The Spanish Gardener (1956)

Directed by

Philip Leacock

Genre

drama film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 35m

Rating

6.3 of 10 from 20 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A British diplomat moves to Spain with his young son. He hires a local gardener who becomes close to the boy, causing jealousy and conflict between father and son.

dramaticmelancholicfamily-centricslow-burnemotionalvisually lushrestrainedtense

What happens

The Spanish Gardener is a 1956 VistaVision and Technicolor film based on the 1950 eponymous novel by A. J. Cronin. The film, which stars Dirk Bogarde and Jon Whiteley, was directed by Philip Leacock. The adaptation was filmed both at Pinewood Studios near London and in Palamós nearby Mas Juny estate, as well as in S'Agaro, on the Costa Brava, Catalonia. There were also two other adaptations of the story for Brazilian television: Nicholas (1958) and O Jardineiro Espanhol (1967). The film was entered into the 7th Berlin International Film Festival. The ending of the film differs from that of the book. Dirk Bogarde later called it "a travesty of what it should have been... a perfectly straightforward novel... ruined as a movie. Some of it’s quite good, I suppose, but I saw it and was heartbroken because it just wasn’t true." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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