Pensioners film makes it to Cannes

Two pensioners were today celebrating the news that their first movie is going to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Former factory worker Rodney Maile, aged 69, and his 60-year-old friend Jack Cornish have remade the Cary Grant classic Charade.

The pair decided to create the picture two years ago after deciding that there was too much “sex, blood, and horror” on screen.

With no movie experience, Mr Maile, from Milford Haven, west Wales, and Mr Cornish, from Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, were originally going to use amateur actors and a camcorder.

But their film changed shape when they managed to persuade an Oscar-nominated editor (Kant Pan of The Crying Game) and a Bafta winning director of photography to come on board.

Mr Cornish, a former journalist, said: “At first, the film was going to be a modest amateur effort using local drama club members and my camcorder.

“Slowly that all changed. The more we got into it we realised the only way to achieve what we wanted was to make it a totally professional effort.

“We were delighted, absolutely over-the-moon when we heard it was going to premiere in Cannes.

“It’s been a long, hard slog but it’s all been worth it and now we’re hoping to make more movies.”

It took the men two years to make the movie.

They struck upon the idea in 2002 after learning that copyright for the original had expired because of a “mix up between the studio and the production company”.

Mr Maile said: “We’d been making a home video and when we finished it we opened a couple of bottles of wine and got on to the subject of films.

“We thought there was a need for films that aren’t full of sex, blood and horror.”