The imminent opening of a film version of Brideshead Revisited has triggered a spate of commentary, both prospective and retrospective, on attempts to film Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel. The best so far has been Ginia Bellafante’s piece in today’s New York Times, as nifty a bit of writing as you’ll see in a daily newspaper.
The gold standard, of course, is the 1981 television miniseries, which in the opinion of many (including me) is the finest dramatic endeavor ever produced on film or videotape. The casting was just about perfect, with stage legends Laurence Olivier and Claire Bloom as Lord and Lady Marchmain and John Gielgud as Edward Ryder. The central role of Charles Ryder launched Jeremy Irons’s career, and supporting actors Phoebe Nicholls and Simon Jones had the roles of their lives as Cordelia and Brideshead Flyte. The weak link, in my view, was Diana Quick as Julia, but this can be overlooked in an assessment of what is, by any measure, a dazzling entertainment.
The producers of the new, filmed version, were forced to telescope a 21-hour miniseries into a 2-1/4-hour movie, and, judging from the initial reviews, they took considerable liberties with Waugh’s plot in order to do so. (For the TV production, scenarist John Mortimer was heroically faithful to the book, so much so that when I reread the novel the words and scenes sprang to life from the printed page.) Waugh addicts are likely to be infuriated at this, but I will reserve judgment until I see it – if an art film like this ever makes it to the nabes in Maine.
The renewed interest in Waugh’s work prompted me to watch the 1987 British TV production of Scoop, one of two Waugh novels dealing with the confused (to be charitable) state of African politics. Of course, Waugh’s real target is the British upper class, as personified by the people who run The Beast, a London newspaper. William Boot writes a sedate column for The Beast dealing with the crested grebe and its like. Through a mixup he is sent by his newspaper to cover an incipient war in a woebegone African country called Ishmaelia. To tell you more would be pointless (and difficult), but I can say that the sterling cast (Michael Hordern, Donald Pleasance, Denholm Elliott, and Michael Maloney as Boot) gives the film all the absurdity that Waugh could have wanted. Waugh traveled extensively in Africa, and his other novel set in that continent, Black Mischief, is even better in my opinion, but it has never been filmed. (Apparently not even the bravest producer dared tackle a novel whose heroine is eaten at the end.)
A Handful of Dust helped establish Waugh as a gifted writer in 1934, and in 1988 it was turned into an excellent movie. How could it fail, with Alec Guinness, Kristin Scott Thomas, Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, and a terrific James Wilby in the cast? The director, Charles Sturridge, was the same man who had steered the Brideshead miniseries seven years earlier, and he is co-credited with the writing.
Waugh’s trip to Hollywood resulted in a film version of The Loved One, a freakish movie featuring, if you can believe it, the likes of Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Liberace, John Gielgud, and Robert Morley. Plus, disastrously, Robert Morse in the lead. It was a terrible movie. As a matter of fact, most of Waugh does not translate well to film, because so much of its value lies in the printed words. Those few who understand that, as John Mortimer did, can give us something for the ages.
