Themes: Self-Destructive Romance, Class Differences, Infidelity
Main Cast: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Hilton McRae, Emily Morgan, Charlotte Mitchell
Release Year: 1981
Country: UK
Run Time: 127 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. How does one convey this time-frame dichotomy on film? The decision made by director Karel Reisz and Harold Pinter was to frame Fowles' basic plot within a "modern" context of their own making. While we watch as Sarah (Meryl Streep), a 19th-century Englishwoman ruined by an affair with a French lieutenant, enters into another disastrous relationship with principled young Charles (Jeremy Irons), we are constantly made aware that what we're seeing is only a film. This is done by surrounding the story with a modern narrative, focusing on a movie production company which is on location--filming The French Lieutenant's Woman. Meryl Streep doubles in the role of Sara and the American actress who plays her, while Jeremy Irons essays the dual role of Charles and the handsome Briton playing Charles. Likewise, everyone else in the cast is seen as "themselves" and as their French Lieutenant's Woman characters. Not surprisingly, the "real" Streep and Irons enter into an affair which closely parallels their characters' relationship. The commercial TV version of French Lieutenant's Woman eliminates 30 minutes' worth of "extraneous" scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
One of England's most highly regarded playwrights, Harold Pinter was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for his sly, self-reflexive adaptation of The French Lieutenant's Woman. The conundrum for Pinter and director Karel Reisz was how to translate John Fowles' enigmatic novel to the screen without losing the author's blend of the Victorian world with a modern sensibility. They settled upon a movie-within-a-movie structure. The narrative device of having both a "fictionalized" and a "real" component complementing each other is nothing new to dramatists, and it is a favorite trick of the movies as well: to greater or lesser degrees, such films as Children of Paradise, 8 1/2, Le Mepris, and The Last Metro all use such a "meta-fictional" technique. As the two actors playing the two characters, Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons manage to keep their respective roles distinctive, yet parallel. Streep was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, her first of six in the 1980s. This was Irons' first major motion picture after making a splash in the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Lynsey Baxter - Ernestina; Jean Faulds - Cook; Peter Vaughan - Mr. Freeman; Colin Jeavons - Vicar; Liz Smith - Mrs. Fairley; Patience Collier - Mrs. Poulteney; John Barrett - Dairyman; Leo McKern - Dr. Grogan; Arabella Weir - Girl on Undercliff; Ben Forster - Boy on Undercliff; Catherine Willmer - Dr. Grogan's housekeeper; Anthony Langdon - Asylum Keeper; Edward Duke - Nathaniel; Richard Griffiths - Sir Tom; Graham Fletcher-Cook - Delivery Boy; Michael Elwyn - Montague; Toni Palmer - Mrs. Endicott; Cecily Hobbs - Betty Anne; Doreen Mantle - Lady on Train; David Warner - Murphy; Alun Armstrong - Grimes; Beverly Garland; Richard Hope - 3rd Assistant; Mary McLeod; Harriet Walter; Penelope Wilton - Sonia; Peter Fraser; Gerard Falconetti - Davide; Vicky Ireland; Clare Travers-Deacon; Joanna Joseph - Lizzie
Credit
Allan Cameron - Art Director, Norman Dorme - Art Director, Terry Pritchard - Art Director, Geoffrey Helman - Associate Producer, Tom Rand - Costume Designer, Karel Reisz - Director, John Bloom - Editor, Carl Davis - Composer (Music Score), Assheton Gorton - Production Designer, Freddie Francis - Cinematographer, Chris Burt - Production Manager, Leon Clore - Producer, Ann Mollo - Set Designer, Allan Bryce - Special Effects, Don Sharpe - Sound Editor, Ivan Sharrock - Sound Recordist, Harold Pinter - Screenwriter, John Fowles - Book Author
The plot concerns the love affair between a Victorian gentleman and a woman who has been jilted by a French officer, scandalizing the "polite society" of Lyme Regis.
In the original book, the author is very much present - constantly addressing the reader directly and commenting on his characters, and on Victorian society in general, from his Twentieth-century perspective. A direct adaptation would have required a continual voice over.
Instead, the film creates the effect of the 19th Century society looked at from a 20th Century perspective by having a story within a story, the Victorian story being a film being shot in the present and the actors portraying the two Victorian characters having a love affair in their actual life, with the film shifting constantly between the two centuries. And though the actors are not bound by Victorian mores in their actual present-day lives, their affair still presents hard dilemmas since each is in a relationship to somebody else.
Also, instead of trying to create a literal translation of the novel's alternate endings, Pinter's screenplay adopted a more cinematic approach by having the characters' story ends one way, the actors' another.
The book was published in 1969 and unlike his previous novels the transfer to the big screen was a protracted process with the film rights changing hands a number of times before a treatment, funding and cast were eventually finalized. In 1977 Malcolm Bradbury and Christopher Bigsby approached Fowles to suggest they work on a television adaptation which Fowles was amenable to, but then producer Saul Zaentz came in and the film version was finally greenlit.
Carl Davis' award-winning music performed by an unidentified orchestra and Viola soloist Kenneth Essex, who in earlier years had appeared as one of the four string soloists on several Beatles singles including Eleanor Rigby.
