Far From the Madding Crowd (Schlesinger, 1967): Curzon Soho, 2pm
This 35mm screening is part of Curzon's John Schlesinger season. Details here.BFI introduction to LFF screening in 2015:
1967 saw Julie Christie and Terence Stamp immortalised by The Kinks in
‘Waterloo Sunset’ and cast as lovers in Thomas Hardy’s epic love story.
Headstrong and independent, farmer Bathsheba Everdene is among the most
modern of 19th-century heroines and Christie’s performance beautifully
underlines her as a woman at odds with the conventions of the time. The
film contains a number of stand-out set-pieces, such as Stamp’s
seductive, almost Freudian display of swordsmanship. But what resonates
so deeply is the way in which Schlesinger and cinematographer Nicolas
Roeg frame the passions and tragedy at the film’s heart with the
patterns of rural life and the harsh, sodden beauty of the Dorset
landscape. Almost 50 years on, this restoration reveals the film as an
immersive piece of cinema with Hardy’s cruel ironies and bleak lyricism
fully intact.
Robin Baker
John Patterson wrote an excellent article in the Guardian on this re-release. You can read the full article here. This is an extract:
Schlesinger’s Hardy was derided back then for its casting of Julie
Christie and Terence Stamp, mere months after they’d been name-checked
in the Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, and who then seemed more Swinging London
than Wailing Wessex. Time and distance have eradicated that feeling,
however, and I delighted in the credits as they unfolded: not just Terry
and Julie, but Peter Finch and eternal peasant-pagan Alan Bates, all
perfectly cast; Stamp in particular, as the vile Sergeant Troy, whose
name should really be “destroy”. But behind the camera too, there is joy to be had. Frederic Raphael’s
screenplay, tied to Hardy as it must be, keeps the screenwriter’s more
irritating locutions and “sparkling dialogue” tendencies in check, and
serves Hardy admirably in terms of scale and pacing, while making hay of
double entendres such as Troy’s leering “I’ll unfasten you in no time”.
But perhaps the heart of the movie is the relationship between
production designer Richard Macdonald – the man responsible for Joseph
Losey’s eye-popping “mise-insane” films during the 60s – and
cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, at the height of what I think of as his
Red Period as a cameraman. Best of all is to see a large-scale British
period movie in which millions and millions of MGM’s dollars are clearly
and effectively visible on the screen.
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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