La vie tumultueuse de Lady Caroline Lamb

Only a besotted husband could send a love letter as wacky as this movie as Robert Bolt did to Sarah Miles; on which he squandered all the critical capital he'd amassed with 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'A Man for All Seasons'.

The real Caroline Lamb (1785-1828) probably wasn't much like the unhinged pixie Sarah Miles plays here (and there never was another woman like Joan Greenwood in 'The Bad Lord Byron'). Lord Byron was certainly nothing like Richard Chamberlain in Freddie Mercury eyeliner. But dull it ain't.

Screenwriter Robert Bolt who wrote such great work for David Lean in Ryan's Daughter, Doctor Zhivago, and Lawrence of Arabia and for Fred Zinnemann in A Man For All Seasons, tried his one and only hand at directing in Lady Caroline Lamb. The problem was that screenwriter Bolt was done wrong by director Bolt. Especially let down was Bolt's then wife Sarah Miles.

Miles who when directed by David Lean in Ryan's Daughter turned in such a spirited performance, was not given the same inspiration for Lady Caroline Lamb. Whatever else Caroline Lamb was she was not dull to be around. Miles does all right, but the rest of the cast just seems to walk through the parts, even the two guys playing the men in her life, Richard Chamberlain as Lord Byron and Jon Finch as William Lamb the future Lord Melbourne and Prime Minister of Great Britain.

I think these guys and the rest of the cast knew this was a vehicle for Miles the minute they walked on set and performed accordingly. Even Sir Laurence Olivier as the Duke of Wellington is strangely lifeless. Of course after seeing Christopher Plummer as the perfect Wellington in Waterloo, I'm kind of spoiled.

In real life Melbourne was hardly an injured party. He had a couple of other scandals attached to his name that had nothing to do with Lady Caroline. He never let the grass grow under his feet. Byron was notorious all over Europe for bedding everything in skirts within reach. It's likely he did want to call it a day with Caro, but probably because she was crazier than him.

Still the escapades of George and Caro titillated all of Georgian Great Britain, but they don't move the audience a bit here.

Boy, can women make fools over themselves and over such a cute little boy as Lord Byron!!! Lord Lamb is made to look a lamb indeed, as he continually forgives his neurotic/crazy wife for affairs that other women, including his own mother, have left and right but with discretion!! It reminded me of the hooraw over poor Pres. Clinton and his dalliance with the hooker/I mean aide, and the hypocritical rantings of Newt Gingrich who was doing the same thing all the time,.....but DISCREETLY. My goodness, aren't we just like the English!!! Since I don't really know the history, other than that the Brittannica says that she made a scene at some Lady's party...boy, did she ever!!! cutting her wrists and bleeding all over everybody's ball gowns. The mother, former mistress of George IV is quite intelligent and not half-bad. I loved all the costumes and the histrionics myself. Just to look at all those palatial estates was worth the price of the movie!!

And of course, Olivier is different in every movie! How I miss him!

After enduring Robert Bolt's rather turgid retelling of Lady Caroline Lamb's ill-fated love and finding myself, once again, unable to warm to his real-life wife (at the time), the rather tiresome Sarah Miles, the whole enterprise was redeemed by that fabulously funny curtain line. When told that Lady Caroline has died of a broken heart, one of her chief female detractors faces the camera (through the lace curtains of a window, I seem to recall) and hisses, (Alas! I'm not quoting verbatim, since I haven't seen this since its theatrical release, but here goes...) "She would!, wouldn't she?!?" I laughed all the way out to the parking lot. Not available on video, apparently, and if they do unearth this bit of cinematic costume jewellry (not really a precious gem, mind you), let us hope that it will be on DVD where the Panavision/widescreen ratio will be preserved.

This was one of four high-profile yet maligned films, all dating from the same year, which were slapped with the dreaded BOMB rating by the "Leonard Maltin Movie Guide"; conversely, the more conservative Leslie Halliwell was generally more receptive to their old-fashioned qualities! Anyway, two of these (including the one under review) had been very hard to come by, though both were quite recently shown on Italian TV – and, in fact, came across my copy of LADY CAROLINE LAMB off "You Tube" which I looked for on a whim on the occasion of co-star Richard Chamberlain's birthday! For the record, the other titles I am referring to are THE GREAT WALTZ (which still eludes me), MAN OF LA MANCHA and POPE JOAN (which has only been made available in a trimmed version and which I will be getting to presently in my Easter Epic marathon)…

I have always enjoyed pictures dealing with historical figures but, around the time this came out, these had acquired a Revisionist outlook which often exposed the less-than-pleasant details of their private lives. Perhaps the first to do this had been Ken Russell via a number of irreverent made-for-TV musical biopics throughout the 1960s but, by the end of the decade, his movie career had taken off in earnest – with THE MUSIC LOVERS, starring the afore-mentioned Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky, hitting the screens in 1971. Here, then, he is libertine poet Lord George Byron – first seen challenging a black man to a boxing match – who became the lover of the titular figure (played by Sarah Miles) while she was married to politician Sir William Lamb (Jon Finch). While we are told that such affairs were common practice, sometimes involving even royalty, they were mostly kept "discreet" – a term which certainly cannot be applied to the one depicted in the film.

Indeed, the movie's low estimation in some critics' minds has much to do with its definite camp value: Miles, sporting short-cropped hair, is tomboyish – never more so than, when uninvited to a dinner honouring the Duke of Wellington (Laurence Olivier) due to her scandalous behaviour (with Byron opting to escort another lady), she adopts the garments of the torch-carrying lads ostentatiously accompanying his carriage around at night!; worst of all, however, she attends a costume ball half-naked and in blackface (purporting to be Byron's negro slave!) – it is here that the cracks in their relationship start to show, as she is ignored by her partner and laughed at by her peers! Having mentioned Wellington, it is also unbecoming to watch either the famed general or the celebrated thespian indulge in a one-night stand with Miles; incidentally, things would come to a head between Caroline (often referred to merely as "Caro"!) and Byron at the Duke's party, where she attempts suicide!

Finch, an able orator in Parliament (a protégé of George Canning, played by John Mills, even if he stands on the opposite side in the House of Representatives), obviously suffers on account of his wife's indiscretions; indeed, he is asked to choose between her and his career by none other than King George IV (Ralph Richardson) – who had once been his own mother's (Margaret Leighton) lover! The elder woman had always resented Miles and, in fact, her coldness results in Caroline going mad at the end. Notable bit players here include Peter Bull, Pamela Brown and Michael Wilding; the production values were certainly the best that money could buy: the late cinematographer Oswald Morris, art director Carmen Dillon and composer Richard Rodney Bennett (who supplies the expected lush score).

Incidentally, this was award-winning playwright/scriptwriter Bolt's sole directorial foray – which he created and personally nurtured, so to speak, as a vehicle for his real-life wife Miles. A co-production between the U.K. and Italy, it incorporated an irrelevant and fairly embarrassing scene set in the latter country as Miles and Finch go on a trip and decide to take a nightly stroll in a former gladiatorial arena – which is soon infested with wretched souls clamouring for money and grub; what makes it so bad, however, is the fact that the extras were not locals since they speak in broken Italian (even rendering "impiccati" – meaning "hanged" – as "impiegati" – workers)! As I said, then, the print I watched – interrupted every once in a while by the wording "PLAY" and related video information – was not in the best of shape…but the film was nowhere near as unwatchable as I was led to believe; if anything, back in the day, it had managed to score BAFTA nominations for Richardson, Bennett and Dillon!