Film

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain (1995)

Director: Christopher Monger

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

English cartographer Reginald Anson (Grant, blinking and stammering) and his colleague George (McNeice) arrive at a quiet Welsh village in 1917 to measure Ffynnon Garw - the 'first mountain in Wales', the locals boast. The Englishmen's findings dismay them. At 984 ft the summit is 15 ft short of a mountain. Led by the landlord, Morgan the Goat (Meaney), and his arch-rival, the Rev Jones (Griffith), the villagers determine that the surveyors will not leave until the hill has become a mountain. Monger (Just Like a Woman, Waiting for the Light) heard this yarn from his father and his father's father, but the film owes as much to the parochial charm of the Ealing comedies of the 1940s, and that obsession with size which runs through much British film humour (The Mouse That Roared, The Smallest Show on Earth, etc). It's a gentle, indulgent celebration of community values, heart and home, with a sprinkling of Welsh nationalist propaganda. Well crafted as it is, and hard to dislike, it's harder still to shake the suspicion that Monger is making a mountain out of a molehill.

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