Oxford at the movies

The city and university have provided the backdrop for historical recreations and literary adaptations, campus dramas and slapstick comedies, Hollywood blockbusters and Bollywood masalas. Even James Bond and Harry Potter have been seen among the various colleges, chapels and libraries.

What sets Oxford apart is its sheer versatility. One moment it can supply the harsh prison setting for a globetrotting thriller, the next it is home to a tearjerking love story.

Then there are the villages and stately homes of the surrounding county, which have graced Ealing comedies, war movies, family entertainments and Oscar winners with equal aplomb.

The earliest full-length film recorded here was probably a silent take on Worcester graduate Brandon Thomas’s stage favourite Charley’s Aunt (1925), which brought Sydney Chaplin (Charlie's half-brother) to Magdalen College in 1925.

But Hollywood outings tended to be made back in the studio, with stock footage of the skyline and the High Street being used to set the scene.

Little attention was paid to authentic detail, however, hence Laurel and Hardy getting lost in a maze in A Chump at Oxford (1940).

Hollywood has done much to perpetuate the Oxford clichés and stereotypes of Victorian and Edwardian fiction. Both Robert Taylor in A Yank at Oxford (1938) and Rob Lowe in Oxford Blues (1984) crossed the Atlantic convinced that everyone cycled around wearing gowns and mortar boards, that scouts were chirpy cockneys and that toffs and profs alike delighted in giving outsiders — especially Americans — a tough time.

But British film-makers did nothing to rectify the situation, as they were reluctant to address the questions of class that were inevitably raised by stories about students and dons with clipped BBC accents.

Indeed, the only working-class Brit central to a film about the university was Stan Laurel in A Chump at Oxford — and he turned out to be a nobleman, Lord Paddington, suffering from a case of amnesia.

The emphasis on social realism and film noir and the 1950s boom in widescreen epics set in the ancient world meant that post-war Hollywood lost interest in Oxford — an indifference that lasted for some 40 years.

Yet there were few homegrown film-makers willing to work here. Government agencies and transport companies sponsored the occasional travelogue, while the newsreels never missed a varsity match against Cambridge.

But features like Joseph Losey’s Accident (1967) and the Peter Cushing horror, Incense for the Damned (1970), were rare excursions until Oxford began to reap the dividend of the international success of the 1981 TV series, Brideshead Revisited.

Boasting buildings dating from Saxon times through to the 21st century, Oxford and its surrounding county offer an unrivalled architectural diversity that can provide atmospheric backdrops for almost any time or place in post-medieval history.

Blenheim Palace, for example, served as Elsinore in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version of Hamlet, while Elizabethan England was conjured up at Broughton Castle in Shakespeare in Love (1998). More turbulent times have been recreated at the Bodleian Library, with the Convocation House featuring in both the English Civil War drama To Kill a King (2002) and The Madness of King George (1994), while the Tower of the Five Orders helped evoke revolutionary Paris in Quills (2000).

The Victorian city played itself in both Dreamchild (1985) — Gavin Millar’s account of the writing of Alice in Wonderland — and American Friends (1991), Michael Palin's adaptation of his own academic ancestor's diaries.

Yet it was just as convincing impersonating 1870s Harvard in Michael Cimino’s infamous and highly under-rated Heaven's Gate (1980). The heart of the university made a fine public school, too, in Another Country (1984) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).

But Oxford isn’t simply locked in a time warp. It has also starred in several modern-day movies, like Shadowlands (1993), A Fish Called Wanda (1988), Enduring Love (2004), The Golden Compass (2007) and An Education (2009).

Foreign films have also been made here, including Alba Pagana (1969) and Robert Rylands’ Last Journey (1996). The Queen's College and Bicester Shopping Village have even featured in Bollywood musicals!

As well, as being a timeless location, Oxford also has links with some of the biggest names in British cinema history.

Hugh Laurie and Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter films, were born in the city. Laurence Olivier went to school here, as did Sam Mendes and Maggie Smith, who, like Deborah Kerr, began her career at the Oxford Playhouse.

The first Oxford graduate to make it in Hollywood was Donald Crisp, who worked with such silent titans as D W Griffith and Buster Keaton, before becoming a reliable character actor in the sound era.

The multi-talented Ivor Novello became its first star through films like Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1928). Kris Kristofferson, Michael York and Hugh Grant have all since followed his lead. But the university’s only genuine superstar is Richard Burton, who began acting as a student at Exeter College and later teamed with Elizabeth Taylor in Doctor Faustus at the Playhouse.

Comedy actors Dudley Moore, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Rowan Atkinson and Mel Smith are also Oxford alumni, as are actresses Imogen Stubbs, Kate Beckinsale, Emily Mortimer and Rosamund Pike.

Among the leading directors to study here are Anthony Asquith, Charles Crichton, Roger Corman and Terrence Malick, as well as those pioneers of kitchen sink drama, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger and Ken Loach.

Screenwriters include Dennis Potter, Alan Bennett, Richard Curtis and Graham Greene, who started out as a film critic on a student magazine. In addition, some of the most successful films of all time have been based on books written by or about past residents, tutors and students.

Several stars also live in Oxfordshire, including Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley. Roald Dahl and Sir Michael Horden died here. Sir John Gielgud was cremated in Oxford, while such much-filmed authors as Kenneth Grahame, C S Lewis, George Orwell, Agatha Christie and J R R Tolkien are just some of those buried about the county.

In all, 60-odd feature films have been set in and around Oxford, with hundreds more having some association with either the city or the university.

There have also been dozens of TV shows filmed in the county —cult series including The Prisoner, The Champions, The New Avengers and Doctor Who; acclaimed costume pieces like Pride and Prejudice (1995), Emma (1996), Jane Eyre (1997), Oliver Twist (1999) and Daniel Deronda (2002); and hard-hitting dramas like Bad Girls and Casualty, as well as comedy classics like The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and The Vicar of Dibley But the image of Oxford held by millions across the world comes primarly from two programmes — Brideshead Revisited and Inspector Morse (1987-2001).

Charles Sturridge’s impeccable adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel inspired undergraduates and yuppies alike to adopt the dress code and carefree attitudes of the Jazz Age.

Moreover, it convinced many more that the university was still a place where nobility counted for more than ability.

With his thirst for a pint balancing his love of classical music, Endeavour Morse helped correct that impression.

Educated at St John's, he was not Oxford's first televised detective — that was Balliol's Lord Peter Wimsey. But he is easily its most famous — despite the dogged efforts of DI Lewis and Midsomer’s DCI Barnaby.