Yahoo Movies One Life director says whole crew was 'sobbing' during emotional That's Life scene
The new British drama tells the incredible true story of the man dubbed the British Oskar Schindler
Watch: One Life's director looks back at emotional day on set
One Life director James Hawes says the cast and crew on his biopic of the man dubbed the “British Schindler” couldn’t hold back the tears as they filmed a momentous scene.
One Life — in UK cinemas now — is the heroic true story of Sir Nicholas Winton, who helped 669 young Jewish refugees escape from the prospect of Nazi concentration camps on the eve of World War II and find safety in Britain.
His work came to public attention some 50 years later on TV’s That’s Life. It was recreating the moment on the show when he was re-united with people he’d helped which touched everybody’s hearts, both in front and behind the cameras.
“The whole crew was sobbing,” Hawes explained to Yahoo UK. “It was the most incredibly emotional day for everybody. Especially for the people he’d helped, because they were feeling their own stories.
"One of them, Lord Alfred Dubs, also came to the film’s premiere and he couldn’t say that he enjoyed the film, but he was enormously moved because he was watching his own story and remembered the moment when he said goodbye to his own parents at Prague station.
“In the That’s Life scene, to have those people stand up and own the fact that Nicky [Winton] saved their lives had the whole crew sobbing. There was no way of holding it together.”
The scene was made more intense by casting people who were real life relatives of the children rescued by Winton. “If you look carefully at the film, in the row just behind Anthony Hopkins, there is a row of three sisters and their brother,” Hawes explained. “They’re children of one of the Kinder and you see the emotion – one woman is barely keeping it together. It’s one of the best performances I can ever lay claim to.”
There was no way of holding it together.James Hawes, One Life director
In the film, double Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins is the older Nicholas, with Johnny Flynn as the younger man in the run-up to the War. Casting Hopkins came about through Hawes and his team working closely with the Winton family, especially his daughter Barbara who was both an executive producer and wrote the book which inspired the film. She specifically asked that the veteran actor should play the older version of her father.
Hawes is convinced it’s a strikingly relevant story, despite the rescue mission having taken place over eighty years ago. This was brought home to him while researching locations for the shoot in Prague Station. “We were looking at Nicky’s statue and suddenly there was this disturbance down the platform. We realised the crowd of people arriving were Ukrainian refugees.
"They were travelling in a different direction and the conflict was just a border away, but you couldn’t help but wonder what Nicky would have thought. Perhaps he was glad that people were helping refugees, but that it was tragically sad that history was repeating itself.”
He believes the lessons of history should never be forgotten. “If we can’t learn from a story as positive as this one, then we’re in a pretty desperate state,” he reflects. “We seem to be very bad at learning from what we’ve done in the past and our political memories are extremely short. I’ve made quite a few films — TV movies mainly — about true stories and real people and I like the ones that have an impact, that have ripples and echoes to send into the way we live today. This film felt like one that would do that and, therefore, it mattered.”
After a TV career including recent major series such as Black Mirror and Slow Horses, One Life is Hawes’ first feature film. Anthony Hopkins’ stellar CV includes playing a number of real people, from Alfred Hitchcock to Richard Nixon, and his next film, Freud’s Last Session, sees him playing the renowned psychologist. Currently on the West End stage playing Richard Burton, Johnny Flynn will be seen on Netflix next year as Dickie Greenleaf in Ripley, the streamer’s re-boot of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley.
One Life is in UK cinemas now.
Read more: Incredible real life stories
Watch a trailer below.
