed by Stephen Bayly.
1990s
1991: Un Nos Ola Leuad, directed by Endaf Emlyn.
1992: Hedd Wyn - Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1992. It won a BAFTA Award for Best Film in the year of its release. Directed by Paul Turner.
1993: Cwm Hyfryd (My Pretty Valley), also directed by Paul Turner, concerns itself with a critique of Thatcherism, particularly as it relates to the closing of mines in Wales.
1993: Gadael Lenin (Leaving Lenin), about a group of Welsh students and teachers who take a trip to Russia. Directed by Endaf Emlyn.
1994: Ymadawiad Arthur (Arthur's Departure), directed by Marc Evans and starring Llyr Ifans.
1995: Y Mapiwr. Directed by Endaf Emlyn.
1997: Tylluan Wen (A White Owl), directed by Alun Ffred Jones.
1998: Pum Cynnig i Gymro (Bride of War), directed by Peter Edwards. Also in English, German and Polish.
1999: Solomon & Gaenor, starring Ioan Gruffudd. An English-language version was also filmed at the same time. Directed by Paul Morrison.
2000s
2002: Eldra, directed by Timothy Lyn, about a Romani ("Gypsy") family living in North Wales.
2003: Y Mabinogi, also featuring Ioan Gruffudd; this is a combined live-action and animated version of Welsh collection of tales known as the Mabinogion. Directed by Derek W. Hayes.
2005: Y Lleill, directed by Emyr Glyn Williams.
2006: Calon Gaeth ("Small Country"), directed by Ashley Way.
2008: Cwcw, written and directed by Delyth Jones.
2010s
2010: Patagonia, directed by Marc Evans, filmed in Welsh, English and Spanish.
2015: Under Milk Wood, directed by Kevin Allen
English-language films set in Wales
1930s
1932: The Old Dark House, starring Boris Karloff. Directed by James Whale.
1937: Today We Live, a communist agitprop documentary by Ralph Bond concerning unemployed miners in Pentre, Rhondda.
1937: Eastern Valley, by Donald Alexander.
1938: The Citadel, set in a Welsh mining town. Directed by King Vidor.
1940s
1940: The Proud Valley, concerning Welsh coal miners. Directed by Pen Tennyson.
1941: How Green Was My Valley, a classic directed by John Ford; winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. However, the film is often criticized for the actors having Irish accents, as several of the actors were Irish, and having a scene with an Irish jig instead of a traditional Welsh dance. Ford's response to these criticisms were simply, "It's a Celtic country, isn't it?"[1]
1941: The Wolf Man, featuring Bela Lugosi. Directed by George Waggner.
1944: The Halfway House, directed by Basil Dearden.
1945: The Corn Is Green, starring Bette Davis. Directed by Irving Rapper.
1949: A Run for Your Money, directed by Charles Frend.
1949: Blue Scar, by Jill Craigie, about the nationalization of the coal industry in Wales.
1950s
1950: The Undefeated, by Paul Dickson.
1951: David, by Paul Dickson.
1959: Tiger Bay, takes place in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales. Directed by J. Lee Thompson.
1960s
1962: Dylan Thomas, a short documentary on the poet featuring the narration of the Welsh actor Richard Burton. Directed by Jack Howells, it won the 1963 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
1962: Only Two Can Play, starring Peter Sellers as the Welsh character John Lewis and directed by Sidney Gilliat.
1967: Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon, directed by Don Sharp.
1970s
1972: Under Milk Wood - a film version of Dylan Thomas's "play for voices", starring Pontrhydyfen-born actor Richard Burton, then-wife Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O'Toole. Directed by Andrew Sinclair.
1973: Hang Up Your Brightest Colours, a once-banned documentary by Kenneth Griffith on Irish Republican Michael Collins.
1976: At the Earth's Core, directed by Kevin Conner, takes place in the Welsh mountains.
1976: Above Us the Earth, by Karl Francis.
1977: Curious Journey, a documentary by Kenneth Griffith.
1978: Dylan, about Dylan Thomas's final visit to America, concluding with his death in New York on 9 November 1953. Directed by Richard Lewis.
1978: Grand Slam (1978 film), a BBC Wales film about Welsh rugby fans travelling to Paris for the Grand Slam of Wales vs. France.
1979: Black As Hell, Thick As Grass, a documentary by Kenneth Griffith.
1979: The Corn Is Green (1979 film) Written by Ivan Davis (Emlyn Williams Wrote The Play). Starring Katharine Hepburn, Bill Fraser, Patricia Hayes, Artro Morris, Dorothea Phillips & Toyah Willcox.
1980s
1982: Giro City, by Karl Francis.
1983: House of the Long Shadows, directed by Pete Walker. Comments on nationalism of the Welsh, especially the older generation, who hate the English; the American jokes that he should wear a leek to show he's a friend. Vincent Price, who has a Welsh surname, plays a character who describes Wales as his ancestral homeland. His character's family appears to be English, however.
1985: Ms Rhymney Valley, by Karl Francis.
1987: Girls' Night Out, an S4C film by Joanna Quinn.
1987: A Child's Christmas in Wales, a TV-movie based on Dylan Thomas's work of the same name. Starring Denholm Elliott, directed by Don McBrearty.
1987: On the Black Hill, about Welsh identical twins. Directed by Andrew Grieve.
1990s
1990: Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, a one-man show featuring Bob Kingdom as Thomas and directed by Anthony Hopkins.
1992: Elenya, concerning a woman of Italian descent living in Wales. Directed by Steve Gough.
1992: Under Milk Wood, an animated adaptation of the Dylan Thomas play.
1994: Second Best (film), starring William Hurt, Alan Cumming and Chris Cleary Miles. Directed by Chris Menges.
1995: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, starring Hugh Grant. Directed by Christopher Monger.
1995: Streetlife, starring Rhys Ifans. Directed by Karl Francis.
1996: August, directed by Margam, Wales-born actor/director Anthony Hopkins, is an adaptation of Chekov's Uncle Vanya set in North Wales.
1996: Darklands, concerning druidic cults. Directed by Julian Richards.
1997: Twin Town, starring brothers Rhys Ifans and Llyr Ifans. Directed by Kevin Allen.
1997: House of America, starring Siân Phillips and Matthew Rhys. Directed by Marc Evans.
1997: Prince Valiant, directed by Anthony Hickox. Based on the comic strip series. Partially filmed in Wales, and certain sequences surround the Welsh Princess Ilene (who is Valiant's love interest) are set in Wales. However, King Arthur is depicted as leader of the forces of England and ruler of Britain, rather than being in accordance with the original Welsh mythology of Arthur or with the Monty Python depiction of Arthur as ruler of the Britons.
1997: The Proposition, directed by Strathford Hamilton.
1999: Human Traffic. Directed by Justin Kerrigan.
1999: Famous Fred, by Joanna Quinn.
1999: Solomon & Gaenor, starring Cardiff-born actor Ioan Gruffudd. A Welsh-language version was also filmed at the same time. Directed by Paul Morrison.
1999: The Funeral of the Last Gypsy King, a short film directed by Jane Rogoyska.
2000s
2000: The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (aka Small Miracles), starring John-Paul Macleod and Jonathan Pryce. Directed by Martin Duffy.
2000: House!, about Bingo rivalries in South Wales, starring Kelly Macdonald. Directed by Julian Kemp.
2001: Very Annie Mary, starring Rachel Griffiths, Holywell-born Jonathan Pryce and Ioan Gruffudd. Directed by Sara Sugarman.
2001: Happy Now, starring Ioan Gruffudd. Directed by Philippa Cousins.
2001: Endgame, directed by Gary Wicks; much of the film takes place at the main character's Welsh cottage.
2002: On All Floors, directed by Geoff Evans and written by Craig Handley.
2002: Plots with a View (aka: Undertaking Betty), directed by Nick Hurran. Starring Brenda Blethyn, Alfred Molina, Christopher Walken, and Lee Evans. A brilliant, but commercially unsuccessful, black comedy about competing undertakers in the small fictional Welsh village of Wrottin Powys. Won the BAFTA Cymru Award, in 2003. Not yet released in the UK.
2003: Otherworld, the English-language version of the film Y Mabinogi, listed above in the Welsh-language section.
2003: I'll Be There, written and directed by Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson and featuring Welsh singer Charlotte Church.
2005: The Dark, starring Sean Bean and Maria Bello. While taking place in Wales, it reinvisions the Otherworld (from The Mabinogion) as being a place of hellish torment. Directed by John Fawcett.
2005: Evil Aliens takes place on the Welsh island of Scallad. Directed by Jake West.
2005: Ramble On, an animated short directed by Tom Parkinson.
2006: Dirty Sanchez: The Movie. The Welsh equivalent of Jackass: The Movie, but arguably raunchier. Directed by Jim Hickey.
2006: Little White Lies, directed by Caradog W. James.
2006: Love You, Joseff Hughes, a short directed by Dan Hartley.
2006: In the film adaptation of Stormbreaker, Alex Rider receives military training in the Brecon Beacons.
2006: The Haunted Airman, starring Robert Pattinson as an injured aviator who convalesces in Wales.
2007: The Baker, AKA Assassin in Love directed by Gareth Lewis, about a hitman who retires to a rural Welsh village as a baker.
2008: The Edge of Love, starring Matthew Rhys as Dylan Thomas, Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller (as Dylan's wife, Caitlin Macnamara) and Cillian Murphy. Directed by John Maybury, this film is about part of Thomas' life in Swansea during World War II.
2009: Amelia, starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor. As Amelia crosses the Atlantic, she arrives in Wales (thinking it's Ireland), and the locals sing the hymn Calon Lân.
2009: Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, mentions that Eddie tried to learn a bit of the Welsh language before playing a gig in Pwllheli, Wales. He also lived in Skewen, Wales, for a bit as a child. The documentary also mentions that Eddie is the favorite comedian of Anthony Hopkins.
2009: Big Font. Large Spacing, a feature about two students completing a psychology essay in one night. The film was all shot in Cathays in Cardiff.
2010s
2010: Submarine, set in Swansea and starring Welsh actor Craig Roberts.
2010: Risen, biopic of Welsh champion boxer Howard Winstone.
Films with Welsh characters (but not set in Wales)
1952: Cosh Boy, a film in which the main character's mother is Welsh. Directed by Lewis Gilbert.
1956: In The Searchers, directed by John Ford, the character Martin Pawly claims that he is 1/8 Cherokee, and the rest is English and Welsh.
1958: Look Back in Anger, starring Welsh actor Richard Burton and featuring the Welsh character, Cliff. Directed by Tony Richardson.
1958: The Vikings. This film has Rhodri Mawr as a character, and his daughter Morgana (played by Janet Leigh).
1959: I'm All Right, Jack, starring Peter Sellers and featuring a Welsh worker named Dai. Directed by John Boulting.
1959: Upstairs and Downstairs features a Welsh female character. Directed by Ralph Thomas.
1964: Zulu, starring Michael Caine, depicts the struggle of a detachment of a Welsh regiment against Zulu warriors. Directed by Cy Endfield.
1968: Candy, featuring Richard Burton as a Welsh alcoholic poet, MacPhisto.
1970: The Molly Maguires, directed by Martin Ritt and starring Sean Connery, tells the story of the Irish labor troubles in the anthracite coal mines of Schuylkill county, PA. Several of the characters including the police chief Davies (played by an Englishman Frank Finlay) and a miner Jenkins (played by John Alderson, another Englishman) are Welsh.
1971: Two English Girls (Les Deux anglaises et le continent), directed by François Truffaut. Despite the title, the titular characters are actually both Welsh.
1971: 10 Rillington Place, directed by Richard Fleischer. Stars John Hurt as a Welshman living in London.
1977: A Bridge Too Far. One of the final scenes features a minor character nicknamed Taff.
1978: The Hound of the Baskervilles features Dudley Moore portraying a Welsh Doctor Watson, reusing a version of his Welsh accent from the 1967 film Bedazzled.
1979: The Life of Brian, a film by Monty Python, features a character named Judith (played by Sue Jones-Davies) who is referred to by Brian's mother as a "Welsh tart." Several other references to Welsh characters can be gleaned from the screenplay.[2]
1980: The Falls, directed by Welsh-born filmmaker Peter Greenaway, references the Welsh-born character Tulse Luper.
1983: Taking Tiger Mountain; Militant feminist scientists brainwash a research subject to assassinate the Welsh Minister of Prostitution. Directed by Tom Huckabee, with a story by William S. Burroughs.
1991: Old Scores, a film set in New Zealand about a former Welsh rugby star. Directed by Alan Clayton.
1994: Au Pair, directed by Angelika Weber; the main character and her boyfriend are Welsh.
1997: The Replacements, featuring Rhys Ifans as a Welsh soccer player who gets recruited to play American football. When called a "Mick" by teammates, he asserts that his is Welsh, not Irish. Directed by Howard Deutch.
1999: Notting Hill, featuring Rhys Ifans as a Welsh character called Spike
2000: The Man Who Cried, about a Jewish girl who leaves the Soviet Union to be raised in England, utilizes a Welsh music teacher to help aid in the girl's assimilation to English culture; as he was not allowed to speak Welsh but succeeded professionally after learning English, so will she succeed if she abandons her native tongue.
2003 and following: The Tulse Luper Suitcases, a multimedia project by Welsh-born filmmaker Peter Greenaway concerning the Welsh-born character Tulse Luper.
2004: Heights, starring Glenn Close. Features Andrew Howard as the Welsh character, Ian. Directed by Chris Terrio.
2004: Patrick, a documentary about the Welsh St. Patrick who became the patron saint of Ireland. Directed by Pamela Mason Wagner.
2011: The Rite, featuring Anthony Hopkins as Father Lucas, a Welsh exorcist, living in Rome.
Filmed on location in Wales, but set elsewhere
1958: The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, featuring Ingrid Bergman, Curd Jurgens, and Robert Donat was filmed on location in Wales in Gwynedd and Beddgelert but is set in China.
1968: The Lion in Winter, featuring Welsh actors Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton in their first feature films, was filmed on location in Wales but is set in France.
1969: Carry on up the Khyber is the sixteenth Carry On film, released in 1968. It stars Carry On regulars Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth. The film is, in part, a spoof of "Kiplingesque" movies and television series about life in the British Empire, both contemporary and from earlier, Hollywood, periods. Scenes on the North West Frontier were filmed beneath the summit of Snowdon in North Wales.
1981: An American Werewolf in London. The early scenes set in Yorkshire were filmed in the Brecon Beacons.
1983: The Keep. Although set in Romania, it was actually shot in Llanberis and Blaenau Ffestiniog in Gwynedd, North Wales.
1992: The Princess and the Goblin was the first animated featured produced in Wales. It was jointly a Hungarian animated film.
1995: First Knight starring Sean Connery, Richard Gere and Julia Ormond. Directed by Jerry Zucker. Story of King Arthur filmed in Snowdonia.
1997: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Part of the movie was filmed on location at Parys Mountain on the island of Anglesey.
2000: The Miracle Maker, starring Ralph Fiennes as Jesus, was filmed in Cardiff, Wales. Directed by Derek W. Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov.
2006: Half Light, starring Demi Moore and directed by Craig Rosenberg, is set in Scotland but was shot on location in Wales.
2003: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Shot on location in the mountains of Snowdonia but set in China.
2011: Ironclad the first film to be shot at Dragon International Film Studios in Llanilid.
Miscellaneous
1967: In Bedazzled, when Dudley Moore's character wishes for intellectualism, he develops a Welsh accent.
1968: In the film Barbarella, a few characters use Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch as a password.
1971: Straw Dogs, directed by Sam Peckinpah. A Cornish vicar uses the Welsh place name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch as the magic word in a magic trick he performs.
1986: In Back to School, directed by Alan Metter, Rodney Dangerfield's character recites Do not go gentle into that good night for his oral exam.
1995: In Before Sunrise, directed by Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke's character mimics Dylan Thomas's voice, reading a fragment from As I Walked Out One Evening wrote by W.H. Auden.
2000: The Weight of Water, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, features the Dylan Thomas poem And death shall have no dominion.
2002: Solaris. This Steven Soderbergh remake also features the Dylan Thomas poem And death shall have no dominion, as George Clooney's character reads the first stanza of the poem.
2004: Crash, movie features the Welsh-language folk song Lisa Lân sung by Carol Ensley.
Welsh actors and directors
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See also
Scholarly Resources
Wales on Screen, edited by Steve Blandford Wales and Cinema: The First Hundred Years, by Dave Berry
Footnotes
- ↑ David Berry Wales and Cinema: The First Hundred Years. Cardiff, 1994, page 161.
- ↑ [1] Archived August 13, 2009 at the Wayback Machine
