26 thoughts on “Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)

  1. I’m just glad Mary no longer has those god awful bangs she was sporting in the first movie. It was such an unflattering look for her.

  2. I rather enjoyed the first season of the series. Seasons two and three felt enough like diminishing returns that I swore off the show. Is there enough pretty in this second film to make dead horse flogging worthwhile?

  3. I prefer this hairstyle on Mary, whatever their reasoning. Also that taupe-and-black outfit in the pic with her and the microphone. Edith is the one who has benefited most from being in this era (she got actually flattering looks!).

    Looking at the photo from the wedding – boy they really found a good mini-Dan Stevens for George, didn’t they?

  4. Tom in a bathing suit is hot AF! The 1st movie was pretty, but pointless IMO! Wish this was set in the summer of 1929. One last hurrah before the Wall Street Crash!

    1. Allen Leech has always been hot. I’ve been crushing on him ever since HBO’s Rome and his unexpected shower scene.

      1. A.L. is not bad at all, although no Downton guy will ever come close to the late Mr. Pamuk (Theo James).

      2. Do you recall what season that shower scene was in? Asking for…research purposes.

  5. The costumes look fab as usual. Looking at these pix and the trailers, were all the Abbey scenes filmed after their return from S France? Because he’s looking unnaturally tan.

  6. I’ll certainly watch it, though I may wait for the dvd to come out (as one eventually and inevitably will.) I liked the first half of the series better than the second (before we lost Sybil and Matthew) but I’ve binged the whole thing more than once, and can add this to the collection.

  7. Oh, this looks puffy, silly, glitzy dreck. Of course I’ll watch it, but I’ll probably need to be drunk. They don’t serve booze at my local theater so it will have to wait until a home viewing.

  8. The older French lady who was the widow of the original owner of the chateau had the most amazing cream dress when she walked down the stairs, in the first scene. It was so elegant and French. I wish I could find a picture of it – I literally gasped when she appeared!

  9. Yes. It is definitely in my future. Not sure if I’ll brave the theatres with Covid, since most ppl where I live go mask-less or wait until Amazon it HBO/MAX stream it. BTW. I’m addicted to Gilded Age bc I am a Team Bertha/George fan.

  10. My mother’s been watching old Downton Abbey episodes and I’ve realized that I really don’t like these people much. Mary’s an icy b–ch, Edith’s an idiot and the entire household has broken enough shibboleths to be ostracized forever! Yet the King and Queen drop in for a visit! My suspension of disbelief is broken.
    On the other hand there are pretty clothes and Dame Maggie Smith so it’s not entirely without redeeming qualities.

  11. I know being a costume site this isn’t really the focus, but in the scene at the Villa party I was jarred my the band and their extremely modern sound. I feel for better accuracy they could even gotten the Alex Mendham orchestra. However I did love the costumes.

  12. ” And I felt that the complications encountered in the ‘filming a movie at Downton Abbey’ storyline were so obviously ripped off from Singin’ in the Rain that I kept waiting for this:”

    Actually, no. There’s a real-life basis in British film history for that plot line that has nothing to do with SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN– which itself was more likely inspired by this incident:

    Alfred Hitchcock’s BLACKMAIL (1929) started production as a silent film, but the producers decided to add a sound scene at the end as a selling “gimmick.”

    A number of Hollywood films, like NOAH’S ARK (1928), were “part-talkies” at this point– mostly music and synchronized sound effects, with a few sound dialogue scenes in addition to the usual subtitle cards throughout.

    However, Hitchcock’s film was structured in a way that large parts of the film would have been action scenes without dialogue anyway, so only a limited number of talking scenes throughout the film needed to be re-filmed.

    Although the revamped film was ballyhooed as “the first full-length all-talkie film made in Great Britain,” the long stretches with no dialogue meant it was technically still only a “part-talkie.”

    Unfortunately, Hitchcock had to overcome one MAJOR difficulty: his lead actress, Anny Ondra, was from Prague and had a thick Czech accent that rendered her unsuitable for her role in the film.

    Rather than scrap all of her footage and start over with a new actress, Hitchcock hired British actress Joan Barry to replace her spoken dialogue. But since the technology available didn’t permit post-dubbing, Joan Barry stood off-camera and spoke the lines into a microphone, while Ondra lip-synched on-camera to Barry’s voice.

    Sound familiar?

    Since not all theaters had sound equipment at this point, a silent version of BLACKMAIL was also prepared and released after the “talkie” version– and despite all the ballyhoo for the sound version, the silent version actually had a longer theatrical run and made more money.

    Both versions have been restored and preserved by the British Film Institute.

    1. What the vast majority of viewers (& reviewers; I’ve seen & heard this referenced elsewhere) will be familiar with is the Singin’ in the Rain plot. You can’t put that into a current movie & say otherwise.

      1. SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN might be more familiar to a majority of U.S. viewers and reviewers, but the dubbing of Anny Ondra’s role in BLACKMAIL is very well known as well.

        And it’s what they were actually referring to, according to the people who made it.

        DOWNTON ABBEY executive producer Gareth Neame’s grandfather, cinematographer/producer/director Ronald Neame, was Hitchcock’s assistant cameraman on BLACKMAIL:

        https://www.etonline.com/downton-abbey-how-an-alfred-hitchcock-film-inspired-a-new-era-exclusive-184316

        (The article incorrectly says Ronald Neame was assistant director, but he was actually an uncredited assistant camerman, as was future director Michael Powell.)

        1. Sorry, I think you’ve bought into this film’s very weak PR! Because the rest of us, audiences & reviewers alike, are going with the far, far more obvious association. See, that’s the thing, when you put something out in the public that’s incredibly unoriginal, folks are going to call you on it. Fellows has been at this long enough to know that, & no amount of spin will change it.

          1. “Sorry, I think you’ve bought into this film’s very weak PR! Because the rest of us, audiences & reviewers alike, are going with the far, far more obvious association.”

            The connection to Hitchcock’s BLACKMAIL is solidly documented– the reworking of the film to incorporate sound, the technique they used for Joan Barry to replace Anny Ondra’s voice, producer Gareth Neame’s grandfather Ronald Neame getting his start in films as camera assistant on this film– this has all been written about for decades.

            It isn’t just some “very weak PR” tale they fabricated after the fact in response to negative reviews. It’s part of British film history and also part of the family history of one of the people who has been with the DOWNTON ABBEY franchise since the beginning.

  13. I just saw the movie. I thought that Cora had the best looks BY FAR when compared to everyone else in the film.

  14. We just saw it last weekend and as my partner and I are avid fans we loved it. I was swooning over most of the clothes, especially that kimono you mentioned with pajama pants that Edith wore in the South of France. Why no photo of it??

    And the Mosely story was very neat, I like that he is getting his due as a comic actor and the character finding his voice as a screenwriter.

Comments are closed.

Discover more from Frock Flicks

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue Reading