Spoilers from the Downton Podcast
The producer initially asked Robert for permission to film, and ‘turned him down gently’. Mary says she will ring him back.
RE Henry Talbot, he is off away doing car things, meaning he’s not around, Mary is missing him, and now there’s a lovely, handsome producer at the house. Make of that what you will...
Tom and Lucy’s wedding opens the movie. Alan sees Tom’s marriage as a completion of his story, and he sees Lucy and Tom as ‘victims of circumstance’ (Lucy being born a bastard, Tom’s uneasy standing in the nobility). We see Tom and Lucy are still discovering each other in South of France.
Movie is partially inspired by an experience of Gareth Neame’s grandfather, as he came from a ‘dynasty of filmmakers’, working on Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’, the first talking movie filmed in the UK, which began as a silent film and was turned into a talking movie, where I suspect those images of Mary on the microphone come in. (Neame’s great-grandmother was also a silent film actress called Ivy Close. You might remember Alfred and Ivy talking about her on the way back from the cinema. She was also the first Beauty Queen in the UK. I just thought that was interesting.)
