After watching and reviewing the 1998 TV adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s great novel, I re-watched the famous 1967 John Schlesinger movie. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to blog lately and it is already about three weeks since I saw this version, so it’s starting to fade a little in my mind – but I just thought I’d write something about some of the main points which struck me.
Julie Christie and Terence Stamp
I enjoyed the 1998 mini-series very much – but, after seeing the Schlesinger movie, my feeling is that it is much the more powerful adaptation, with a greater intensity. I’m sure this is partly because of the beautiful cinematography by Nicolas Roeg, who later went on to direct Christie in Don’t Look Now, and partly because a cinema film (the first Hardy adaptation to make it to the big screen in 40 years) can have more of an epic, sweeping quality to it. At nearly three hours long, the film can also move at a leisurely pace at times and doesn’t have the same problem that many cinema adaptations of classic novels suffer, in terms of packing too much into a small space.
This version also has a fine screenwriter, Frederic Raphael, and, of course, a great cast, with Julie Christie, fresh from her success in Doctor Zhivago and Darling, as woman farmer Bathsheba Everdene, and Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp as the three men who court her, farmers Gabriel Oak and William Boldwood and dashing soldier Francis Troy.
A few reviewers have suggested that Christie might be somewhat miscast as Bathsheba, and to be honest I slightly feel this too . Somehow she doesn’t really convince as a woman farmer, though I’m not sure exactly why that is - to me she just seems a little urban and modern in this role, though I have never felt that about Doctor Zhivago. There is also something rather 1960s-looking about her hair and heavy make-up, although, having said that, probably the stars of the more recent adaptation have just as much of a 1990s look to them and I just don’t notice it so much because those kinds of looks are still in fashion.
Alan Bates as Oak
For me Alan Bates is probably the actor I associate most with Hardy, after a few years ago watching his unforgettable performance as Michael Henchard in the BBC series of The Mayor of Casterbridge, and I think he is excellent as Oak, giving him a solid yet brooding quality. Peter Finch is full of quiet intensity as Boldwood, while Terence Stamp is suitably flashy and conceited as Troy. I was especially struck by a scene where Stamp sings a lewd folk or music-hall song to the farm workers at the harvest-cum-wedding party in the old barn, apparently gloating over his own sexual powers - one of several scenes where folk songs are woven into the film.
Both the 1967 and 1998 adaptations are “faithful” to the novel, including most of its major events and often keeping Hardy’s dialogue – but there are some interesting departures from the text in the Schlesinger film, which are among the most striking moments. One of these comes in a scene which was originally cut from prints in the US and later restored (I don’t think it was ever cut here in the UK), where Troy is taking part in a cock-fighting scene and goads his cockerel on to its death – really bringing out the callousness of his nature and enacting what he does to Fanny.
The set-piece scene where Troy shows Bathsheba his “sword trick” is another moment where he is associated with violence. In this film he repeatedly charges down a hill towards her, and, as she stands her ground in a mixture of fear and fascination, the demonstration is intercut with footage of soldiers charging through the countryside in battle - brief glimpses which could represent Troy’s memories, Bathsheba’s imaginings, or both.
Peter Finch and Julie Christie
Another striking visual moment, this time associated with Boldwood, comes when he casts Bathsheba’s fatal valentine card into the fire – and the flames leaping around it suggest how the card’s arrival has set his passion burning and consuming.
There are also many other memorable scenes, from the one where Bathsheba and Troy are glimpsed arguing on a beach, with none of their words audible but Bathsheba’s tears and her pleading expression speaking for themselves, to the famous dark scene where the gargoyle spews rain on to Fanny Robin’s tomb in the churchyard.
Roger Ebert’s 1968 review of the film suggested it oversimplifies the characters and turns them “into stereotyped romantic lovers, instead of showing them as complex people trapped in an isolated society”. I don’t think it’s fair to say they are stereotyped, but I do think it’s possibly true that each character is made more straightforward than in the novel and doesn’t contain as many contradictions.
For instance, at the start of the novel, when he is trying to build his own business as a sheep farmer, Oak seems exhausted and over-stretched, and twice a disaster or a near-disaster unfolds while he is asleep – first he nearly dies in his shed when he forgets to open the air vent, and then his sheepdog gets free and chases all his sheep over the cliff. In the film the first of these incidents is completely cut and, although the cliff plunge is powerfully shown, I don’t think it carries any suggestion that it could be partly caused by Oak’s weariness. I also don’t think there’s a mention of the fact that he failed to insure his flock and so his ruin is partly a result of him taking a gamble. Instead, it all seems to be bad luck or fate that happens to him. To put it another way, in the novel he starts as a young man, immature in some ways, and goes on to mature as a result of the trials he undergoes, which turn him into a hero by the end. In the film he seems a hero from the start.
Similarly, Bathsheba doesn’t have the episodes of timidity which she has at times in the book but is more outgoing and determined all the time – for instance, it is her idea to send the valentine card to Boldwood, rather than the episode being sparked by an idle suggestion from Liddy (Fiona Walker). None of this is to criticise the film, since I think simplifying the characters slightly and focusing on the key aspects of their personalities, rather than painting them all in shades of grey, works very well in this movie. The 1998 film does give more of a multi-layered feeling to the characters, which works well too at the slightly slower pace of a mini-series.
I felt that Fanny (Prunella Ransome) is less prominent in this film than in the more recent mini-series, which managed to keep her story in the foreground by including scenes of her working on a farm during her pregnancy, similar to Tess’s sufferings in Tess of the d’Urbervilles when she has been deserted by Angel Clare. In 1967, Ransome wasn’t mentioned on the posters and I haven’t managed to find a picture of her in the character. However, although Fanny disappears from this movie for long stretches, her story still carries the same emotional impact when its melodramatic finale unfolds. In this version, instead of seeing the dying Fanny on the road, Troy spots her hiding in an outbuilding at his farm and has to keep her out of the sight of Bathsheba, watching from the well-furnished house - making the contrast between the two women all the more stark.
An old poster from the 1960s - which doesn't seem to make it clear this is an historical drama
I enjoyed reading this blog. I think you make a good point about why often more modern adaptations please us more. The cinematography is superior; so too is the camera able to come closer up. The technical aspects are sharper and more able, and I think it’s also more acceptable nowadays to show more vulnerable emotion than it once was. You can trace this across the century.
I agree that probably the characters in this novel (and any novel) would show more contradictions. The medium of the sentence is capable of carrying contradictions easily, but sometimes I feel the complaint about simplification comes from not taking seriously the visuals as you have done. In French film criticism the critic teases as much and more meaning out of a crowded complicated mise-en-scene set of stills than most people do out of a scene in a book. We in the Anglo tradition are not used to verbalizing out of a picture, but why not? If you tease meaning out of a verbal utterance. It could be in the case of the male, the film wanted the meaning of chance to be the center of a theme; why not? That would cohere with Hardy’s atheism.
Also stories like Fanny’s are shown more boldly and there’s a real attempt to bring out any character who cannot be identified as part of the elite — for costume dramas still carry the negative baggage of elitism (literary sources, beautiful screenplay by someone like Raphael)
I saw the Julie Christie Alan Bates one in a theatre and remember it particularly because there was actually an intermission between the two parts. Silence, lights on.
The cover for the set is dismaying. Christie does not look like that — she is austere, elegant, not voluptuous at all.
Ellen
Dear Ellen, thank you for commenting.:) I would definitely like to learn/think more about the visuals of films as they are often the thing which interests me the most – I find that key moments stick in my mind when the rest of the film or mini-series has faded away. In this case, although I liked the recent mini-series, I like the Schlesinger film even better because the visuals are so memorable. There are many more arresting moments apart from the ones I mentioned.
I do think it is a big advantage of the newer version that it gives Fanny’s story more space, and I do like the way it shows different aspects of the characters – plus I just love Paloma Baeza as Bathsheba- so maybe I shouldn’t say that I like the Schlesinger one more, but that they both have different focuses and that I like them both.
I should have put a caption on the misleading poster you commented on – this isn’t the cover for the DVD, but an old 1960s poster which I thought seems to be trying to disguise the fact that this is an historical drama! I’ll go in and add a caption to explain what the poster is.:)
For my is one of the best films for all time, this film represents all a philosophical thesis on the love (the love is something objective, it occurs between several people, is like a biological glue), the true love is the one that occurs at the end of the film between Bathsheba and Oak, because it is symmetrical, the other relations (Boldwood and Troy with Bathsheba) are asymmetric and imperfect, they had a point of calamitous, Boldwood totally obsessed, He see Bathsheba like something that he must own anyway, although knows that Bathsheba will love never him and he never could be corresponded, Troy a truhan, he only loved Fanny.
All the scenes of the film have a sense and many announce scenes are prophecies, Oak killing with the gun to the mad dog that has thrown abyss down to ewes announces the scene of the end of Boldwood killing to Troy while he drags the innocent ewe, Bathsheba, downstairs. The scene of the beach between Troy and Bathsheba and an adult pair dressed black that is superposed in first plane as announcing the future disasters of of the Troy-Bathsheba marriage.
In the final scene of the clock it is possible to be seen as the film is closed, Bathsheba has removed to the clock wedding present from Troy of his room of dear things it has put and it in a neutral place, has happened of clock-fetiche to only a clock and while the clock gives the hours Gabriel and Bathsheba remain watching the one to the other, symmetrical love.
Thank you very much for your comments, Carlos. I agree it is fascinating how to see how many scenes in this film prefigure others, such as Oak killing the dog and then Boldwood killing Troy. I also agree that Boldwood mainly sees Bathsheba as something for him to possess, like the clothes he stores away for her in the chest (I’m thinking of the book here and must admit I don’t remember if that scene is in the film.) The way the clock recurs through the film is also very interesting. No worries about your English, and thanks again!
Sorry for my very imperfect english