ABC Stage 67 Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn? (1966–1967) Online

I was the producer of this one hour film made for a British TV company but budgeted on a sale to ABC in America. It was based on a five page original story by Le Carre for which we paid an unreasonably large fee and scripted by Stanley Mann, a Canadian writer. It was directed by Ted Kotchef who went on to create the character RAMBO with Sylvester Stallone.

It was quite good and might stand up to a TV showing even now - but, of course, the Cold War background is very dated.

Anthony Perry

Anyone interested e-mail me.

Yes, the film has survived. I saw it on television (ITV or Channel 4) in England in the early 1990s as part of a series ('TV Heaven') in which they recreated an evening's TV programming, including commercials, from a specific year.

In the 1990s introduction to the programme, the presenter stated that it was the first, or one of the first, British TV films to be made in colour (although it was originally shown in black and white).

The film itself is very atmospheric and haunting, with an excellent Le Carré plot and a fine performance by James Mason. Both the film and the short story on which it is based deserve to be more widely available.

I first saw this during a season on programme on Channel 4 in the UK called "TV Heaven", in the 1967 week. As the previous comment states, it was a very melancholy drama, but brilliantly played out by James Mason and Hugh Griffith as the downtrodden son and domineering father respectively.

Mason's character had decided to head to West Berlin just prior to the Wall, and his father had remained in the Eastern Sector. Word gets to him that his father has died, and he is to travel to the East to collect the body for burial, only to discover that his father is alive and well and as cantankerous as ever! Deceived by his father and coerced by a local woman he falls for, the son is convinced to take him back across the border to West Berlin in the casket, under the impression that the father wants to spend his remaining days in "freedom" - but a terrible decision at the border means that the one person he comes to love comes to an unpleasant end....

With the amount of "classic" TV that is available on DVD nowadays, what's to stop them releasing this?

In 1966-67, ABC ran a Wednesday night series of "specials"-- one hour shows bearing no resemblance to one another. Two episodes became famous-- the lovely Perry/Capote CHRISTMAS MEMORY and Sam Peckinpah's career-saving NOON WINE. The debut show, with Alan Arkin playing a magic-realist NYC cabby, was remarkable as well (script by Murray Schisgal). Even though IMDb records no other data on "Dare I Weep...", I am reasonably sure it was a mid-winter installment-- a deeply melancholy drama based on an early Le Carre story or script, in which Mason was manipulated into sneaking a man he hated (was it his father?) out of a Communist country. I remember little else except a morose surprise-ending, but was struck, years later, on seeing Carol Reed's MAN BETWEEN with Mason that the pieces had strong similarities.

Mason was an extraordinary actor, and those recognizing belatedly his stature deserve a look at this little 50-minute film. Does anyone know if it has survived?

Another made-for-TV effort starring James Mason which shows the same kind of professionalism as if it had been a feature-film, a typical espionage tale of the era: in fact, the star would appear in the excellent THE DEADLY AFFAIR the same year which, like this one, was adapted from the work of master spy novelist John Le Carre'. Mason plays a mild-mannered middle-aged man: having conveniently fled the dominance of his father (Hugh Griffith!) by going to live in West Berlin, his life is still run by two spinster cousins (one of them played by Kay Walsh yet again). Sent for by the other side to pick up the old man's coffin, he finds him very much alive upon arriving but is still required to transport him (making Mason sweat at the checkpoint, even if he had shut the air from the coffin for the duration of the inspection and Griffith had actually assumed the semblance of death thanks to a special drug)! However, not wanting to suffer his father's meddling once more, he chooses to delay crossing the border in the hope that the old man will suffocate! At Griffith's house, our unlikely hero had met – and grown to like – a woman (Jill Bennett) the authorities are looking for…so it comes as a complete shock to him when the soldiers insist on taking a look inside the coffin and happily report back to Mason afterwards that he is really transporting what it says in the papers i.e. his mother. Though the ironic/tragic implications of this obviously pulled quite a dramatic punch, creating the perfect sour note on which to conclude the gloomy program, I could not help laughing out loud at the sheer adversity afflicting the protagonist here!