A Month in the Country

First released on videotape in 1985 (and still available if you dig for it), this 90-minute British tele-play was produced in 1967. Derek Marlowe wrote the screenplay, Quentin Lawrence directed, and Peter Snell produced. It features mostly English performers who went on to some renown in later years, most notably Susannah York and Ian McShane. York plays the lovely, bored and repressed Natalya who hires the tutor Beliayev (a young and handsome Ian McShane) to give her 10 year old son what she feels she never had in her own life - freedom and the ability to express himself in life. The tutor Beliayev serves as the love object and catalyst in the film, inspiring characters to gain various levels of enlightenment about themselves. It's a good example of Turgenev's ability to create complicated, sympathetic characters, especially women and young men. The picture and sound quality have suffered over the years, but it's worth a viewing, especially for York and McShane fans or students of Turgenev's work.