The Bad Lord Byron

I'm only a little familiar with the life and work of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron who may today still be best known for his description as being "Mad, bad and dangerous to know". Certainly this post-Gainsborough production repeats the phrase often enough, including partly in the title of course. Quite what the celbrated poet and adventurer would have made of his life being condensed into a mere 83 minutes I'm not sure and while he knew a thing or two about unusual verse structure, I rather think, like me, he'd have been nonplussed if not downright confused at the way this movie attempts to encapsulate his tumultuous life.

We join the movie at the end of his relatively short life, fighting with the Greeks against Turkish oppression, having lately done something similar in Italy with the revolutionary resistance there, the Carbonari. Struck down however by illness, we find him on his death bed where he slips into a strange dream where he's put on celestial trial to decide whether he was a good or bad man, in the former guise a great poet and freedom fighter, in the latter a libertine spendthrift who picks up and drops usually titled wealthy young ladies at will, whether they be married or not. Now, I'm a dream sequence fan myself, but this one certainly isn't in the Powell and Pressburger class.

The simple answer to the big question is of course that he was both. Unfortunately the director here misses the point in pompously and disingenuously throwing the matter back in the viewer's lap in a rather silly and misjudged final scene.

Dennis Price is given the task of bringing the notorious Bard to life but fails to project the man's sexual magnetism which seduced so many beautiful women. There is however an interesting selection of contemporary actresses including Mai Zetterling and Joan Greenwood who get to play his conquests although some of these performances are somewhat uneven too.

On the plus side I did get to hear some fine lines of poetry which will probably prompt me to read some of the man's work but on the whole it seemed to me that this pedestrian and portentous movie did its subject a disservice in dulling if not dumbing down the exciting life led by this undoubtedly charismatic man.

Dennis Price doesn't actually look like he is having to do much acting as he portrays the bravely errant soldier-cum-poet in this drama. He is bedridden, seriously ill, and wondering how he might be looked upon by St. Peter as his day of reckoning looms. The film now sets out to show us a little of his reminiscences - his lives and loves, most notably with an on-form Mai Zetterling ("Teresa"), Sonia Holm as his long-suffering wife Annabella and, of course, Lady Caroline Lamb (Joan Greenwood). It takes the form of a trial - with people giving testament to his behaviour and character under the gaze of the sagely, if frequently quite bemused judge (Ronald Adam). Price plays well here, and his scenes with Greenwood remained me of their scenes together in "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (also made in 1949). Sadly, though it starts off quite entertainingly, it becomes very wordy and slow quite quickly and the last forty minutes or so dragged a bit, I thought. I like Price, he has something about him, but this all wears a bit too thin. Maybe his libertine, naughty, side fell foul of the censors, but what we have here is ultimately rather plain. Adequate, nothing more.

The eternal fate of Lord Byron is decided in this film which seems to give the verdict already in The Bad Lord Byron. Byron's story and fate is decided and we see it by pieces in true Citizen Kane tradition.

The film flopped horribly for J. Arthur Rank and no doubt sealed the fate of Dennis Price as a leading man which began so promisingly in Kind Hearts and Coronets. In fact Price plays Byron in much the same manner he played Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

The film opens at the very end of Byron's life where he's lying ill of a fatal fever during the Greek War of Independence where he had gone to serve. As he's in his last stages of delirium, a heavenly court is convened to decide his eternal fate.

Citizen Kane is not the only influence on The Bad Lord Byron, the whole concept of the heavenly court is taken from The Michael Powell film, A Matter of Life and Death where David Niven was having his fate decided before a much more majestic heavenly judge.

Yet I think The Bad Lord Byron could have used the touch of an Orson Welles. The whole thing is rather too pedestrian.

Dennis Price does OK with the material and direction he got. Mai Zetterling as the Italian countess who awoke Byron's political consciousness and Joan Greenwood as the infamous Lady Caroline Lamb stand out as well.

The real Lord Byron wasn't a patch on what Dennis Price gives us. He was all the things his life shows us, an adventurer, a politician, a poet of the first rank, a lover of freedom. He was also one of the most notorious rakes in history leaving a trail of broken female and male hearts throughout Europe. He might also have had an affair with his half sister.

So if you were on Lord Byron's eternal jury where would you put him?

Dennis Price had some difficult times himself for his sexual inclinations and should have been the right actor to put Lord Byron on screen, but he is not. He is too gentlemanly and undramatic. The demonic traits of Byron are missing entirely. Dennis Price is a perfectr actor in every way but not enough for Byron. Perhaps the script is more to blame, which is poorly written - there are so many vitally significant parts of Byron's life missing here entirely, for instance is there no word of Shelley throughout the film, which is a catastrophic blunder, since the friendship between those too greatest poets of their time perhaps was the most important and at least most dramatic and significant part of their lives.

Among the ladies, Joan Greenwood is the best, while Byron's sister and wife are lost in the balls and the intrigues. Mai Zetterling as the Countess Guiccioli also makes a rather insipid impression with no real passion but sentimentality. On the whole, the film is bogged down in mostly sentimental nonsense bereaving it of life, interest and any trace of drama, which is a pity, since so much could have been made out of Byron's highly dramatic life.

The film begins when he lies dying, and in his delirium he stands trial for his life concerning his regrets about his ladies. No verdict is pronounced, but the juury of the audience will get the message.

Sorry, it could have been better.

This Rank period drama directed by David MacDonald begins with George Byron on his deathbed, then taking us to a purgatorial courtroom where a faceless judge presides over his fate. Is he to be remembered by posterity as a poet and a liberator, or a seducer and libertine? Witnesses are brought to testify in flashbacks with prosecution clad in black and defence in white, with the set reminiscent of the stylised courtroom used in John Ford's Mary of Scotland. However the legitimacy of this treatment is undermined by the performance of Dennis Price as Byron. Price plays his womaniser like a vampirish Oscar Wilde, with an odd scene of him sharing a glass with the brother of a woman he is involved with, a mysogynistic conversation with a friend - "You're far too bright a flame to be extinguished by a woman's fan" - and a pop psychological explanation given about how his mother treated him miserably and he mistreats women as revenge. It's a pity that the only woman of the 4 associated with Byron presented here as an individual is the one the first to be disposed of. This kind of paper thin betrayal and the dialogue being a series of howlers - "She's purer than the driven snow", "Your British sense of fair play is implacable", "You can't keep an eagle in a cage" - makes the film unintentionally hilarious until tedium sets in. It's no coincidence that the testimony of the defence's witnesses reduce Price to dull sincerity. The society presented here is one which races to buy Byron's first collection of poetry which sells out the first morning it is on sale, then snubs him when his wife leaves him and he seeks overseas exile for a crime presumably on a par with Wilde. Price delivers a speech to the troops which is meant to be inspiring but we observe that it might be more effective if he could speak the troops' language or vice versa, and though Byron moans about his being lame we can't see how it has held him back any. As Lady Caroline Lamb, Joan Greenwood easily steals the movie. Her throaty voice makes her very likeable, and MacDonald gives her a good scene where she cuts her wrist to get Byron's attention, as well pulling the camera back slowly to frame she and Price in long shot for their first kiss.