H05055 FILM ADAPTATIONS OF HARDY'S WORKS 7/14/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: Jcphardysoc@aol.com
Subject: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 14, 2005 11:45:55 AM PDT
Forum subscribers might be interested in the following snippet in the latest issue of Radio Times (a British TV & radio listings magazine):
'Keeley Hawes .... is now off to Jersey where she'll be filming another ITV1 production - this time a dramatisation of Thomas Hardy's classic Under the Greenwood Tree'
I've often wondered why there's been no modern TV or cinema version of this delightful novel until now.
Best wishes
John Pentney
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 14, 2005 11:51:18 AM PDT
Needless to say, I'm interested. I hope it will make it to the American side of the pond soon after its airing in the UK. . .and that it will be better than ITV's "Tess" and "Mayor"!
Ever grumpy,
Paul Niemeyer
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From: royd.whitlock@ntlworld.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 15, 2005 12:42:53 PM PDT
Paul,
As a non-Hardy-expert, only lately discovering the author, I enjoyed both recent films especially "Tess". I wasn't so impressed by Polanski's version though.
Perhaps you could elaborate on your 'disparaging' remark for my (our?) benefit, please.
Royd
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 15, 2005 2:11:33 PM PDT
Royd,
I'm not sure how saying I hope the proposed "Greenwood Tree" will be better than the ITV "Tess" and "Mayor" counts as disparagement; but since you asked. . .
My problems with the Ian Sharp-directed "Tess" are legion. In brief: it takes away any doubt that Alec is a rapist (Hardy's ambiguity about this is a crucial element of the book); I feel that it presents Tess as a spitfire, even at times a virago, which makes her acquiescence to Angel's treatment of her difficult to accept; the story is changed so that Tess doesn't learn until the very end that Alec really isn't her cousin--in the novel, Tess figures this out very early, and in comparison the TV Tess comes across as a dupe; the characterizations are often simplistic (Marian's alcoholism is portrayed by her swinging a jug of liquor at her side wherever she goes); and then there's that voice-over narrator, who is apparently meant to be the octogenerian Hardy, who tells us throughout the program that we are watching a drama on the workings of Fate.
I feel that this version of "Tess" doesn't trust its viewers to make their own judgments--the moments in the novel that Hardy keeps deliberately muted are in the TV serial painted in vivid colors. We MUST view Tess as victim. We MUST view Alec as rapist. I much prefer Polanski's film, which is, like the novel, subtle, ambiguous, and open to interpretation.
I have to admit, it's been about a year since I saw the ITV "Mayor of Casterbridge." I have it on DVD and I've been planning to write on it, but a change in jobs and other projects have intervened. Going by my recollection, I very much enjoyed Ciaran Hinds' performance as Henchard, and I found the first half to be good. The second half, however, seemed to rush headlong into events--so much so the events struck me as baffling. Again, this is a very rusty recollection. I may go back to this film and find it wonderful--although, frankly, the Dennis Potter-scripted "Mayor" of 1978, with the late great Alan Bates as Henchard, is hard to beat. Potter restructures the story so that events in the past are juxtaposed with those in the present, creating a sense of the past dragging the characters down. . .instead of the characters being rushed into a tragic future.
To emphasize, I truly hope the ITV "Under the Greenwood Tree" will be a GOOD program, one that both works as an adaptation of Hardy and that will stand on its own as an entertaining telefilm.
I hope this elaboration works for you, Royd--and for everyone else.
Best,
Paul Niemeyer
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From: jacky@wilkibob.me.uk
Subject: RE: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 12:47:13 AM PDT
With further reference to your views on film/TV adaptations, Paul, what is your view of the Far From the Madding Crowd film, and Julie Christie's and Alan Bates's performance in that?
Jacky
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From: rnemesva@stfx.ca
Subject: RE: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 6:23:29 AM PDT
Paul is clearly too modest to mention this, but his book *Seeing Hardy: Film and Television Adaptations of the Fiction of Thomas Hardy* (McFarland, 2003) provides an extended discussion of the Schlesinger version of *Far From the Madding Crowd.* And, since I'm obviously less modest than he is, I'll just note that I agree with his evaluation of the LWT/A&E version of *Tess* and develop my thoughts on its weaknesses in my essay "Romancing the Text: Genre, Indeterminacy, and Televising *Tess of the d'Urbervilles,* which will be appearing in Cambridge UP's *Hardy on Screen,* edited by Terry Wright and scheduled to by published later this year. This collection will also include an essay on FFMC by Keith Wilson.
Richard Nemesvari
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
rnemesva@stfx.ca
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From: gary.alderson@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 6:42:24 AM PDT
I think my problem with watching a TV adaptation of "Under the Greenwood Tree" will be that I've spent too long in Stinsford over the years. If the quire isn't walking up the side of the Froom itself, and if the wakes are taking their midnight feast anywhere other than Stinsford church tower, I'll be sitting moaning - even though there isn't a clock in Stinsford church tower and the gallery's a new one! Not to mention that "Mellstock Lane" wasn't covered in tarmac in the novel. Still, I don't suppose this is a problem that most viewers will suffer. Since he believed he sprung from a Jersey family, Thomas Hardy might even have approved of the filming location. Good luck to the producers - I've always wished we had an adaptation to watch.
Gary Alderson
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 12:35:37 PM PDT
Hah--modesty, schmodesty! Ask a couple of my old Arizona State students, who outed me on one of those "trash your professors" websites as a raving egomaniac who despises the opinions of others and who takes any and every opportunity to promote his literary masterpiece. 'Twas only from fear of violating the forum rules against advertising that I held my tongue (or stopped my typing fingers); but now that the cat's out of the bag, Jacky, do check out the book--if it's not in your local library, yell and scream until they order it.
But, serially, folks, in answer to Jacky's question about my opinion on Schlesinger's "Far from the Madding Crowd"--Visually, it is a very beautiful film. Nicolas Roeg's cinematography is truly magnificent, and the film succeeds in terms of costume design and period detail, and especially with Richard Rodney Bennett's score, which I hope will one day be released on CD. But therein lies the rub. Schlesinger's stated purpose in making "Crowd" was to get away from the social dramas about modern British life he was then making--to do a period piece about country values and a simpler time. Unfortunately, the heart of Hardy's novel is missing. There is SO much focus on period detail and pretty pictures that the film is often flat and dull. For instance, in the scene of the Harvest Home supper, everything looks great--the table partly in the house and partly outside, the piles of sumptuous food, the detailed costumes, and Julie Christie even sings an authentic song of the day--but what purpose does it serve? There's very little sense of community togetherness, and NO sense of the harvest that has brought them all together. It is merely a visually arresting moment out of many such moments, with little in the way of drama behind it.
I actually prefer the 1998 Granada/WGBH television production of "Crowd," with Paloma Baeza as Bathsheba and Nathaniel Parker as Gabriel. This serial is, if anything, brimming with a sense of life--good gosh, Liddy is seen having sex in the barn after the Harvest Home, showing that a certain connection to an old pagan fertility ritual survives--and I think the program captures the irony in Hardy's use of the title. It is impossible to go very far from the madding crowd; the Weatherbury community is dependent on the sale of their wool and grain to the outside world in order to survive, and as Fanny Robin's sad tramping to menial labor and to the workhouse illustrates, the harsh realities of "civilized" society are very close indeed. This production does not, as have so many readings of the novel and as did John Schlesinger's film, view Hardy's novel as a simple celebration of escaping the burdens of modern life.
But, of course, more detailed information is to be found elsewhere, and I commend you to that search!
Best,
Paul Niemeyer,
Egomaniac Supreme
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 3:23:47 PM PDT
I hate to nit-pick -- especially when it concerns my esteemed colleague -- Paul Niemeyer - but the Shearing Supper isn't a Harvest Home. It takes place in May (not August) and far from celebrating any kind of fertility rite it signifies annual economic profits - a yearly reckoning (a late April IRS payback?) -- in sum, the success of the wool trade: notably the shearing of females for their skins!
If one movie happens to feature Liddy enjoying sexual frolics after the Shearing Supper feast I can only hope she held on to her skin as her ovine sisters did not.
As to the *Tess* TV movie I agree with everything Paul says and more. I'd also like to draw readers' attention to Hardy's time and clime. It was critically important that his narrator remained ambiguous about Tess 's experience in the *Chase* episode. The whole business is complex. But we can begin with the fact that seduction was a social issue and and rape a legal issue. Thus it was that, for Victorians, seduction had far wider implications for the molested female than did rape. For a start, few women had the wherewithal let alone the support and encouragement to pursue a rape charge. This took money, attorneys and an enormous amount of courage. Seduction on the other hand found its resolution (of being brought to justice -- to use the current hackneyed phrase) purely by social means. If not skimmity-rides then certainly ostracisation and stigmatisation (and it wasn't the woman, necessarily, who paid) and in some cases, in some rural traditions (cf the Cerne Giant), the community would step in to take care of the resultant offspring of what we might call rape and they might have called seduction. "Seduction" had nothing to do with consensual sex. It had only to do with the male's exploitation of the female. It was assumed that the male was physically stronger, socially more empowered and less disadvantaged than the female in question. Even if the woman said "Yes" this did not signify., for Victorians, that the appropriation (Hardy's word) of her body was in any way justified.
Clearly it is all far more complicated than this outline suggests (as the early version of *Tess" indicates). But we do see, in the version we read nowadays, that the illegitimate child, fathered upon Tess by her seducer/rapist, is in process of being absorbed into the community - that is , until it dies at which point the church is involved (for burial) and - for the first time, stigmatisation kicks in, in the name of Christianity.
I share Paul Niemeyer's sense of the illfittingness of the TV version and it's treatment of Alec (and, of course, Tess). It is all far too simplified and sufficiently glossed over as to be not in the least thought- provoking It's almost as if the director believes a modern audience to be incapable of understanding the subtly different social mores of another time and clime.
A shame really. Hardy's work is nothing if not profoundly stirring!
Cheers
Rosemarie
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 3:30:25 PM PDT
In the words of a certain profound social thinker of modern times. . .
D'OHHHHH!!
But thanks for catchin' my back, Rosemarie!
Paul
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 16, 2005 6:07:16 PM PDT
I long to make a movie of UGT with the Cohen Bros playing the central characters. I thought the modern Homeric Odyssey -- *Oh Brother! Where Art Thou* one of the best movies of the modern era. I would love to see what the Cohen Bros might do with UGT.
(but this would not please Gary of course)
Best
Rosemarie
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From: gary.alderson@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 17, 2005 12:58:22 AM PDT
I think as a rule, life generally is all far more complicated...
"Stigmatisation kicks in, in the name of Christianity" assumes there is a monolithic "Christianity" that can do this. In even the environment of Tess I think you could say there are "Christianities". Ironically, according to a legalistic C of E view of Christian sacraments, there's absolutely no reason why Sorrow can't be buried in hallowed ground - he's been baptised in an emergency by a (presumably) baptised Christian, and therefore according to the Book of Rules, he's a regenerate Christian. It's a Christianity tainted by Victorian ideas of morality (and a certain pique from the parson at being denied his incumbent's rights) that denies Sorrow a funeral conducted by the parson, but it's the moral conscience of the parson despite his strait-jacket that allows Tess to manage the funeral arrangements herself.
Again, Mr Clare has a very evanglical Anglican version of Christianity that, while fierce in itself, is apparently softened by his character - the narrative suggests that he and his wife could have shown charity to Tess. On the other hand, the younger Clares' reading material suggests they're of a later, more "liberal" form of Anglicanism but personally they're less charitable.
Alex of course adopts an even more aggressively evangelical form of non-conformist Christianity, which seems emotionally based whereas Mr Clare's would be text-based (being the St Paul fan he is). And Tess's upbringing and "native" Christianity has fused with the natural environment she lives in to produce what Hardy describes as paganism, but doesn't seem a million miles from an unintellectual form of eco-Christianity.
The odd thing in this is that in two of these instances it's the more (as we might say - the term wasn't used in Hardy's time in this way) "fundamentalist" Christianities that are showing charity. The more progressive, socially-conditioned, or liberal Christianities are the judgemental ones.
Gary Alderson
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From: wesspix1@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: TV Adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree
Date: July 17, 2005 10:01:55 AM PDT
I believe this is the power of Tess. It shows a whole spectrum of beliefs, with their respective reactions to Tess. The "Hardyan" traditional/pagan beliefs will accept what has happened on the grounds that "'tis to be, and here goes!". Angel's is apparently the most "modern" viewpoint, and yet is incredibly judgmental. His father's viewpoint is fundamentalist beyond anything I would recognise (even as a "born again Christian") and yet is more charitable than his sons. To me the strength of Tess is in that paradox: Angel claims to be so, so modern; yet he has given up his supernaturalist beliefs while clinging to Victorian moral values. He has not realised that the one hung on the other.
regards
Gary Alderson
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