Private Potter

Private Potter
Directed by	Casper Wrede
Screenplay by	Ronald Harwood Casper Wrede
Produced by	Ben Arbeid
Starring	Tom Courtenay Mogens Wieth Ronald Fraser James Maxwell Frank Finlay
Cinematography	Arthur Lavis
Edited by	John Pomeroy
Music by	George Hall
Production company	MGM-British Studios
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	1962 (1962)
Running time	89 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Private Potter is a 1962 British drama film directed by Caspar Wrede and starring Tom Courtenay, Mogens Wieth, Ronald Fraser and James Maxwell. The screenplay was by Wrede and Ronald Harwood.

Plot

During the Cyprus Emergency (1955–1959) Private Potter is a soldier who claims that the reason he cried out leading to the death of a comrade was that he saw a vision of God. There is then a debate over whether he should be court-martialled.

Cast

• Tom Courtenay as Private Potter
• Mogens Wieth as Yannis
• Ronald Fraser as Doctor
• James Maxwell as Lieutenant Colonel Harry Gunyon
• Ralph Michael as Padre
• Brewster Mason as Brigadier
• Eric Thompson as Captain John Knowles
• John Graham as Major Sims
• Frank Finlay as Captain Patterson
• Harry Landis as Lance Corporal Lamb
• Michael Coles as Private Robertson
• Jeremy Geidt as Major Reid
• Fulton Mackay as soldier

Production

The screenplay was written by Ronald Harwood for a television play that was broadcast on ITV in 1961 featuring some of the same main cast, including Tom Courtenay, and Caspar Wrede again as director. Finnish-born director Wrede first spotted Courtenay while he was still at RADA and the leading role of the fragile young soldier who wilts under pressure was his first film appearance.

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote:

As the slack direction of the opening night scenes indicates, Casper Wrede has an eye for composition but lacks, as yet, the ability to use it constructively. Irritatingly inconsistent, he tediously over-emphasises that the slightest sound will ruin the initial military operation, and then allows some fairly noisy conversation among the men and staccato drumbeats behind the actual advance. Deprived even of the sort of significance it could so easily have had as the first sound to pierce a perfectly preserved silence, Potter's cry makes little impact: what is worse, the soldier's strange predicament never arouses much more than academic interest. This is not the fault of Tom Courtenay, who quickly establishes Potter as a credible human being in the grip of something he doesn't understand. The playing of the officers, however, sometimes displays that seeming lack of total involvement that can result from an uneasy amalgam of old school and "new wave" styles of acting, but in this case more obviously originates in an unconvincing script. James Maxwell gets the worst of it as a colonel apparently paralysed by the need to make a decision. His unlikely dilemma, finally exploded by the Brigadier's ponderous statement of the obvious, is presumably written in to give credence to the spirituality of Potter's experience. ... In fact, the scenes that should throw most light on Potter's development – like the session with the psychiatrist ... are shallow as well as undramatic. This failure to explore its own theme is the most disappointing thing about a potentially interesting film.

External links

• Private Potter at IMDb