[Hardy-l] Re: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 4

[ANN WHITLOCK]

--- On Mon, 13/10/08, hardy-l-request at coyote.csusm.edu <hardy-l-request at coyote.csusm.edu> wrote:


From: hardy-l-request at coyote.csusm.edu <hardy-l-request at coyote.csusm.edu>
Subject: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 4.
Jacky Wilkinson wrote:
'All in all I thought it was sincere attempt to convey Hardy's concerns
and Tess's sufferings to a modern audience. I believe a version which
adheres strictly to the book form can often be sterile and it is always
helpful to remember that the production is 'based' on Hardy's
novel, and further, that the audience for which it is intended is a twenty-first
century audience as opposed to a nineteenth-century one and I feel this
production managed to walk the line between the two pretty adeptly - well,
that's what I thought for what it's worth.'
 
What I found fascinating was since film is a different art form from a novel, that there were both winners and losers in the interpretation of the subject matter and themes. In the Flintcombe Ash scenes it was fascinating to see the inter relationship of sound and visual imagery; the direction and close up focus of the camera and the way it increased and reduced the focus on the machinery and the faces. Vast silhouettes of agricultural carts dwarfed the workers, and shadows of ladders towered up the grimy brick walls. The camera moved like a narrator from detail to detail. 
 
The decision of what to cut and what to keep has far more significance in such a short version of the novel than in a six part adaptation. One of the most moving sequences was the last day or two of the life of John Durbeyfield. The lighting and placing of the figures made it look like a series of oil paintings of ancient rural life. The pace was leisurely and, given the short space of time for so much to be packed into an hour, the director made something significant of a little scene seldom alluded to – Durbeyfield’s conversation with Tess about his wish to become a living antiquarian legend in the public eye.
 It was the mingling of Tess with the minor characters which made it memorable for me – Flintcombe Ash – the scenes with Alec’s mother, Tess, and the hens – the painful trudging with no success - It was the sense of people interlaced with place which was very moving.
I did n’t much like either Angel Clare or Alec D’Urberville. They seemed to me to be very flat.
I did think yet again how I hate the scene at Stonehenge and later with Liza-Lu. For me the novel ends when the housekeeper goes to raise the alarm.
All the best
Ann Whitlock
 
 
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