FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD 1967lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2013/01/far-from-madding-crowd-1967.html

Beyond the obvious need to lure the American public away from their TV sets with size and spectacle impossible tomatch on the small screen, I’m not sure I've ever been totally clear on the thought process behind the '60s epic. I canunderstand when the subject’s a heroic historical figure (Lawrence of Arabia ), or the backdrop is something as broadin scope as the Russian Revolution (Doctor Zhivago); but when the roadshow treatment (widescreen, two-plus-hours running time, reserved seats, intermission) is imposed upon relatively intimate stories of love, relationships,and the flaws of character that lead to tragedy (Ryan’s Daughter), I can’t help but feel that the outsized visual scaleof the epic can sometimes work to undermine the effectiveness of the human drama. Such is what I find to be thecase with John Schlesinger’s otherwise superior adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd.

Julie Christie as Bathsheba Everdine

Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak

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Terence Stamp as Sergeant Frank Troy

Peter Finch as William Boldwood

In earlier posts I've expressed my weakness for visual ostentation and how readily I’m able to overlook a film’sshortcomings when its deficiencies are mitigated by a certain stylistic panache. However, the impressive cast JohnSchlesinger assembled for Far From the Madding Crowd is so fascinating in their own right (Julie Christie, AlanBates, Peter Finch, and Terence Stamp) that all the pomp and spectacle of the production values surrounding themmakes a perfect case against the need to gild the lily.

Far from the Madding Crowd is an outsized film of subtle emotions that mighthave benefited greatly from the kind of intimate style employed by Ken Russell

for his adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love.

MGM’s handing over the reins of a $4 million adaptation of a Thomas Hardy classic to the creative team behind themodestly-funded, ultra-mod, youth-culture hit, Darling (1965), was either an inspired stroke of genius or a simple actof crass commercialism. Inspired, certainly, in conjecturing that the very contemporary talents of producer JosephJanni, director John Schlesinger, screenwriter Frederic Raphael, and actress Julie Christie (with the added assist ofher Fahrenheit 451 cinematographer, Nicolas Roeg) could bring to this Victorian-era period piece the same verveand freshness they brought to their cynical evisceration of swinging London. Crassly commercial, undeniably, in astudio attempting to hit boxoffice paydirt merely by reassembling the hot-property talents of a current success,heedless of their suitability to the material at hand.

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While I tend to think MGM was thinking with their pocketbooks more than their heads (Hollywood at the time wasliterally throwing open its doors to any and everyone who displayed the slightest trace of knowing what youngaudiences were looking for), I have to also admit that in many ways, Thomas Hardy’s take on Wessex countrysidelife in 1874 and Schlesinger’s view of 1965 London are a better fit than first glance would reveal.

Bathsheba finds herself the focus of the amorous attentions of three men

As embodied by Julie Christie, Far From the Madding Crowd’s Bathsheba Everdine is easily the spiritual cousin ofDarling’s Diana Scott. While lacking Diana’s heartlessness, Bathsheba, like Diana, is of an individualistic,determined, and headstrong nature, tempered by the foibles of pride, vanity, and a kind of reckless self-enchantmentwith her own powers of allure. Nowhere near as passive as Hardy’s most popular heroine, the unfortunate Tess ofTess of the D’Urbervilles, Bathsheba is a non-heroic heroine of unfailingly human-sized passions andidiosyncrasies. Conflictingly led by her heart, her indomitability, and a barely-masked need to have her beautyregarded by others—for no reason beyond the immature, yet very human desire to be reassured of their worth fromtime to time—Bathsheba is less the traditional romantic heroine ruled by her passions than a kind of rural Circe,bewitching and dooming the hapless men who cross her path.

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Self EnchantedA landowner, a businesswoman, and an independent spirit

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMI’m not one to demand that a film adaptation of a book hew slavishly to the written word. Of course, I love it when afilm made from a favorite novel is translated to the screen in terms compliant to the way I envisioned it (Goodbye,Columbus), but I’m just as happy if a filmmaker deviates from the text if they are able unearth something new,something wholly cinematic that captures the book’s essence, if not its exact plot (Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining). Ionly got around to reading Far From the Madding Crowd last year, some 34 years after I saw the film version,and beyond the then-controversial casting the of the blond Christie in the role of the fiery brunette Bathsheba, Ifound Schlesinger’s film to be surprisingly faithful to the book.

A highlight of both the book and the film is the "swordplay" seduction scene

Perhaps too faithful, as the self-deprecating director indicated to biographer William J. Mann in the biographicalmemoir, The Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger . In addressing claims that the film was far too long andatypically slow in pacing, Schlesinger lamented: “We didn't take enough liberty with the film because we were tooworried about taking liberties with a classic.” And indeed the film displays the kind of reverence to text that makesFar From the Madding Crowd the kind of film perfect for high-school literature classes, but for me, the movie is moreatmospherically leisurely than slow. I love the time Schlesinger gives over to giving us colorful views of country farmlife and the romantic quadrangle at the heart of the film (pentagonal if one includes the tragic Fanny Robin, the farmgirl with just about as much luck as the traditional heroine of Victorian literature).

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Prunella Ransome portrays Fanny Robin, a young servant girl in love with thedashing Sergeant Troy (Stamp). Were this a epic musical taking place in 19-

century France, hers would be the Anne Hathaway role.

I fell in fell in love with Far From the Madding Crowd chiefly because of Julie Christie (surprise!) but also because itis refreshing to see an sweeping epic film of this type with a strong woman at its center. A woman whose actions notonly propel the events of the story, but whose destiny is shaped by her desires (what she does and doesn't want),not merely by the vagaries of fate.

As far as I'm concerned, the film has a tough time recovering from a huge loss ofcredibility when Julie Christie rebuffs the matrimonial advances of that

absolutely gorgeous slab of hirsute hunk, Alan Bates. Seriously, what was shethinking?

PERFORMANCESI’m afraid if I log one more post in which I wax rhapsodic on the wonders of Julie Christie, my partner is going insearch of professional help (for either me or himself), so I’ll make this brief. In Bathsheba Everdine, Christie is castas yet another shallow petulant—a character of the sort she virtually trademarked in the '60s with her roles inDarling, Fahrenheit 451 (the Montag’s wife half of her dual role, anyway), and Petulia. Christie’s artistry and gift inbeing able to convey the emotional depth behind the superficial has been, I think, the obvious intelligence that hasalways been an inseverable part of her beauty and appeal. It takes a lot of brains to play thoughtless.

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Mad Love

As good as Christie is (and for me, her star quality alone galvanizes this monolithic movie) the top acting honors goto Peter Finch who gives the screen one of the most searing portraits of tortured obsession since James Mason inLolita. One of my favorite scenes is a silent one where the camera is trained on Finch’s face as Christie’s characterrides by in a wagon. In his eyes alone you can see a wellspring of hope rise and fall in a matter of seconds. It reallytakes something to upstage Julie Christie, and she is very good here, but Peter Finch really won me over by givingthe film's most realized and moving performance.

Scenes depicting English country life are beautifully rendered

THE STUFF OF FANTASYThe production values of Far From the Madding Crowd are first rate. The time and place is richly evoked in lavishcostumes, painstaking period detail, and vivid depictions of rural life. Still, while the large-format Panavision doeswell when it comes to dramatically capturing the tempestuous forces of nature which underscore the impassionedcarryings-on of Hardy’s characters, the sheer size of Far From the Madding Crowd keeps me at a slight emotionalremove. Nicolas Roeg’s ofttimes astonishingly beautiful camerawork strives rather valiantly to imbue the picture-postcard compositions with as much humanity and sensitivity as possible. The story is so engaging and theperformances so good that one longs to be brought closer, but too often the film leaves us feeling as if we arelooking at these lives through the wide-lens end of a pair of binoculars.

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Cinematographer, later-turned-director Nicolas Roeg was the unofficial caretakerof the Julie Christie "look" early in her career. He also photographed her tobreathtaking effect for Fahrenheit 451, Petulia, and in 1973 he directed her

in Don't Look Now

THE STUFF OF DREAMSFar From the Madding Crowd did not do too well at the boxoffice in 1968. A fact likely attributable, at least in part, tothe film being promoted as a romance when in actuality the real love story begins about 60 seconds before the 168-minute movie ends. To its detriment, in hoping to be the next epic romance in the Doctor Zhivago vein, Far From theMadding Crowd is chiefly a drama about people who are either in love with the right people at the wrong time or thewrong people at the right time.

The Valentine which sets the tragic drama in motion

Far From the Madding Crowd is a movie I like to revisit because in it I find a poignant meditation on love. The threemen seeking the hand of Bathsheba offer her three distinct types of love: passionate and sensual; a near-paternaladoration; and finally, the calm, even-tempered love of respect and friendship. Which is truer? Which is preferable?The film never answers, but there is much to read into the film’s final scene. Look at it carefully, there’s a lot goingon. Look at the expressions on the faces, the placement of the characters in a kind of domestic tableau, take note ofthe weather, the significance of the color red, the recurring clock and timepiece motifs, the framing of the final shot…then draw your own conclusions. Like the ambiguously happy ending of Mike Nichols' The Graduate, everyoneseems to come away from Far From The Madding Crowd with a different impression of what the ending signifies.

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Check out the blog Random Ramblings, Thoughts and Fiction for another review of Far From the MaddingCrowd (lots of great pics!).

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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