When the great Italian film-maker Lina Wertmüller and her fellow controversialist the Polish director Walerian Borowczyk (maker of Immoral Tales) were invited to be headline guests at the Oxford film festival in the late 1970s they were quite unaware that the event wore its lack of a hospitality budget like a badge of merit.
Anxious to help out, I offered my mother-in-law’s small terraced house as a possible venue for a party to try to impress two of Europe’s finest. The result was a surprisingly successful gathering for afternoon tea as the pair took politely to chintz and fruitcake, belying their often contentious on-screen imagery. My mother-in-law, ever the perfect host, still hadn’t a clue who they were even after they left.
