Colin Firth in Nostromo. Page updated 13 March 1999

COLIN FIRTH IN
GENRE: drama
DIRECTOR: Alastair Reid
SCREENPLAY: John Hale, based on Joseph Conrad's novel "Nostromo", 1904
PRODUCER: Michel Waering, Fernando Ghia

PRINCIPAL CAST: Colin Firth [Charles Gould], Serena Scott Thomas [Emilia Gould], Claudia Cardinale [Teresa Viola], Albert Finney [Doctor Monygham], Claudio Amendola [Nostromo], Joaquim de Almeida [Colonel Sotillo], Brian Dennehy [Holroyd]. Producer Michael Wearing appear as Ernest Gould, Charles' father, in the very beginning of the series.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Nostromo has been described as an allegorical tale of loyalty and honor. Charles Gould travels to the fictional South American country of Costaguana in the 1890s to re-open the mine which closed after Gould's father was murdered some twenty years earlier. As corruption and insurrection spreads, Gould struggles to keep his mine open through dubious political alliances.

This huge BBC production, co-financed with WGBH in Boston, RAI in Italy and TVE in Spain, was beset by problems during its making. The director, Alastair Reid, collapsed with exhaustion and filming had to be completed while he was in hospital. There were threatened demonstrations from the 15,000 underpaid extras and mishaps which included a landing craft running aground and sub-contractors razing precious rainforest to hide cables.

MY RATING: *** The story is so rich that I get lost in all the characters. It is definitely a film which improve with each viewing... Unfortunately it has an uneven cast [or directing?] but Colin, Albert Finney and Serena Scott Thomas are all excellent.

VIDEO: PAL format. Possibly also NTSC



Colin about playing Charles Gould:

Colin plays the decidedly un-heroic part of an Englishman who inherits a defunct silver mine in a fictional South American country called Costaguana. He determines to revive the mine because of "his belief in the power of industry to civilise the world, but as he succeeds he sacrifices his wife - and everyone else emotionally. He's a tricky character. I don't think I understood him or his obsession." [Sunday Mail, 10 November 1996]

The novel is famously irreducible. "I was almost resentful of how difficult it was to get through it", he says - but for Firth the lead role basically came down to another study in humourlessness and withdrawal, another furtively disturbed Englishman. So why play it?

"It was curiosity. I felt there was an awful lot more to Gould than met the eye. I found myself in the strange position of doubting what Conrad said about him - that the character had no sense of irony - and I wondered whether that was a foreigner's perception of an Englishman. It would be quite possible for a man like Gould to have a very strong sense of irony and for it to be invisible to somebody from Poland."

On a less celebral level, he was attracted by the horse-riding, the explosions and the steamskip - "a boys own instinct actually to go out on the big adventure, a childhood sense of why I wanted to be an actor." [Independent Sunday, 19 January 1997]

Colin: "I know that anyone who was at school with me might read this and think what a cunt! But it was a case of Firth as Clint Eastwood; one of my dreams actually came true because I got to ride a horse through a South American town, ride through the old Spanish quarter caked in dirt, filthy, matted, holding a gun, with Ennio Morricone blasting out in the background and the town burning." [Time Out March 19-26 1997]



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