Having just finished a re-reading of Hardy's The Woodlanders, I decided to re-watch the Channel 4 film I had on a DVD. This blog will admit to two heresies. Firstly, unusually, I want to discuss the film before the book.
1997 Film on DVD
For once, unlike so many modern travesties, the film stuck quite closely to the book. No actor is exactly like the character you have conjured up in your mind's-eye during your reading, but I thought those in the film were not far off my imagination. Rufus Sewell fitted Giles Winterborne (more restrained than his earthy performance in that classic Cold Comfort Farm!); he was suitably supported by Walter Sparrow as Old Creedle; Anthony Haygarth made a pretty good fist of Mr. Melbury; Sheila Burrell may have reminded me too much of Ada Doom and the something nasty in the woodshed, but was still apt casting as Grammer Oliver; Polly Walker exuded both the sensuality and vulnerability needed for Mrs Charmond; Amanda Ryan fleshed out the small part of Suke Damson (the name suggests ripeness); whilst Jodhi May clearly got across Marty South's intense but unrequited love for Giles. Cal Macaninch as Dr. Fitzpiers and Emily Woof as Grace Melbury did not let the side down: the coldness, self-centredness, arrogance of the first were all amply expressed; whilst the strange mixture of innocence mixed with ambition, of purity combined with sexual awareness were intrinsic to Woof's portrayal.
Rufus Sewell as Giles : Emily Woof as Grace
When one adds the breath-taking scenery of the brooding woodlands, the claustrophobic hamlet, the open-vistas of the downs, the changing seasons and weather (particularly the rain-swept tragic final hours of Giles); with a music score which never felt intrusive - then, I think, a contemporary Film Review got it about right: Breathtaking cinematography...a great cast...a triumph of full-blooded story-telling.
Little Hintock
Now, for the second heresy.
The film ends with Fitzpiers slowly walking up a slope to Grace; both are dressed in black and the figures show up starkly against the skyline. She does not attempt to come close to him. He says: "I have done you so much wrong..."; then, a few words later, "What do you feel for me?" A brief silence. As she turns away from him, she replies, "Nothing". The credits roll. After being pretty faithful to the story-line of the book (admittedly a few key episodes were, had to be, left out), this ending has no place in Hardy's novel. Given it was released in 1997 - 110 ten years after the novel was first published - it reflected the social mores of the changed (dare one say, progressed) times. I still feel Hardy would have given the reader a more truthful, morally acceptable, ending if he had followed a similar course.
If only the book had finished before the last three chapters, with a tying up, similar to the film's conclusion. Grace's father's counsel should have sealed it: ...my opinion is that if you don't live with him, you had better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing bo-peep. You sent him away; and now he's gone. Very well; trouble him no more. However, Chapter XLVI commences with a 'warning' of what was to come: The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed indoors a great deal. She does venture out to tend Winterborne's grave with the devoted Marty. Then her husband arrives there unexpectedly. He realises Grace is not yet to be treated presumingly; and he was correspondingly careful to tranquillise her. What a calculated and sinister meaning there is in the word 'tranquillise'. Grace seemingly holds out: I go with Marty to Giles's grave. We swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up. Chapter XLVII, to me, is the most artificial of the whole book. Two pages are devoted to a mini-essay on man traps. Admittedly, there is a touch of humour in the description of the various types: from the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted landlords - quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums.; to the bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the bone. The irony (pardon the pun) of this trap, laid by Suke's husband Tim Tangs to wound the doctor, whom he knows had frolicked with Suke, is that it not only nearly caught Grace, but that it led inexorably to the reunion of the two Fitzpiers. This time, Hardy's description of the surroundings borders on the 'twee': Grace noticed they were in an encircled glade in the densest part of the wood....it was an exceptionally soft, balmy evening for the time of year, which was just that transient period in the May month when beech trees have suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the softness of butterflies' wings. Ugh!
Grace is, in fact, diminished in most readers' eyes. To worry about the lack of a brush or comb when walzing off to Sherton Abbas, rather than the effect of her volte face on her father and others. Well, really! Father Melbury hits the nail softly on its head when he says to himself: Well - he's her husband,...but it's a forlorn hope for her; and God knows how it will end! Creedle uses the hammer more firmly: "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't she ha' bode with her father, and been faithful". Poor Creedle was thinking of his old employer (Winterborne). As was faithful Marty South. She bookends the three years of the book's time-line. She lost her hair for Mrs Charmond at the beginning and now mourns her lost love at the end. The withered flowers that she and Grace had left on Giles's grave a week earlier are cleared away, and she puts fresh ones in their place: "Now, my own, own love, " she whispered, "you are mine, and on'y mine; for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died...If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and heaven!. . . . But, no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ee; for you was a good man, and did good things!" One is left with a compelling feeling that Marty deserved happiness, whilst Grace did not.
Giles Winterborne a good man...
Unlike Marty, or Grace in the film, Hardy's Fitzpiers are off to the Midlands. One wonders if one of his well-off landed patients will be a Chatterley. Perhaps, Grace might meet Mellors' father on one of her lonely wanderings through those woods.
I will do another blog on the rest of the novel next.
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