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Thanks to cameraman Nicolas Roeg and production designer Richard MacDonald (who also worked for Joseph Losey), 19th-century Dorset looks as pretty and as picturesque as a John Constable reproduction on top of a cookie tin. Not that Schlesinger or screenwriter Frederic Raphael underplays the duress of rural life. We see the hardship of the farm workers' lives as the seasons turn. The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which Gabriel Oak's dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, thereby forcing him into penury. Whether hunger or heartbreak, every character here suffers. Bathsheba (like the model Christie plays in Darling) is a free spirit in a society in which women's rights are severely restricted. --Geoffrey Macnab
Amazon.com Essential Video
Thanks to cameraman Nicolas Roeg and production designer Richard MacDonald (who also worked for Joseph Losey), 19th-century Dorset looks as pretty and as picturesque as a John Constable reproduction on top of a cookie tin. Not that Schlesinger or screenwriter Frederic Raphael underplays the duress of rural life. We see the hardship of the farm workers' lives as the seasons turn. The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which Gabriel Oak's dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, thereby forcing him into penury. Whether hunger or heartbreak, every character here suffers. Bathsheba (like the model Christie plays in Darling) is a free spirit in a society in which women's rights are severely restricted. --Geoffrey Macnab
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful film adaptation of my favourite book,
By
This review is from: Far From The Madding Crowd (VHS Tape)
"Far from the Madding Crowd" has been, since childhood, my favourite novel. I can't recall how many times I've read it! And this film adaptation is one of the finest I've ever seen. I've loved it, in it's own right, since I was a child too - it's a "piece of perfection" in my opinion.The "Hardy Country" atmosphere is so evocatively represented by Nicholas Roeg's beautiful camera work and the main character's emotional states so finely played by the leads. Julie Christie portrays Bathsheba's pride and wilfullness perfectly, and equally well conveys her desperation and humiliation at the hands of Frank Troy. And what a performance from Terence Stamp! He conveys Troy's raffish charm and hidden vulnerability expertly. Who could forget that scene where he spurns Bathsheba over the dead body of his true love, Fanny? It must be one of the most powerful scenes in literature or film. When he says to Bathsheba: "She is more to me now, dead as she is, than you ever were, or are, or could be!" My god, fancy having something like that said to you!! How devastating! Then we have the intense and tortured Farmer Boldwood - Peter Finch in one of his finest roles. And, lastly, the gorgeous Alan Bates - the absolute personification of Gabriel Oak, leapt from Hardy's page into life! I agree with most of the comments from other lovers of this film - it is a truly underrated masterpiece.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
overwhlemed by this film!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Far From The Madding Crowd (VHS Tape)
I saw this film when it was first released in 1968. It is absolutely one of the most brilliant, beautiful, riveting and memorable motion pictures of all time. I own the tape and laser disc versions. I know it is available on DVD in Australia. Please Warner Home Video see that it becomes available in the USA on DVD.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Underrated - Stunning - Great Filmmaking,
By Mark D Burgh "Music, Writing, Art, Film, Hist... (Fort Smith, AR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Far From The Madding Crowd (VHS Tape)
Fresh of the smash of Darling, the creative team of John Schlesinger, Freddie Raphael, and Julie Christie tackled Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd." Shot on location in Hardy's Wessex, suberbly cast, and paced well, this film ought to have swept the world. Why it did not was probably that it came out in 1967 when the screen epic genre was dying. A film with an overture (music is the film's weakpoint) and an intermission was not going to play in the fast and furious competetion including Bonny & Clyde and In the Heat of Night.For all that, this movie held my attention, and shocked me with its sorrows. Alan Bates, rock steady, anchors this film, not Julie Christie's thoughtless Bathesheba. He does only right throughout the movie, unlike all the other characters. Peter Finch, as the psychotically repressed Boldwood ignites the screen every time the camera comes on him; he exudes force. And has there ever been a rake like Terence Stamp, or one more sympathetic in the film's emotional climax; the scene where he rejects the living Bathesba for the dead Franny. In retrospect, this film is the boilerplate for all those Masterpiece Theatre adaptions that began a few years later; still it greater than the best of these. This is one of those few films, like maybe Casablanca, or Citizen Kane, or Lean's Oliver Twist, where the perfect confluence of creative and technical achieved an apotheosis. The only work comparable today: Ang Lee's films. The common thread: the humanity of the characters shaped in their respective cultures. Vanity has consequences, none good.
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