Far from the Madding Crowd
by John Schlesinger
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Actor: Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Peter Finch, Prunella Ransome, Terence StampDirector: John Schlesinger
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.20:1
Running Time: 171 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-01-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Best Picture/Best Actor - National Board of Review Awards! JULIE CHRISTIE rejoins the writer and director of her starmaking Darling on Thomas Hardy's tale of a rebellious country girl for whose affection soldier TERENCE STAMP, landowner PETER FINCH and sheep farmer ALAN BATES becomes rivals. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG Age: 883929036233 UPC: 88392903623
DVD Reviews of Far from the Madding Crowd
DVD Review: One of the Great, Sweeping, Epic Romances that Has Found its Audience
Summary: 5 Stars
When the British film, "Far From the Madding Crowd," a romantic drama based upon the 1874 book of the same name, Far from the Madding Crowd , by British Victorian author Thomas Hardy was released in 1967, it was neither a critical nor an audience favorite. In fact, its only Oscar nomination was for the lovely resonant soundtrack, with grace notes of contemporaneous English folk songs, by Richard Rodney Bennett.
Now, make no mistake about it: you are in, as they say, Hardy country here, in more ways than one. The film succeeds in giving you a very strong taste of the time and place in which it is set. It seems as if it must be a David Lean film, in its sweep, its beauty, and its coverage of many years. It wasn't a Lean film. But the Wessex countryside, as beautifully captured by director by John Schlesinger, with cinematography by director-to-be Nicholas Roeg, accurately depicts the physical look of the place - I've been there, and can tell you that. Acres and acres of green meadows and fields, rolling hills, big sky. The film also, as I suppose it must, follows the original melodramatic Hardy novel that is dependent on all sorts of far-fetched coincidences that may try the patience of most readers.
People familiar with the Thomas Hardy novel have been known to object that Bathsheba was there portrayed as dark and dramatic in coloring, and we have in Christie, of course, a fair-haired blue-eyed blond. I accepted Christie in the part immediately, and can't imagine another actress of the time who could have handled it better.
The film represented a reteaming of the trio that had just had a big commercial success with the contemporary 1960's tale of swinging London, Darling: director Schlesinger (who would be named a Commander of the British Empire), screenwriter Frederic Raphael, and incandescent star Julie Christie. It tells the tale of Bathsheba Everdene, (Christie), stubborn, and hot-headed; she has unexpectedly inherited a large, successful farm. She initially tells her employees: "I shall manage everything with my own head and hands." But in the matter of marriage, she is, willy-nilly, led by her heart. Of course, she has three of the handsomest, most attractive suitors a girl could ever imagine: it's no wonder they quite turned her head. As rough-hewn shepherd and knowledgeable farmer Gabriel Oak, we have Alan Bates. ("Whenever I look up, there shall you be. And whenever you look up, there shall I be.")As rich and handsome local landowner William Boldwood, we have Peter Finch, who also turned in a superb acting job: he won the National Board of Review's Best Actor award.
As Sgt. Francis (Frank) Troy, who functions more or less as the moustache-twirling villain of the piece, we have Terence Stamp. We several times hear the maids gossiping about Frank: that he has more women than he knows what to do with. He has seduced one of them, only to realize he can marry the mistress; great suffering will ensue. But it should be noted that he is consistently portrayed as a man who doesn't much care for women: he has joined the army just for starters. And we are shown a few times that he is happiest in male company.
Stamp was chosen as #59 on Empire Magazine's 1995 list of the hundred sexiest stars in film. He must be considered a true London Cockney, by the classic definition: a person born within the sound of Bow bells, as he was born in Stepney, and lived, as a young child, on Canal Road, Bow, before the German World War II Blitzkrieg forced his family's evacuation.
The man just is a heart-breaker. I once saw him, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, after a retrospective showing of the film he'd made immediately before this one, Poor Cow [Region 2], directed by Ken Loach. He was telling us he's just used his first movie earnings to buy his first classic Rolls Royce -- he called it a "Roller," guess owners do - and he'd wanted to show it off. But he'd been warned by friends that Loach, a fire-breathing socialist then as now - that director's never even gone Hollywood-- strongly disapproved of luxury cars. So Stamp had had to be sure to park his new Roller far away, where it couldn't be seen by the director. You could still hear the regret in his voice, 35+ years later. Now, sources insist that he and Christie had a blazing off-screen romance during the filming of "Far:" supposedly it inspired the Kinks' classic hit "Waterloo Sunset," with the line, "When Terry met Julie." Personally, I wouldn't care to go up against the Roller.
But I loved this film from the moment I first saw it, and love it still. It's one of the great, sweeping, epic romances, and it has found its audience.
Description of Far from the Madding Crowd
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