Film Review
There is hardly any doubt that Jack Cardiff is the greatest of all
British cinematographers, but his dozen or so offerings as a film
director are largely forgotten, implying that a director needs to have
more than just a keen visual sense to be a master of his art.
Cardiff's fourth directing credit was on this visually sumptuous but
otherwise disappointingly anodyne adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's classic
novel,
Sons and Lovers.
The constraints of censorship and public good taste placed severe
limitations on what Cardiff could put up on the big screen in 1960 and
so the raunchier passages of Lawrence's sexually explicit novel are
conspicuous by their absence.
On the acting front, Trevor Howard turns in the most fully developed
and credible performance, his character being far more believable,
indeed more sympathetic, than the others, who are underwritten and too
vague to be anywhere near as interesting. Great actress though
she is, Wendy Hiller struggles to make her character, a possessive and
manipulative mother hell-bent on destroying her sons' happiness, any
more than a mere shadow of the incredibly complex picture that Lawrence
paints in his novel. The biggest let-down is the casting of
Dean Stockwell in the central role, an impossibly handsome young
American actor parachuted in presumably to help boost box office
returns in the United States. Unable to provide even the vaguest
approximation of an East Midlands accent (which immediately sets him
apart from the rest of the cast), Stockwell looks horribly out of
place, and whilst his performance is actually quite good the script
makes it hard for him to establish himself a as credible
character.
The film's strongest suit is its beautifully expressive black and white photography,
particularly the locations scenes around Nottingham that provide a
potent sense of the stifling drabness of an English mining community in the
Edwardian era. Freddie Francis won an Oscar for his
cinematography, and deservedly so. From the first shot to the
last,
Sons and Lovers has an
intoxicating beauty about it that connects far more successfully with
the grimly realist poetry of Lawrence's novel than the heavily literary
dialogue, overly emphatic score and generally uninspiring performances.
The upshot is that whilst
Sons of Lovers is an engaging visual feast
it deals too glibly with the devastating truths that Lawrence was able to articulate in his novel
(in particular the destructive power of the mother-son relationship).
It ends up being little more than a wordy coming-of-age story, a passionless and synthetic
treatment of one of the most revelatory works of 20th century English literature.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In an English mining town of the 1910s, Paul Morel has aspirations of
pursuing an artistic career, encouraged by his possessive mother.
He regards his father, an alcoholic miner given to violent mood swings,
with contempt and fails to comprehend why his mother married him.
Mrs Morel is displeased when her son lets slip that he may be falling
in love with a childhood friend of his, Miriam. Paul is soon
persuaded by his mother that Miriam is not the girl for him and turns
his attention to another, older woman, Clara Dawes. Although a
married woman, Clara has been separated from her husband for two years
and has no qualms over starting a love affair with her eager new
admirer...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.