Women in Love

It was a review of this film in the excellent DVD Times that fired me to read the book and hence discover the other works of D. H. Lawrence. And also to buy this DVD. I would recommend reading this review, it is hard to think of writing a better one.

As the author of the article says, the ideas from the book came tearing off the page and ripped into my soul and cosy notions of sex and love. I cannot imagine how this book must have read in the late 1910s – even today the ideas seem shocking and revolutionary against our current solomnent consumerist malaise. I was reminded of the fierce passions of youth, the search for absolute truth and freedom in love. Sex seems to get disconnected from love in our modern society. Really, sex is used for advertising, as a measure of one’s integrity, as a leisure activity. People search for love but have sex whilst waiting for love to come along. And when love does come along, what does the sex become, what remains of sex? Sometimes the absolution of giving yourself to someone, mind and body, is lost I think. This function is not there anymore, the sex has been used up in other energies. A voice from the early 20th Century reminds me of this fact - the idea to love passionately and in doing so remove oneselves from the restraints of the physical world.

So much for my current concerns, what about the movie. As I said, read the DVD Times review. For my part, one major element missed from this review is the look of Alan Bates – so very hirsute, yet evidently the look is designed to mirror the look of D. H. Lawrence himself, as the character if Rupert Birkin is undoubtedly modeled on the author.

Also, I would put in a word of support for Jenny Linden’s portrayal of Ursula Brangwen – yes she is up against three heavyweight actors, and she does not give the appropriate depth to the Ursula character, but I felt she was as much a delight to watch as Glenda Jackson, if for different reasons. Can you describe Oliver Reed as a heavyweight actor? The Gerald Crich character is undoubtedly meant to be a foil for the passion of Rupert Birkin, and Reed’s cold glare is effective in this case. He is also utterly convincing when he is working on the coal face as the owner’s son, as well as being torn between the love for his father and disdain for his father’s outdated philanthropic ideas. Still it’s hard to see how the chemistry works between Gerald and Ursula. Given a movie’s time limitations, that’s maybe understandable – the book takes things far slower naturally.

And here is an argument against making novels into movies. There are always horrendous compromises with time and plot condensing. Novels make far better TV series where the plot and characters have time to breathe, as with Brideshead Revisited. In the Guardian review of Brokeback Mountain, the reviewer makes the case that a short story can improve and gain wings when adapted to a movie. Too much gets lost adapting a novel to 100 minutes.

So an Oscar for Glenda Jackson. This seems improbable somehow, as does the Academy actually watching this picture. I imagine there was not a great deal of competition in 1970. Jackson did wonderful work in Ken Russell’s pictures there is no doubt, and the dance she makes in front of the herd of bulls is very affecting. But an Oscar?
I love Ken Russell – his humor, his integration of music, all the things I learnt from his composer-films. Also I love his naughty side, the desire to upset stuffy England. This film is well known for its male nude wrestling scene, which it has to be said now looks pretty unerotic. Also Jackson’s Oscar was the first for an actor with a nude scene. How quaint these ‘firsts’ seem now to me.

The cinematography works very well. The blackness of coal dust covered Yorkshire (not the Nottinghamshire of the book.) The colour of the two women contrasting on the black. The clarity of the sequences at the Matterhorn is wonderful. Once scene really stunned me – the mis en scene while Gudrun dances near the late, the horizontal lines of the earth and the lower branches of the trees really made my eyes open wide.

Referring back to the DVD Times review, at the end it’s a very good film, but fails to really capture the feeling and complexity of one of the key works of 20th Century English literature.