The 1984 British film The Chain never really got the critical plaudits it deserved. Directed by Jack Gold and written by Jack Rosenthal, its stellar cast included Phyllis Logan, Nigel Hawthorne, Anna Massey, Billie Whitelaw and Leo McKern. It was criticised for its overly layered plot – a removal man, played by Warren Mitchell, muses on the seven deadly sins as he moves seven households in one day, all connected in a long chain of sale – but the film endures because of Rosenthal’s sharply observational script that, in retrospect, has turned The Chain into a document of 1980s mores. It is delightful and ambitious. Try and find it.
Its central structure is a circular one, nicked from a French film, La Ronde. At the top of the chain sits the successful Leo McKern. Everyone else is moving up the property ladder except him. He’s decided he will go and live in the tiny home he first owned at the beginning of his career, the very home at the bottom of the same chain – which he, unaware, closes into a loop.