David Lister: Film fans short-changed by trailer trash

Keira Knightley is unhappy about what has been said about her role in her new film, The Duchess. She plays Georgiana, the 18th-century Duchess of Devonshire. She's not unhappy about what the critics are saying, not yet anyway. Miss Knightley's unhappiness is about what the film's own trailer is saying.

The trailer draws a link between the Duchess of Devonshire and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. In fact, the trailer doesn't so much draw a link as sledgehammer a link. I have seen the film at an advance screening, and the trailer on You Tube. They are, like Georgiana and Diana, somewhat distant relations.

The trailer begins with a picture of Diana, followed by the choice phrases: "Two women related by ancestry"; "United by destiny"; "History repeats itself".

The two were indeed related. Georgiana was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana. In addition, both married powerful men, who were unfaithful to them and not much interested in them. There were three also in the Devonshire marriage, actually three at the breakfast table. Both Georgiana and Diana were expected to produce a male heir. Both became fashion icons; both were popular; both were vulnerable and, well you know the rest.

It is an uncanny set of coincidences. And one can't totally blame those in charge of the trailer for wanting to make the most of it. The trouble is that Diana is never actually mentioned in the film, nor in Amanda Foreman's book, on which the film is based. An indignant Keira Knightley says: "I am Georgiana. I am not Diana. The film is not about Diana." Amanda Foreman is also indignant, and more wordily so. "The marketing people probably thought the only way they could get the young popcorn-eating brigade to see this film was if they made some comparison with Diana." As for the "United by destiny" tag, she says: "I don't actually think that Georgiana died in a carriage crash."

Here she does protest too much. Destiny does not have to refer solely to the means of death. But the most interesting thing is that the director of the film is angry. Saul Dibb says: "We didn't want to make any parallels between the two women whatsoever". He, like Foreman, blames "the marketing men" for the trailer.

It is a point a lot of film-goers will not know. A director can have no say in the trailer. One can't imagine the late Alfred Hitchcock agreeing to such a clause in his contract. His trailer for Psycho – as he led the audience round the motel himself, shaking his head and muttering "Horrible, horrible", and then ripping open the shower curtain at the trailer's climax – was a director's trailer par excellence.

Somewhere over the years the director's power has been ceded to the studio's and distributors' marketing departments. The Duchess trailer is an example of where such a confusion of responsibilities can go wrong. It's not that I necessarily agree with the howls of protest of Knightley and Foreman. The Diana link is implicit in both the film and the book, and to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous.

The people I feel sorry for are Saul Dibb and the audiences: Dibb because he tried to be subtle as a film-maker and merely hint at the link, and any subtlety is blown apart by the in-your-face marketing department; and audiences because they are being misled into thinking they are going to see a film about Diana, as her picture appears at the beginning of the trailer.

Trailers are about selling. But there is a certain madness in the director and the marketing people being so at odds. To sell someone's vision with a different vision is really telling the audience that one of those visions isn't quite right. The director should have power of veto.

Old-time humour

The excellent BBC TV sketch show Armstrong and Miller has, as a regular turn, an impersonation of the Fifties and Sixties variety act Flanders and Swann. The pair delivered witty and tuneful songs ("I'm a Gnu" and "The Hippopotamus Song" being the most famous) with Flanders, who suffered from polio and used a wheelchair, and Swann at the piano. Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller give their brilliant impersonation a twist by giving the pair suitably humorous but filthy lyrics to sing.

What intrigues me about this sketch is that I reckon only a small minority of the viewing audience will have heard of Flanders and Swann. They have not exactly been in fashion for several decades. It strikes me that this could be the start of a rather surreal line in sketch shows. Do impersonations of people that most of your audience has never seen. In Armstrong and Miller's case, the impersonation is excellent. But if it were rubbish, how many viewers would know?

Lateness jibes are cheap shots

A strange habit has crept into the reviewing of rock concerts recently. It is an almost statutory mention of the lateness of the artist in taking to the stage. An Amy Winehouse concert is almost never reviewed without a note of how many minutes late she is in starting. And this week reviews of the start of Madonna's UK tour in Cardiff stressed that she was two hours late in coming on stage at the Millennium Stadium. She came on at 9pm instead of the advertised 7pm.

Come off it. I've been going to rock concerts for a long time and virtually never has the main artist come on at the start time advertised on the ticket. Around 9pm when darkness has set in, and the light show can work in all its glory, is precisely when I would have expected Madonna to come on stage.

These accusations of lateness are just cheap point-scoring by critics. And if audiences want to know when their favourite is coming on, then just ring up the venue and ask: "Can you tell me the running order, please?" The time you are given will be the right time, almost to the second.

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