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

Bookstore: Frugal Muse

Location: Far West Side of Madison, Wisconsin

Why I Love Them: Frugal Muse is the store that made me fall in love with bookstores. Not the generic gridded out box stores like a Barnes and Noble or a Borders, but a store with nooks and crannies, where at any turn you might find yourself transported to another world. The original location was a converted video store and felt like it went back for miles and miles. There was a lovely shortcut from the biographies to the mysteries that created a blind spot and you felt yourself lost to the outside world. Round about the history section there was another lovely nook that you could tuck yourself away in for hours. When my mother, Marian the librarian, was in the process of expanding the library for the school she worked for not a week went by without us stopping in to see what new books had arrived. Frugal Muse has always gotten a handful of new books to put on display near the front of the store, but it's the hunting of rare used books that really warms the cockles of my heart. A few years back now they moved to a newer location which is less magical, but if you look you can still find areas to hide it, I particularly like the mystery section, and who knew the magical nook in the history section was movable? Because, there it still is. In a different place, but just as wonderful. 

Best Buy: As for my "best buy" I realized it was actually an easy answer, my Penguin Numbered Trollopes! Back in the early oughts there were two wonderful Anthony Trollope miniseries produced, The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right, which lead me down a rabbit hole to The Pallisers and so much more. The problem with Trollope as a writer was that stateside his books weren't easy to find. I remember watching an episode of Black Books and Manny just calling up their distributor and asking for the complete set of Trollope. If only it was that easy! I couldn't call anyone to get these books and therefore when I discovered their existence the hunt began. The Penguin Numbered Trollope consists of fifty-two books, of which I'm still missing twelve (2, 4, 6, 7, 17, 18, 22, 30, 32, 37, 43, and 45 if you're interested.) But a large chunk of these came from a one day purchase at Frugal Muse. I came into their old location and wandered back to the fiction section near the bathrooms and right there on the shelf were ALL these Trollope books, beautiful and orange and numbered. I cumbersomely took them up to the register and one of the two owners, who are just wonderful by the way, gave me an extra 15% off because I was taking the whole set off their hands. I LONG for a book buying high like I achieved that day to happen again and there's every chance that it will be at Frugal Muse.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anthony Trollope, Black Books, Frugal Muse, He Knew He Was Right, Librarians, Libraries, Penguin, Penguin Numbered Trollopes, Support Your Brick and Mortar, The Pallisers, The Way We Live Now, Used Bookstores

The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1855
Format: Hardcover, 203 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Mr. Septimus Harding is the Warden of Hiram's Hospital in Barchester. He is also the precentor of that town's cathedral. Yet it is his care of Hirman's Hospital that brings him much grief. The hospital was founded by John Hiram many many years before as an almshouse for the care of twelve bedesmen. Hirman's wish was for his Hospital to care for those who had worked hard all their lives and had no one to care for them. Here enters the Warden. The Warden would care for the spiritual and psychical well-being of the men. Over the years though the position of Warden has become an envious position and a gift of the Bishop, because while the cost of living has changed, the men still only receive what was stipulated in the will, while the rest of the now considerable money goes into the pockets of the Warden.

Mr. Harding though is an innocent man. He does not think of money but only the well-being of his charges. All this changes when Mr. Bold appears on the scene. For quite some time he has been a friend to Mr. Harding and a hopeful suitor to his daughter, Eleanor Harding. Yet Mr. Bold is also a bit of a reformer. He likes seeing his name attached to good deeds in the press and here is the Warden, oblivious in the ways of the world. A man who doesn't know he is doing wrong and continuing the evils of the church. Despite his love for Mr. and Eleanor Harding, he launches an attack on the hospital. With the newspapers grabbing hold of the story, it soon turns into a witch hunt with lawyers on both sides and the poor Warden in the middle.

Trapped between doing what he loves and feeling that perhaps he is in the wrong, Mr. Harding for the first time in his life has to dig deep inside his soul and find an answer for himself. While his son-in-law, Dr. Grantly, is zealously defending the church and his own father, the Bishop, it might come down to the evil muck flung at Mr. Harding by the press that finally sways him. To be thought to be doing wrong is more than this innocent lover of music and caregiver can take.

Quite a few years back now I remember watching The Way We Live Now and thinking, damn, this Anthony Trollope is awesome. As it often happens with me, I first devoured all the miniseries I could, falling deeply in love with The Pallisers, and then going out and getting all the books I could lay my hands on. This was harder then it is now because at the time Trollope was oddly out of print here, but thanks to Andrew Davies and the BBC that has since changed. In fact, because of the surge of interest in Trollope they re-released an old BBC Miniseries The Barchester Chronicles. I immediately bought it, mainly because it had Alan Rickman in it, so it couldn't be bad, now could it? I was sort of wrong... there where times when it was wonderful, and times when I was bored to tears. The miniseries followed the first two books in the Barchester Chronicles, and can you guess which part bored me to tears? That's right, the part based on The Warden.

Yet, despite my boredom with the miniseries, I knew one day that I would read this book. Mainly because the Barchester Chronicles, all six books in the series, are some of the most loved books of their time. I thoroughly enjoyed the Pallisers, so I HAD to eventually get to reading this book. In fact, I was hesitant on many occasions. But my desire to read about Barchester, a land so loved that even other authors, like Angela Thirkell, have taken up their pen to this hallowed ground eventually won out. That and I was determined to read a Trollope book for my Dickensian Denouement and the first book in the Pallisers, Can You Forgive Her, is like five times the length and with school, my time is precious.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised at first. The story was simple and sweet and even if you don't care anything for church politics and reform, Trollope was able to make the story engaging by having you fall in love with the characters. Yet there was a flaw that Trollope repeatedly fell prey to that made me more than once set the book aside after my eyes had glazed over and I almost fell asleep. He had these long diatribes that would be inserted almost but not quite randomly into the story. Not only did it break up the narrative and take you out of the book, but dear lord, there was almost more diatribe than plot for a lot of the book!

Trollope's two main attacks where against the press and against popular sentimental authors. While the attack on the authors was funny, because it was clearly aimed directly at Dickens and in particular Bleak House, which had just finished it's weekly run, and it's limp heroes and heroines (Ester anyone?) and fascinating though absurdly named secondary characters. Yet this rant went overly long and the amusement I felt waned and I just wanted it to end. His other rant was even longer. The press and popular journalist where his other target. While it is more than a little terrifying that in his lambasting of the press he was able to nail the growing power that the press has gotten a hold of, to the extent where it creates the news, even to this day, I didn't sign up for reading so much about it, thank you very much.

Though, I have to say, I'm excited, now that I've gotten through the first book, who knows the awesomeness that awaits. I hope people have not been steering me wrong all these years and that the rest of the series is as wonderful as they say. If Trollope sticks on topic, I have no doubt of his abilities... Tom Towers indeed, get thee and thy press away.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alan Rickman, Anthony Trollope, Barchester, Can You Forgive Her?, Charles Dickens, Dickensian Denouement, The Barchester Chronicles, The Pallisers, The Warden

Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful and prolific writers in Victorian England. He out wrote Dickens two to one, writing forty seven novels, as well as dozens of short stories and a few books on travel. His best loved novels are the Pallisers series, which was made into a BBC series in the seventies, and the Chronicles of Barsetshire, that are so loved, other authors, such as Angela Thirkell, used the imaginary county as a setting for her books. Oddly enough, one of his lasting contributions was from his work in the Post Office, when he introduced the Pillar Box to England, which is a free standing post box for mail which is still in use today, a lasting image that is truly British and is all thanks to Anthony Trollope.

Dickens and Trollope mainly knew each other through Dickens's friendship with Trollope's family, mainly Anthony's elder brother Thomas. Dickens also corresponded with Trollope's father and his mother, Francis, who was a well known writer in her own right. So it can be safely assumed they knew each other for quite some time, at least since the 1840s. Though the extent of their friendship is not known, they dined at each others homes and Dickens even corresponded with Trollope's wife Rose, though perhaps he had ulterior motives... one never knows with Dickens!

Their friendship was quite cordial, though Dickens apparently didn't like Trollope's writing, even though he published The Duke's Children in All the Year Round. They mainly saw each other at literary functions where occasionally they would speak on the same platform. The real reason Trollope must be mentioned with Dickens is for sheer output. You can not talk about one without the other. These two authors baffled their readers with how much they could produce. Yet, aside from their overabundance in writing, they greatly differed, moving in different crowds, Trollope loving the domesticated life and his work at the post office and his clubs, whereas Dickens felt stifled by his home life and loved to abandon it for actors and actresses and caused quite a to-do with his leaving his club.

While Dickens has come to be known as the Victorian paragon, during his time, aside from his writing, he was rather outre. He left his wife for an actress twenty seven years his junior. Trollope more embodied the ideals of the era, Victoria and Albert and all that is good and British. After Trollope's death in 1882 his popularity has greatly fluctuated. When his autobiography was published posthumously, his critics took great glee in learning that Trollope adhered to a strict daily writing quota, siting that output doesn't mean excellence, though that's just their opinion on the matter. Yet Trollope has surfaced again and again in popularity over the years and has strong societies dedicated to his works in both the US and UK. Two of his books, The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right, have been recently adapted by the paragon of adaptations, Andrew Davies, for the BBC. His writing style is also far easier to enjoy than Dickens, but that is just a personal opinion. Anyway you look at it, the two of them dominated the literature of the Victorian era.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrew Davies, Angela Thirkell, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, Chronicles of Barsetshire, He Knew He Was Right, Post Office, The Pallisers, The Way We Live Now, Victorian, Victorian Literature

While trolling the web for Doctor Who gossip, I learned of the passing of a true great British Television star, Donald Pickering, who for me, was the first actor to magnificantly play Dolly Longstaffe. If it wasn't for him and his work on The Pallisers, I don't think there ever could have been a Richard Cant in The Way We Live Now... Here's to a great man! From Jackanory to The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Who, The House of Eliott to Victoria & Albert, not a decade has passed in the last 60 years where he wasn't seen on some of the best BBC productions ever made. He will be missed.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 6:36 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Doctor Who, Dolly Longstaffe, Donald Pickering, Jackanory, Sherlock Holmes, The Avengers, The House of Eliott, The Pallisers, The Way We Live Now, Victoria and Albert