Rappaccini's Daughter

This film is so bad I challenge you to sit through it. It must have been directed by an imbecile. I love Hawthorne and this was the single worst adaptation I've ever seen of his material. I have seen this lead actress in some other things and she was very good in them so I don't know what happened here. The director must have been picked out of a hat. He managed to turn one of Hawthorne's finest tales into a miserable experience. He failed to capture the essence of the story, but managed to dumb it down and cloud it with clichés. I encourage anyone who has seen this to read the original text and vindicate Hawthorne of this horrible misdoing. If nothing else, this serves as an example of how not to adapt a story to the screen.

A classic story. A beautiful actress. Professional crew. All these things should add up to an excellent film. Sadly, in the case, all this help couldn't save this film. The acting is wooden beyond belief. (Watch Warhol's Dracula for another good example of this) Kathleen Beller is wonderful to look at, but it seems like she's reading from cue cards the entire time. It's stagey, melodramatic and gives TV films a bad name. Too bad, really - it's intent was to be used for educational purposes!

A Romeo and Juliet story, where a student who has just moved to Italy, falls in love with a girl whose father is a scientist and gave her a life essence of poison. The movie is about how this student becomes poisoned and ends up killing her and ruining the rest of his life.

This is a story with many moral implications. Man vs. Self--do we go after what we know is bad for us? Man vs. Science--Where does science become more important than life? There are more questions raised in the reading of the story. This story speaks of the power and innocence and foolishness of young love. Also worth mentioning is the story was written on the brink of the Industrial Revolution, with science eroding the hellfire & brimstone Puritans and a more Realist/Romanticist attitude taking over America. It references Dante's Inferno, and the purposeful, or should I say, the expected decent into Hell. As well, there are th obvious references to Rappacini's garden being Eden and Giovanni and Beatrice (Bay-ah-treechay) as Adam and Eve. There is no murder, but there is death. As Hawthorne always teaches, nothing good can last unconditionally...

One good thing besides the acting, is the appearance in the beginning by Henry Fonda, who narrates an introduction. Knowing that he wouldn't be around much longer after that (shortly before his "Golden Pond" masterpiece) makes it poignant.

While Kathleen Beller goes a good job as Beatrice (love the Italian "Bee-aah-tra-shay" pronunciation), and Kristoffer Tabori is equally good as the mesmerized Giovanni, the story doesn't seem to succeed in reaching your emotions, even when it comes to the tragic ending. When Giovanni first discovers the strange purplish marks on his wrist after Beatrice touched him, for example, you should feel some shock or horror, instead it comes across as if he had a small scratch, no big deal. The whole story comes across that way, despite all the "Garden of Eden" similarities, and other interpretations.

I think it's better just to read the story.