First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

1. Olivier vs Gielgud

Everyone knows that Laurence Olivier is more famous than John Gielgud. But here’s a curious thing. Gielgud was extraordinary in the Granada Brideshead as Charles Ryder’s father. It is unthinkable that the part could be played differently or better. Olivier was OK (as Olivier usually was on TV). But no better than OK as Lord Marchmain. No better, certainly, than Michael Gambon, who plays the part well and differently. He emerges easily from Olivier’s shadow. Gielgud’s shadow is inescapable.This is not to dismiss Patrick Malahide in the film. He’s good. But playing that part after Gielgud is the most unenviable task in filmed drama.

2. Pound vs TS Eliot

Wasn’t it Eliot that Anthony Blanche reads from in the book and the TV series? And yet in the film, he reads from Pound. Could it be that the Eliot estate saw that this film was going to be utter tosh and wanted nothing to do with it?

3. Check out the name of the Catholic adviser on the end credits — I promise you it’s worth waiting for and rather unexpected.

4. Julian Jarrold (who directed ‘BH’) is going to be the greatest director of chocolate ads the world has ever seen. You know all those ads where a man chases some beautiful woman down endless corridors and then finds her and then you get a caption like ‘All because the lady loves…’? Well, ‘BH’ has about three such sequences which is three too many but a great calling card for commercials companies.

5. What happened to the First World War?

The First World War (as the great Christopher Hitchens has pointed out in The Guardian Review) is crucial to BH. The novel begins soon after the war. Lunt refers to it when Charles Ryder arrives in Oxford. Two of Lady Marchmain’s brothers were killed in the war. And yet in the film — nothing.

6. What happened to the Second World War

The book (and TV series) begin and end with the Second World War and a reflection on the social changes that are sweeping away the ancien regime represented by Brideshead and the Marchmains. The decline that Waugh fears is embodied by Hooper, an everyman of the new Britain. He barely appears in the film. The sense of decline and fall (excuse the pun) is missed out. Instead we get lots of minxiness from Hayley Atwell (Julia Flye), high camp from Ben Whishaw and the usual Andrew Davies sexing it up.

7. Andrew Davies

Isn’t it time to stop letting Andrew Davies turn great novels into bad porn without the sex (but lots of gasping, minxing, Charles stripping down to his vest)?

8. The devil is in the details

I knew this was going to be a dog from the moment I first saw the poster which showed someone with their waistcoat done up to the bottom, rather than leaving the bottom button undone. This sounds sad, I know, but it is invariably the case that if a production cannot be bothered with getting details like that right they will get the big things wrong too. So, for example, Lady Marchmain is a mean snob to Charles when they first meet. Unthinkable. Lord Marchmain potters around in Venice with his trousers rolled up and no socks. Seriously? What kind of contraception does the Catholic Julia use when she starts shagging Charles (in the best Andrew Davies tradition — see #7) or is she not bothered? This sort of clunkiness goes on through the film, and, of course, it is just the icing on a very sloppy cake.

9. What film did Emma Thompson and Haylet Atwell think they were in?

Emma Thompson is one of the great film and television actresses (’Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Much Ado’, ‘Remains of the Day’, ‘Wit’, ‘Angels in America’, ‘Fortunes of War’, etc, etc.). So how did she end up playing Mrs Danvers in ‘BH’? Who is responsible? Obviously not her. Who will take the credit for making the character so one-dimensional? Probably Andrew Davies given that he doesn’t see Lady M as sexy enough for his literary attentions.

As for Hayley Atwell, there is an odd moment when she is dancing and you suddenly realise she thinks she’s playing Sally Bowles. Hence all the minxiness and flirting. It’s probably the haircut.

10. Watch out for films which define exactly what’s wrong with them

There’s a curious moment when Rex Mottram asks Charles Ryder, ‘How vulgar can it get?’ Good question. the answer is very. They ripped out the complexity, the sadness, the historical context, and turned it into a curiously sexless menage a trois (or a quatre if you include the teddy bear who also gets largely cut out except for the clunkiest moment of all when Charles Ryder finds it lying beside an empty bottle — oh, the symbolism). This film will probably see the end of one or two careers but it is the screenwriters and the nameless men from Miramax who are most at fault for their cheap cynicism. Who did they think was going to watch this in the States anyway outside of the usual west and east coast and college town movie-houses? May they spend the rest of their lives watching the scene with the “French” doctor from Marrakesh.