The Mill on the Floss

This 1937 adaption of George Elliot's The Mill On The Floss gave film audiences James Mason's first starring role as Tom Tulliver, son of Sam Livesey who has a running feud over the water rights over a mill that Livesey owns on the river Floss. This feud over the water rights where it is determined that Felix Aylmer owns permeates the lives of the families involved.

Mason is an earnest and devoted son to Livesey and something of a lout. He ratchets up the feud several notches until that's just about all he lives for. But that's not how Mason's sister Geraldine Fitzgerald feels nor is it how Aylmer's son Frank Lawton feels. They carry on a Romeo and Juliet like romance despite the feelings of their respective families. And since you know where Elliot got her inspiration from, you also can probably deduce things end rather badly.

This film version could probably use a restoration since it is a key film in the career of James Mason. The streamed version I saw on Amazon looks like it hasn't stood the test of time. The Napoleonic and post Napoleonic era in the United Kingdom is well captured on the film, but the pace is slow and sluggish. The film should also be restored because of the climatic sequence of the flood which destroys some lives and the mill that was the cause of the great feud. It was probably a well staged disaster that I would have liked a better view of, it was pretty dark on my computer.

The Mill On The Floss is sluggish and considerably condensed from the Elliott novel, but still earnestly done by its cast.

I can not go into a dissertation about the movie vs the novel. I can not write a comparative study of the The Mill on the Floss with other novels by George Eliot or her contemporaries. I do appreciate the other commenter's' reviews. However, I would like to correct a few factual errors. As a child, Tom Tulliver bullies his friend "Bob" (not Phillip) into giving him the shilling. Phillip, son of the elder Tulliver's nemesis, observes this act and chides Tom for his behavior in front of Tom's sister, Maggie. (PS - the wealthy family is not the Tullivers. Phillip and his father are wealthy and Tullivers are the working class.) As an adult, Bob and Tom become friends and business partners as Tom is not a bad person, but he certainly is a pigheaded one. However, Tom can not forgive Phillip and his father for the wrongs the old man brought onto the Tullivers and therein lies the basic conflict in the plot. All in all, I didn't think the movie was all that bad and the pace of the plot as well as the acting held my interest from beginning to end. If you are a James Mason fan, you will probably like it better than some of his other movies from that period.

This was Mason's first "serious" movie, and he was very good in it. And yes indeed it would have been glorious to see him have a turn at Heathcliff at that point in his career. Later, he should have had a crack at Mr. Rochester. Too bad...our loss.

I have always been more of a fan of George Eliot's stories than of many of her more, shall we say, "sentimental" contemporaries. Her stories were grittier, with far more realistic characters - and this is one of her best. A childhood feud spills over into adulthood and some unique pig-headedness that maximises the misery for the Tulliver and Wakem families. James Mason takes on his first major cinema role here, and he does it well as the opinionated "Tom", elder brother of "Maggie" (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who is admired by "Philip" (Frank Lawton), but he is from the family that put old man "Tulliver" from his mill after losing a law suit - a fact that "Tom" will neither forgive nor forget... There is a smattering of strong supporting characters from Martita Hunt, Fay Compton and Felix Aylmer to give added richness to this rather sad story of bloody-mindedness (and of the dependence young women had on their men-folks in the 1830s). The production is a bit stagey at times, but really redeemed by the last - tragic - ten minutes, and though this adaptation really does simplify the characters a little too much, it still clings on to enough of the story to make it worth a watch.

There have been several film adaptations of The Mill on the Floss, but the 1936 version is the only one I've ever seen. It reminded me very much of Hungry Hill, so if you liked that movie, you'll probably like this story as well.

Two families have a long-standing feud, and while the younger generation is aware of the enemy camp, they can't help but be drawn to it. Geraldine Fitzgerald falls in love with forbidden fruit Frank Lawton, and her brother James Mason has a fit. He's the "good kid" and hates his enemies as he's been taught. As James tries to stop the romance, he also faces his own prejudices and works hard managing his father's mill.

If you're not very well-versed in dry period pieces, you might fall asleep or get lost during this one. It tends to rush plot points, and it doesn't try very hard to "dummy things down" for the audience. But, if you like proper British stories, and you get wrapped up in feuds, try renting one of the versions of The Mill on the Floss and see what you think.

'The Mill on the Floss' was one of the lesser novels by Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the male pseudonym George Eliot. I tried to read this dull and very turgid novel years ago, but was unable to finish it. I'll review this film version solely on its own merits, as I don't know how faithfully it follows the original novel.

The film's opening credits are printed in an Old English typeface that suggests the mediaeval period, and so it's a very poor choice for a film with a 19th-century setting. (On the other hand, about halfway into the film, we see a close-up shot of a handbill advertising an estate auction. This handbill is set in authentic Victorian type fonts, and looks *very* convincing.) Most of this film is extremely convincing in its depiction of the architecture and clothing of early 19th-century England. The precise location of this film's story is never disclosed, but - judging by the actors' accents - I'd place it as somewhere in the Cotswolds, perhaps Warwickshire.

The plot, what there is of it, involves a mill that changes hands a couple of times (over a couple of decades) between two rival families, one wealthy and one working-class. I disagree with another IMDb reviewer who claims that James Mason has only a small role in this film. Mason has the largest and most central role in this drama, as the scion of the wealthier family. As the spoilt and petulant Tom Tulliver, Mason is darkly brooding and impetuous. His performance here belongs in a better film: it made me want to see 'Wuthering Heights' recast with Mason as Heathcliff.

As this is a multi-generational saga (something which George Eliot did much better in 'Middlemarch'), several of the main roles in this film are split among two actors apiece: child actors in the prologue, adults in the main narrative. The prologue of this film features a very well-written scene, establishing Tom Tulliver as wilful and bully-ragging from an early age, and young Philip Wakeham as decent and thoughtful. Through hard labour, Philip has earned a halfpenny: Tom tries to bully it away from him, but is unwilling to take the coin by brute force: he wants Philip to *give* it to him. All the child actors in this movie, male and female, are talented and attractive. Unfortunately, all of the children speak their dialogue in posh plummy-voiced accents that are utterly unlike the accents of the actors and actresses who play those same roles as adults. This discrepancy calls attention to the staginess of the material. Regrettably, none of the later scenes are as good as this prologue.

The climax features a crowd of labourers in a rainstorm, much better paced and photographed than the earlier scenes. But modern viewers (in Britain, at least) can no longer take this sort of material seriously. By now, practically every British comedian has done a "trouble at t' mill, squire" comedy routine, parodying precisely this subject matter, so I had difficulty watching this movie with a straight face.

The character actress Martita Hunt is good in a small role, but the opening credits (in that Old English typeface) misspell her forename as 'Marita'. I'll rate this dull movie 3 points out of 10: one point apiece for James Mason's performance, the early scene with the children, and the authentic Victorian typesetting in that auctioneer's handbill.