The French Lieutenants Woman New York Times Review
'THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S Adult female'
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September 18, 1981
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Section C , Folio
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WE are in Dorset, Thomas Hardy country. More specifically we are in the South English angling village of Lyme Regis, on Lyme Bay, and, to be more specific still, we are on the quay, looking out over the aboriginal, handsome, serpentine seawall known as the Cobb. The weather is appropriately bleak and the sea across the Cobb looks thick and heavy with time, its movements having less to exercise with weather than with the momentum it shares with the planets.
In the foreground, a busy motion-picture crew is setting upward a shot. They are interlopers, scavengers of natural scenery. There are cameras, cables, lights, reflectors, prop men, makeup for the assistants, the managing director and his star, an authoritative, preoccupied immature woman wrapped in a large black cloak. ''Activity. Camera.''
The clapboard is clapped in front end of the camera, and production commences on a pic titled ''The French Lieutenant's Adult female,'' a romantic melodrama prepare in Lyme Regis in 1867 and which nosotros enter as the camera records this initial scene:
Charles Smithson, one of London's about handsome and eligible bachelors, ou t walking on the Cobb with his fiancee, Ernestina Freeman, firs t sets eyes on the mysterious, cloaked adult female whom the respectable c itizens of Lyme Regis call ''Tragedy,'' whom the less-respecta ble citizens call ''the French lieutenant'due south woman'' and whom other me north - certainly non gentlemen - call ''a hoer,'' and whosename is actua lly Sarah Woodruff.
In this fashion commences Karel Reisz'south immaculately visualized accommodation of John Fowles's acknowledged book ''The French Lieutenant's Woman,'' which has the course and mode of a mid-Victorian novel if ever a mid-Victorian novel been written by a novelist with the benefit of the hindsight available to an author writing in the 1960's.
It was, of course, in the sixty's that Mr. Fowles wrote his long, chatty tale -total of asides and speculations on everything from Darwin and evolution to Freud, Marx, Jane Austen, Dickens, 20thcentury desperation and the shape of the novel - well-nigh the low-born governess named Sarah Woodruff. The book is not simply about Sarah, who, refusing to accept her station in life, allows herself to exist compromised past a passing French naval officeholder, but information technology is as well about Charles Smithson, who unknowingly becomes the unfortunate instrument of her emanicpation.
''The French Lieutenant'southward Adult female,'' which opens today at the Piffling Carnegie Theater, is an astonishingly beautiful moving picture, acted to the elegant hilt by Meryl Streep equally the ultimately unreliable Sarah; Jeremy Irons, who looks a lot like the young Laurence Olivier of ''Wuthering Heights,'' as Charles Smithson, and by a bandage of splendid supporting actors of the sort that just England seems to possess. Why England? Possibly because of its theater, maybe even because of its climate. The subject is worthy of a Fowlesian discourse.
The moving-picture show'southward beauty is dazzling. It stands with - or perhaps a piddling alee of - Stanley Kubrick'due south ''Barry Lyndon'' and Roman Polanski'south ''Tess,'' but it besides must be conceded, quickly and without also stern a reproach, that there is less to ''The French Lieutenant's Adult female'' than meets the dazzled eye.
In adapting Mr. Fowles's novel, and in attempting to find some equivalent to Mr. Fowles'due south vox commenting on the events of the story from a 20th-century perspective, Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay, has elected to add a parallel story, ane nearly the love affair of the actress, Anna, and the actor, Mike, who are playing Sarah and Charles in the motion-picture show-within-the-moving picture.
Thus nosotros cut dorsum and forth betwixt the narrative of ''The French Lieutenant's Woman,'' as Mr. Fowles wrote it, and Mr. Pinter's addition, the fleetingly satisfying, less doomed than simply insubstantial liaison betwixt Anna and Mike in the course of the production of their film.
The device must have sounded improve in story conferences than information technology plays in this film. This contemporary frame is peculiarly flat. It illuminates zilch more about the differences between the manners and mores of 1867 and 1981 than whatever reasonably alert 1981 adult might be expected to bring into the film theater uninstructed. It certainly doesn't give Mr. Reisz anything comparable to Mr. Fowles's opportunities to quote at what sometimes seems pure name-dropping len gth from Matthew Arnold, Hardy, Austen, Da rwin, Freud and fifty-fifty William Manchester (''The Death of the Presid ent'').
It is, I suppose, to the credit of both Mr. Reisz and Mr. Pinter that although the contemporary frame is not at all comparable to the novelist's voice in the volume, neither is it so intrusive that we groan audibly every time we cut from the period narrative to the present story of the movie makers. What in the book passes for philosophical reflection becomes bear witness-business wit in the film. Much of this is fun, as when nosotros see an actress of the stature of Patience Collier, who plays the ferociously stingy, cocky-righteous Mrs. Poulteney, Sarah Woodruff'southward employer in the moving-picture show-within, relaxing at a production-break political party, chicly dressed and puffing on a nicotinepacked cigarette.
Every bit a number of readers of ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' longed for a little less ambivalence in the novel, which has two unlike endings, a movie goer might wish that Mr. Pinter had more fully adult Mr. Fowles's Victorian narrative, which is rich enough in characters, events, moral questions and period details to prompt a lot of the thoughts that the novelist laid out in discourses for the reader's edification.
The principal story is a good 1, and it is lovingly re-enacted by Mr. Reisz, Mr. Pinter and their performers. Miss Streep has never looked more cute nor has she been more in control of her talent as she switches dorsum and along between the lightweight motion picture actress and the tragic Sarah, who enters the scene equally a Hardy-similar victim of fate and stays on to triumph as a modern woman a century ahead of her time. Mr. Irons seems to be one of the few actors today who could be and then completely convincing as the Victorian lover who thinks he'south ahead of his time, being a follower of Darwin and a socially aware member of his privileged class, but who finds, ul timately, that he withal has a l ong way to get.
In addition to Miss Collier, the marvelous supporting cast includes Leo McKern as the gruff, old Lyme Regis md; the beautiful Lynsey Baxter as the surprisingly clear, strong-willed Ernestina; Hilton McRae as Sam, Charles Smithson's ambitious manservant, and Charlotte Mitchell as Mrs. Tranter, Ernestina'due south jolly aunt.
Among others who brand ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' the best big-budget English language film in years are Freddie Francis, director of photography; Assheton Gorton, production designer, and Whoever He/She is who shaped the Dorset coast and countryside into the spectacular, eerie, infinitely photogenic landscape it is today as it was then.
To the Hilt
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN, di- rected by Karel Reisz; screenplay by Harold Pinter, based on book past John Fowles; manager of photography, Freddie Francis; edited past John Bloom; music past Carl Davis; produced past Leon Clore; released by United Artists. At the Little Carnegie, 57th Street east of Seventh Avenue. Running time: 124 minutes. This film is rated R.
Sarah and Anna . . . . . Meryl Streep
Charles and Mike . . . . . Jeremy Irons
Sam . . . . . Hilton McRae
Mary . . . . . Emily Morgan
Mrs. Tranter . . . . . Charlotte Mitchell
Ernestina . . . . . Lynsey Baxter
Melt . . . . . Jean Faulds
Mr. Freeman . . . . . Peter Vaughan
Vicar . . . . . Colin Jeavons
Mrs. Fairley . . . . . Liz Smith
Mrs. Poulteney . . . . . Patience Collier
Dairyman . . . . . John Barrett
Girl on Undercliff . . . . . Arabella Weir
Dr. Grogan . . . . . Leo McKern
Male child on Underrcliff . . . . . Ben Forster
Dr. Grogan's Housekeeper . . . . . Catherine Willmer
Asylum Keeper . . . . . Anthony Langdon
Nathaniel . . . . . Edward Duke
Sir Tom . . . . . Richard Griffiths
Delivery Male child . . . . . Graham Fletcher-Melt
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/18/movies/the-french-lieutenant-s-woman.html
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