strange and random happenstance

Rebecca
Based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Joanna David, Elspeth March, Jeremy Brett, Hugh Morton, Richard Willis, Anna Massey, Terrence Hardiman, Vivian Pickles, Leon Sinden, William Morgan Sheppard, Julian Holloway, Virginia Denham, Sylvia Coleridge, Harriet Walter, Neville Hughes, Victor Lucas, Richardson Morgan, Robert Flemyng, and John Saunders
Release Date: 1979
Rating: ★★★★
Out of Print

Mrs. Van Hopper has her own friend of the bosom. Paid to be her companion, but really acting as her dogsbody. When Mrs. Van Hopper falls ill her friend catches the attention of widower Maxim de Winter and when Mrs. Van Hopper decides to head home to New York Maxim gives the young girl a choice; New York with Mrs. Van Hopper or Manderely with him. As his wife. She hastily marries Maxim and becomes the second Mrs. de Winter. Though she worries and frets that she won't be up to the job, especially once she sees Manderely in person and meets the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers. She feels overwhelmed and Mrs. Danvers does everything in her power to make things worse for her new mistress. It doesn't help that Rebecca has left her imprint everywhere, not just physically, but emotionally. She is in the hearts and minds of the staff, the locals, and even Maxim and his family. So much is expected of the new bride, even a lavish costume ball, just like Rebecca used to host. How is she to continue when Maxim is obviously questioning the wisdom of returning to Manderely? But is it the place or the new bride he regrets more? Only the revelation of a horrible secret will show the truth to the young bride. 

If you are looking for the most accurate adaptation of Rebecca you couldn't do better than this version made by the BBC in the late seventies if you tried, and oh how I've tried. While my heart will always belong to Alfred Hitchcock's version as the obsession of my youth, this one is now my favorite, in spite of the whole last episode being out of sync. This was just chock-a-block with 1970s BBC goodness. If shows like The Pallisers, The Duchess of Duke Street, and Upstairs, Downstairs are your idea of what quality TV should be, then this one's for you! There's a nostalgic quality to shows that went for acting chops over everything else. The sets might be recycled and familiar, yes, that is the window from the maid's garret in Upstairs, Downstairs in a dowdy room in Monte Carlo, and that is the drawing room from The Pallisers transplanted to Manderley with a desk hiding a certain broken cupid, but that just gives you the familiarity that makes this adaptation feel like coming home. While I had never seen this adaptation before, Jeremy Brett and Joanna David surrounded by so many actors I have seen for years and years on the small screen just made me giddy that for once I'd found a Rebecca with less to complain about that made me feel like I was visiting an old friend.

Though, this is me, so you know I will have something to complain about; and that complaint is Joanna David, though it's through no fault of her own. Or maybe a little because I didn't like how they bracketed the show with how she was telling someone about her dream about Manderley while wearing pearls, but that was the director's fault. So the reason I had issues with Joanna David was because of the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca staring Emilia Fox and Charles Dance. Emilia Fox not only played the second Mrs. de Winter, a role here played by Joanna David, but she happens to be Joanna David's daughter. I've never really thought of them looking too much alike, but watching this adaptation from the seventies, I'd occasionally catch a similarity, the way Joanna tilted her head or pursed her lips and I wouldn't be seeing her anymore I'd be seeing her daughter and seeing the same expressions flit across her face was almost unnerving. Oh, how I wish I had seen this adaptation first. Because to constantly remind me of the atrocity that was the 1997 adaptation is a sin. Yet it's a sin that, logically, I shouldn't hold against them because this other adaptation was almost twenty years in the future. But then again I am fickle. Thankfully Jeremy Brett is no Charles Dance.

Yet then there's the perfection of Anna Massey as Mrs. Danvers to make you forget your woes. If I were to gather up all the Mrs. Danvers she would win hands down. She is perfection without ever veering too far into the crazy skid. She's not self-immolating like Judith Anderson or the only bright, yet undeniably unhinged, spot in a horrid production like Diana Rigg. She's simply perfection. Because the truth is Mrs. Danvers is a real human, not a caricature, and despite all her actions, they are rooted in her connection and love for Rebecca, no matter how obsessive that love was. I first fell in love with Anna Massey's acting when I watched He Knew He Was Right. This is a pitch perfect adaptation of Anthony Trollope's book that I love so much I even mentioned it to David Tennant that time I met him. Anna Massey stands in the way of a marriage but will break your heart when she relents to the match. After this I started searching out her work and realized I'd seen her for years in everything from Midsomer Murders to The Darling Buds of May. Yet it's the scene in Rebecca's bedroom when she shows it off to the second Mrs. de Winter that she will destroy you with her range. Going from triumph to boasting to melancholy all in the blink of an eye. Grief as restrained madness. Perfection! 

You'd think with all this superb talent that everyone is perfection in the cast. Well, you'd be wrong because there's Jack Favell... Jack is usually the character that is always gotten right even in the worst of productions. But here? Julian Holloway isn't Jack. Not. One. Bit. Jack is a slimy character, a smooth operator who has no moral compass and you could easily see as jumping into bed with his cousin. Therefore he needs to be equally repellent and alluring. Here he's just repellant. He's a "good old boy" who you'd expect to see wandering around the grounds in plus fours! Rebecca wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole! Oddly enough there's a modern equivalent acting today, Rory Kinnear. This Jack IS 100% like all the characters Rory Kinnear played for years. I have spent years bemoaning him being everywhere, especially in National Theatre Live productions. Two years ago I swear he was in every single production so I avoided that season like the plague. But for as much as I dislike him, annoying me to no end with his profuse body of work, he at least has range, and a few productions I actually liked him in. This proto-Kinnear? He has the range of a teaspoon.

There is one thing though, besides giving this version a proper release, that would easily upgrade it in my opinion, and that is if the music were fixed. The score of this adaptation is literally all over the place. At the beginning of the third part for about three minutes I thought they might have finally gotten it right and then it slid back into a mish-mash of styles. You will catch glimpses of Debussy, which might have occasionally worked, especially as it sounds like, according to my brother, that they might have been using "La Mer" which would be appropriate, but then as the happy couple approaches Manderely the music goes all old school cinema. You feel like you're watching an old reel where the dastardly villain is twirling his mustache while he ties the maiden to the tracks and waits for the train to arrive. I assume the train in this musicians mind is Mrs. Danvers, but who knows. It's almost comical in it's appearance. But for how much that music might have been too old school and inappropriate, don't worry, here are some synths thrown in to make it modern or to, I don't know, remind you it's the seventies despite the fact Rebecca doesn't take place in the seventies? Seriously, the music needs an overhaul.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Anna Massey, Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December, Emilia Fox, He Knew He Was Right, Jeremy Brett, Joanna David, Midsomer Murders, Rebecca, Rory Kinnear, The Pallisers, Upstairs Downstairs

Mansfield Park
Based on the book by Jane Austen
Release Date: March 18th, 2007
Starring: Douglas Hodge, Jemma Redgrave, Maggie O'Neill, Julia Joyce, Zachary Elliott-Hatton, Greg Sheffield, Tara Berwin, Lucy Hurst, Billie Piper, James D'Arcy, Blake Ritson, Michelle Ryan, Rory Kinnear, Catherine Steadman, Joseph Morgan, Hayley Atwell, Joseph Beattie, and Dexter Fletcher
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Fanny Price has been sent away from home to live with wealthy relatives because her mother can no longer afford to keep her. She is scared and intimidated and only her cousin Edmund takes the time to make her feel safe and loved. As she grows up that love becomes stronger which is fortunate as it's about to be tested. Her uncle leaves to attend business in Antigua and the young people take over the house. Fanny's cousin Tom has had his fun spoiled and decides to mount a play at Mansfield Park. His sisters, Maria and Julia will obviously perform, as will Maria's fiance Mr. Rushworth. The party is greater increased by two new neighbors, the siblings Henry and Mary Crawford. Yet Edmund and Fanny will not perform. It's not seemly for a variety of reasons but especially given that the play is rather risque. Though Edmund's growing attraction for Mary makes him foolish and he eventually agrees to perform under duress. Julia soon bows out on seeing that her engaged sister is flirting with Henry. And Fanny is roped into the production to replace Julia which is brought to a crashing halt by the return of her uncle. With Sir Thomas Bertram returned the hope is life will return to normal at Mansfield Park, but little do they know that isn't the case. The arrival of the Crawfords has changed everything. When Maria still goes through with her marriage to Mr. Rushworth Henry Crawford sets his sights on Fanny. He wants to make a little hole in her heart. Yet her heart is protected at least from Henry because it already belongs to Edmund, but the pain she feels on seeing Edmund fall for Mary is excruciating. Will Fanny lose the love of her life or will tragedy lead to a happy ending?

While this adaptation is a hectic haphazard headlong rush at translating Mansfield Park for the small screen the number one thing in it's favor is that it is nothing like the horror show that was the 1999 Frances O'Connor version. I still shudder thinking of that adaptation. In this version instead of augmenting Fanny with her creator, Jane Austen, the production went in a different direction and decided that instead of letting Fanny stand on her own they'd fix all supposed defects by making her more of a Lizzy Bennet and less of a Fanny Price. But the thing is I love Fanny for being Fanny and I love Lizzy for being Lizzy. They are characters that are both loved for being themselves. The Fanny embodied by Billie Piper feels like she's spent a little too much time around The Doctor. All she does is run. Everywhere. Fanny is playing shuttle cocks with Edmund. Fanny is playing hide and seek at Maria's wedding with some unknown child. Fanny is chasing Pug through the halls of Mansfield Park, which I'm sure her Aunt Bertram wouldn't approve of. All the while she's laughing and giggling. This isn't right. Fanny is a slight sickly girl who is retiring. She can't physically take much exercise except by horse. When I first saw this adaptation I would have said it was because Billie Piper perhaps had a more limited acting range, but seriously, have you seen Penny Dreadful? Because this is all on the writer and director and not on Billie. Plus by having Mary use Fanny's horse it doesn't have the betrayal and weight that it has in the book. Fanny was just put-out, it wasn't like her horse was her only form of exercise and this slight was the first sign of Edmund's infatuation with Mary which would pain Fanny so deeply. 

But enough can not be said for the relief I feel in how this adaptation purposefully stepped away from the 1999 adaptation. This can be clearly seen when Henry and Edmund try to discuss the atrocities happening in Antigua and Edmund's mother just waves away any discussion of slavery with an oblivious line about the heat in the West Indies. To those not familiar with the earlier adaptation, which reveled in horrors and viewers had to endure Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas Betram raping his slaves, this line of Aunt Bertram might be a throwaway, but to those who know, it's a time to take a great sigh of relief. This is going to be Austen, not some social commentary on race, but social commentary on a confined society in a country house. And while I feel that of all Austen's novels Mansfield Park is the most confined to location and characters this adaptation takes it further. This is television, this is low budget, this is a small cast. They really weren't taking any risks with this adaptation. And while yes, I do think things could have been done differently, you can see why they did it this way. Mansfield Park is a tricky book to adapt and going for a smaller more intimate scale, while in keeping with the book, also made for an Austen adaptation that someone who didn't love the book could enjoy. The costumes might have felt a little dated and the fact that they never left the property might be perplexing to those who expect their period dramas to have multiple locations and lush sets, but I say so what? Smaller definitely worked better than bigger. Yes, it wasn't perfect, but Andrew Davies has yet to adapt Mansfield Park...

Yet I can not give this adaptation two thumbs up because of my love of Austen's book. The problem here is that while it still feels like Austen, which the 1999 version didn't achieve, there is still a diminishment of the story. It has been made smaller, lesser than. As I've previously stated, Fanny wasn't Fanny, but the greater truth is that none of the characters feel right. They are all slightly wrong. It's like when I tried to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the author had the gall to not use Austen's own words, which thankfully the movie adaptation rectified. Therefore having the lines be not quite Austen's here made me feel the same bafflement when I tried to read that atrociously written parody. As Andrew Davies has said, Austen is perfect, just cut and paste. Take liberties when Austen purposefully steps back. She never goes into great details about the proposals or the happily ever afters, so here you can have free reign, and in fact in those moments of this adaptation, that's when I felt it. That deep pain in my veins that this is true love, that these emotions on screen have triggered a physical response in me. Have taken me away to a place where tears of happiness aren't far behind. While in other parts I actually found myself cheering when an actual line from the book remained intact. And let's face it, while all Austen's lines are memorable, Mansfield Park has a large share of them. So why weren't more used? Also why was Fanny in the play? There is NO way she would have been in the play. IF you have to change things to make it work in the time and format allotted why can't you at least keep the little details intact, like the theatre curtains being green not red? Because the more little things you change the more acceptable you think it to change the words of one of the greatest authors who ever lived.    

I'm not naive, I know that a lot of the culling, a lot of the diminishment of character is for the speed of the storytelling because even as a lover of Mansfield Park I can say that it's languid pace is almost stultifying, therefore it makes a good read to calm down before bed. But the downside to this dovetailing is that there is a diminishment of character in an attempt to make them better suited to the allotted time. In particular with regard to Edmund. Blake Ritson's lines have been almost completely excised because no one wants a preachy hero and Edmund really is full of himself. This means that all Blake is left with is languid gazes and pained expressions with a really horrid haircut. Mansfield Park is the first thing I remember seeing Blake in and I instantly formed an entirely erroneous opinion of him as an actor. I basically had him down as a pretty boy with no acting chops. This is so far from the truth that I urge you to seek out his other work to see his range. He's just so amazingly talented and here he's just wasted. I think he excels in bad boy roles personally, but if you're interested in sticking with Austen adaptations watch his Mr. Elton in the 2009 adaptation of Emma, which almost makes you completely forget the genius of Alan Cumming in the 1996 version. Dueling Mr. Es! My personal favorite though is his portrayal of the Duke of Kent in the reboot of Upstairs Downstairs, even if the conflicted baddie Riario in Da Vinci's Demons is melodramatic fun at it's most camp. But Blake isn't alone in this category of wonderful actors underutilized, this could be said for much of this perfectly cast adaptation. This also shows that a perfect cast can not cure defects in directing and adapting. 

But oddly enough the thing that annoyed me the most was Mr. Rushworth. If you don't know I kind of hate Rory Kinnear. This is a problematic hatred because he's literally in everything. Every once in awhile he surprises me into liking him, Penny Dreadful, The Imitation Game were good roles for him, but then along comes Women in Love and Vexed and I hate him all over again. So you'd think my hatred of Rory Kinnear would be why I was annoyed with Mr. Rushworth, yet oddly it's not. What annoys me about Mr. Rushworth is the changing of his timeline with the family. Because the changing of the timeline would have inevitably changed the outcome of events. It's freaking butterfly chaos theory time people and this wasn't taken into consideration at all in this adaptation. In the book Mrs. Norris makes the connection between Mr. Rushworth and Maria while Sir Thomas is in Antigua. It's a feather in her hat and all that. Here when Sir Thomas announces he must leave for Antigua Mr. Rushworth is already of the family party and is instructed to hold the wedding til his return from his amazingly fast and I think actually geographically impossible trip to Antigua in the time allotted. Um no. That's about it. No. Let's look at the reasons for all this "no" coming from me. The whole point of Rushworth is to show the detrimental interference of Mrs. Norris but also to show Sir Thomas's lack of fatherly concern because he quickly realized the defects in Rushworth and KNEW it wasn't going to work for Maria and even implored her to change her mind if she so wanted. But if Sir Thomas had been there since the couple did get coupled he would have stopped it before it had ever started. Then Maria would have met Henry Crawford in time and they could have gotten married and then that would have been the end of that. People sometimes just don't think that what might be one little change for expediency actual has ramifications that destroy the plot going forward. I think Austen knew what she was doing and should never be second guessed.    

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alan Cumming, Andrew Davies, Bicentenary Ball, Billie Piper, Blake Ritson, Elizabeth Bennet, Emma, Fanny Price, Frances O'Connor, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Penny Dreadful, Rory Kinnear, Upstairs Downstairs