'Journey's End' To End Up On Big Screen
'Journey's End', the famous R. C. Sherriff play set in the trenches of the First World War, is being brought to the big screen in a new adaptation starring Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany and Toby Jones.
The play was first performed in 1928, but is set 10 years before that and concerns the lives of a handful of British soldiers living in the trenches.
They are in the line right before the last major German offensive on the Western Front, Operation Michael (or Kaiserschlacht, the Kaiser's Battle).
Producer Guy De Beaujeu is a big fan of the play and its timeless quality:
"The reason that I got involved with Journey's End particularly is because I genuinely believe it's probably one of the greatest pieces of drama ever written about war. I come from a military family... [and] I instantly recognised a lot of the characters that are in the play as being genuine dipictions of men even, you know, 50 years after the event - the Army is still full of people [like that]".
A lot of the drama revolves around Captain Stanhope, who is idealised by the very 'green' Second Lieutenant Raleigh.
Stanhope is in a relationship with Raleigh's sister, and becomes frustrated with having to live up to the heroic image Raleigh has of him, when in reality he has turned to heavy drinking to cope with trench life.
Paul Bettany plays Lieutenant Osborne, who is outranked by Stanhope, but as an older character and former schoolmaster, still has a paternal quality. Bettany says of the play:
"When men came home from that war, and tried to go back to a normal civilian life, nearly every other man that they met had served... And that is not so true anymore. I think [it's] really valuable [to remember that]".
Journey's End is being filmed at Pinewood studios.
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