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Too much of everything

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

With the exception of the beautiful naked scenes of Susannah York and for those with weird artistic nudity taste, O'Toole cadaverous body, there is not emotions in the theatrical and convoluted dialog of this movie. O'Toole give us brilliant examples of his acting genius in many of his work, but he leaves an emptiness and a disillusion extraordinary in this incomprehensible and scanty movie. I would say that this portrayal of incestuously relationship English style, was made with the intention of just satisfying a contractual requirement and counting, for its development , only with the effulgence of the people involved in it. If there are no other reasons, is simply a incoherent failure of business endeavor . The theme is very interesting but in this version there is only one definition emerging to the mind: boring!

I thought maybe a film which boasted a cast including Peter O'Toole, Susannah York, Michael Craig & Harry Andrews might be worth watching. Alas, I was wrong. Utter pretentious nonsense from beginning to end with both O'Toole and York overacting wildly. I watched it twice and still have no idea what is was about. I've a feeling O'Toole plays the Laird of a Scottish castle who has a drink problem and likes reliving childhood games with his sister (York). He is also barking mad. But apart from that, your guess is as good as mine.The film has no redeeming feature whatsoever. I can only assume the cast and director were blackmailed into making this dreary, unimaginative, stagy piffle. Clearly a waste of the time of a talented cast and director. Risible.

Contains spoilers. The British director J. Lee Thompson made some excellent films, notably 'Ice Cold in Alex' and 'Cape Fear', but 'Country Dance' is one of his more curious offerings. The story is set among the upper classes of rural Scotland, and details the strange triangular relationship between Sir Charles Ferguson, an eccentric aristocratic landowner, his sister Hilary, and Hilary's estranged husband Douglas, who is hoping for a reconciliation with her. We learn that during his career as an Army officer, Charles was regarded as having 'low moral fibre'. This appears to have been an accurate diagnosis of his condition; throughout the film he displays an attitude of gloomy disillusionment with the world, and his main sources of emotional support seem to be Hilary and his whisky bottle. The film ends with his committal to an upper-class lunatic asylum. Peter O'Toole was, when he was at his best as in 'Lawrence of Arabia', one of Britain's leading actors, but the quality of his work was very uneven, and 'Country Dance' is not one of his better films. He overacts frantically, making Charles into a caricature of the useless inbred aristocrat, as though he were auditioning for a part in the Monty Python 'Upper-Class Twit of the Year' sketch. Susannah York as Hilary and Michael Craig as Douglas are rather better, but there is no really outstanding acting performance in the film. There is also little in the way of coherent plot, beyond the tale of Charles's inexorable downward slide.The main problem with the film, however, is neither the acting nor the plot, but rather that of the Theme That Dare Not Speak Its Name. There are half-hearted hints of an incestuous relationship between Charles and Hilary, or at least of an incestuous attraction towards her on his part, and that his dislike of Douglas is motivated by sexual jealousy. Unfortunately, even in the swinging sixties and early seventies (the date of the film is variously given as either 1969 or 1970) there was a limit to what the British Board of Film Censors was willing to allow, and a film with an explicitly incestuous theme was definitely off-limits. (The American title for the film was 'Brotherly Love', but this was not used in Britain; was it too suggestive for the liking of the BBFC?) These hints are therefore never developed and we never get to see what motivates Charles or what has caused his moral collapse, resulting in a hollow film with a hole at its centre. 4/10

A somewhat typical bit of filmmaking from this era. Obviously, It was first conceived into this world for the stage, but nonetheless a very good film from beginning to end. Peter O'Toole and Susannah York get to do their stage performance act for the silver screen and both do it effectively. There is very little in the way of story and anyone not familiar with this type of off beat character study may be a little put off by it. All in all, though, A good film in which Peter O'Toole and Susannah York get to overact.