D.H. Lawrence : fifty years on film

Bibliographic Information

D.H. Lawrence : fifty years on film

Louis K. Greiff

Southern Illinois University Press, c2001

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Note

Includes filmography (p. 227-228) and videography (p. 229-230)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-267) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Between 1949 and 1999, the life and works of D.H. Lawrence have inspired ten feature films: nine based on works of fiction and one based on biography. In "D.H. Lawrence: Fifty Years on Film", Louis K. Grieff examines these films as adaptations, as cultural or historical documents, and as independent works of art. Significantly, the films were not spread evenly throughout decades but appeared in three clusters. The first group, or the "black and white", appeared between 1949 and 1960. With the exception of Marc Allegret's "L'Amant de Lady Chatterley" (1955), all celebrate the British common man as a mid-century hero and promote an unmistakable yet never strident postwar ethos that is Marxism in spirit. The second cluster occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These films show Lawrence's values as similar to the cultural values of the time - non-conformity, neobohemianism, sexual rebellion, war protest, and the celebration of youth. The third group answers the question - why, in an un-Lawrentian decade like the 1980s, was there a revival of Lawrence's works on film? Grieff also deals with the contributions made by directors Ken Russell and Christopher Miles, both of whom directed Lawrence films of the latter two clusters. He shows how Russell and, to a lesser extent, Miles were responsible for bringing mass audiences in touch with the works of Lawrence. Grieff's final and most important goal is to interpret and evaluate the Lawrence films. He looks first at the film as a visual representation of its text, then as an original act of creation and object of art.

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