An Angel for May

2001
An Angel for May
She will be lost forever if he doesn’t find her in time
Director: Harley Cokeliss
Producers: Michael Lionello Cowan, Harley Cokeliss,
Jason Piette
Writer: Peter Milligan, from the novel by
Melvin Burgess
Production Company: A Spice Factory/Barzo Production
Year of Production: 2001 (Released 2002)
Where filmed: Barnsley, Grimethorpe, High Bradfield,
Penistone, Sheffield, South Yorkshire; Leeds, Marsden,
Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire during 2001.
Guerilla Books
Synopsis: Schoolboy Tom, an asthmatic loner, finds
he is able to travel back in time to World War II. There
he meets May, a waif-like evacuee. Returning to the
present, he learns that something terrible happened to
May just days after he left her. Determined to save her,
he resolves to alter time.
Credited cast: Tom Wilkinson (Sam Wheeler), Geraldine
James (Susan Higgins), Hugo Speer (Bob Harris),
Angeline Ball (Barbara Collins), Julie Cox (Alison), John
Benfield (PC Clegg), Nina Wadia (Science Teacher),
Matthew Beard (Tom), Charlotte Wakefield (May),
Anna Massey (Rosie), Dora Bryan (Evelyn), Michael
McNulty (‘Sniffer’), Richard Fleeshman (School Team
Captain), James Joyce (Big Kid), Daniel Mason (Short
Hair), Jonathan Bradd (‘Sir’), Andrew Foxcroft (‘Number
2’), Ashley Rhodes (Small Boy), Bill Rodgers (Fat Man),
Janine Birkett (WPC), Kate Anthony (Mrs. Cranshaw),
Carol McGuigan (Nurse), Andy Devine (Drunken Man),
Rob Riley (Desk Sergeant), Terence Maynard (Reverend
Campbell), John Skevington (Jim) and Tess as herself.
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An Angel for May
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2001
Guerilla Books
As the director of two acclaimed 1970s featurettes for the
late-lamented Children’s Film Foundation, filmmaker Harley
Cokeliss hadn’t expected to be asked to make another
movie 25 years later. Yet, in 2001, the London-based
Californian was invited to choose a book that the renamed
Children’s Film and Television Foundation could develop
into a screenplay. He chose An Angel for May, by Melvin
Burgess, because of what he called “its emotional power and
moral agenda”.
title page: Charlotte Wakefield as the waif-like May.
above: Bomb damage recreated in South Yorkshire.
Working with a modest £1.4 million budget he pulled
together an impressive cast that included Geraldine James,
Angeline Ball, Anna Massey, Dora Bryan and Full Monty
stars Tom Wilkinson and Hugo Speer. Wilkinson, in huge
demand after the runaway success of The Full Monty, turned
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Guerilla Books
above: Director Harley Cokeliss with Anna
Massey, just one of the familiar faces
scattered throughout
An Angel for May.
opposite: The ruin, in the background,
through which Tom travels through time.
It was built on fields close to a farm in
Penistone, South Yorkshire. The wind
machines were used to conjure up stormy
Yorkshire weather on fine days.
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down big-money offers of significant American movies in
favour of An Angel for May. The reason? He felt that Sam
Wheeler, the Yorkshire farmer he played in the film, was
uncannily like his own father, who had farmed land in
Horsforth, Leeds.
Cokeliss shot his film entirely in South and West Yorkshire,
creating an effective and believable patchwork of locations
that represented two very different worlds: wartime
Yorkshire in the 1940s and the same county 50 years later.
He compared the necessity of moving his crew from one
location to another to three-dimensional chess, but stressed
it was entirely his own choice. “An Angel for May was written
by somebody who’s on the other side of the Pennines so
it should be set in Lancashire, but everything described in
An Angel for May
the book was to be found in Yorkshire,” he revealed. “The
story had certain requirements. The boy needed to be able
to go from one place to another. He needed to see the town
change from present day to the past. There needed to be a
farm, a ruin that we could use, housing that could become
fields – all dictated by the story. By filming in South Yorkshire
we were able to receive a modest stipend from what was
then called the Yorkshire Media Production Agency. When
you’re operating on a budget as tight as we were, even that
modest contribution was very significant.”
A key element of the film was a ruin that acted as a wormhole,
transporting juvenile hero Tom back to the 1940s. A set
was built on fields close to a farm in Penistone which, for
three weeks, hosted the principal production base. Using
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2001
cinema cunning Cokeliss used one nearby hill to represent
‘40s countryside and another for the present since it had
windmills in the background. Time was constantly of the
essence. In the village of Marsden, near Huddersfield,
Cokeliss had just a few short hours to complete one vital
scene. “The local council gave us one morning to film it.
We’d taken down the road signs and had turned it back into
circa 1941. Then they wanted us out of their hair.”
Cokeliss was remarkably sanguine about the unpredictability
of Yorkshire weather. He knew that making a movie on a
landscape dotted with giant wind turbines mean one thing:
it was likely to be beyond blustery. Occasionally he and his
crew had to batten down the hatches while a momentary
storm blasted the location and sets. Then, as soon as it had
Guerilla Books
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arrived, the bad weather was gone leaving a window of
beautiful late afternoon sunlight that Cokeliss, his crew and
actors took full advantage of.
G
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Full of praise for his cast, Cokeliss reserved his greatest
admiration for Tom Wilkinson who, following an ad-hoc
workshop with his young family, urged him to give the film a
happy ending. During shooting the director and writer Peter
Milligan had stuck to the novel’s original bleak conclusion.
Cokeliss was convinced by Wilkinson’s argument. “Over
lunch Tom said ‘We’d really like to see the boy succeed.
Why don’t you guys see if you can come up with an ending
where the audience can go out feeling positive?’ We thought
that was an intriguing idea. As it happens our funding got
held up by three months, so Peter and I had the time to
think about it. That was a very powerful message to send.
When we showed the new script to Melvin Burgess he said
‘I wish I’d thought of that ending.’ It was very big of him and
a great compliment to us.”
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An Angel for May
far left, top: Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson made An
Angel
for May because the role he played reminded him of his own
father, a Yorkshireman who farmed in Horsforth, Leeds.
far left, bottom: Another rainy day. Cokeliss was remarkably
sanguine about the unpredictability of Yorkshire weather.
far left, bottom: Like many actresses Charlotte demands a
lift to work.
above: The real farm acting ‘the farm’ .
left: The clapperboard which marries sound and picture.
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