Escândalo de Amor

I remember this movie very well from 23 years ago. It came out at the same time as did REDS, which is coming out in DVD soon. Why not Priest of Love? The film details D.H. Lawrence's stand against World War I, his stormy relationship with his wife Frieda, his conflict with the authorities, his bisexual leanings. Ian McKellan is excellent, as is his co-star, Janet Suzman, as Frieda. In many ways, D.H. Lawrence was a powerful forerunner of that great prodigal student of Freud, Wilhelm Reich, with his writings on human sexuality and its fundamental importance to our psychology. This is truly a great movie, well photographed, from what I remember, dealing with still controversial, relevant topics for today.

Looks at the later part of DH Lawrence's life with his beloved wife Frieda and their frequent movement from one country to another against a background of controversy and book banning / burning back in his native country.

The lead performances are believable and interesting and the second half is more accessible and enlightening than the first as you get closer to the couple's lives and Lawrence's vigorous self belief. The first half though is played out too fast, moving very quickly across the globe with the man having hissy fits with little explanation. Nice support from Penelope Keith.

Probably needs watching more than once.

"Priest of Love" is a biopic about author D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda. It follows them from World War I to his death in 1930.

"Priest of Love" is a rather superficial and dull biography. While D. H. Lawrence's work was very controversial in its day and resulted in some well publicized book burnings and his personal life was weird (to say the least), this film never piqued my interest. Perhaps it was the flat performances by the leads or the script. Perhaps it was because Lawrence wasn't a man whose life I would want to emulate. However, I think the main problem is that the life of Lawrence would best be summed up in a mini-series and condensing about twenty years of his life into a film is a tall order. So, because so much time passes, it comes off more like a Cliff Notes version of his exploits. My recommendation is that you instead read up on Lawrence and his life...you'll learn more and it won't be so dreadfully lifeless as this movie.

I've seen many films of D. H. Lawrence's works including "Sons and Lovers," "Women in Love," "The Virgin and the Gypsy," "The Rainbow" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and enjoyed all of them. I was surprised and disappointed by this one.

Christopher Miles did a wonderful adaptation of "The Virgin and the Gypsy" 10 years before he made this film. He certainly is a scholar of Lawrence and a talented filmmaker, so why was this film so charmless and seem so shallow.

I will give a couple of reasons: First, I saw the 99 minute recut of the film. I imagine/hope that the apparently lost original 125 minutes was less choppy and jumpy.

Second, Ian McKellan was a terrible choice for the lead. He simply was too much of a stage actor at this point of his career and he plays most scenes for the the benefit of the baloney.

Third, the beginning shows Lawrence having a nude swim with a homosexual lover. The rest of the movie is about his love affair with his German wife. It is just confusing and undercuts the rest of the movie as we expect him to run off and leave his wife for a man at some point.

Fourth, the movie portrays Lawrence as a one dimensional lone victim of censorship, surely there were other writers being censored at the time and many powerful people supporting his rights to freedom of speech. Making the censor a buffoon (played dully by John Gielgud) doesn't help, but seems to trivialize the issue.

Fifth, Miles may have been to close to the material. He wants to give us a lot of factual information about Lawrence, but the history lesson feels like a history lesson, and there is little dramatic tension. Janet Suzman as Frieda Lawrence seems to carry the weight of whatever dramatic tension there is.

The movie does have nice cinematography. However all the movies adapted from Lawrence's work also have great cinematography and much better characters and stories.

First things first: I lived and worked in Eastwood, (D H Lawrence's home town) for ten years. I still pass through the area regularly as my wife's family live there. I always found it interesting that D H Lawrences best work is located in that mining (now ex-mining of course) area between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. This film concentrates on D H Lawrence's life after he left the area.

The film is just a bog standard biopic done from the write by numbers playbook. It hardly ever come close to the real D H Lawrence. The facts and events are there, all the wandering around the world etc, but you only have to read Lawrence's collected letters to know that the picture given here is rather superficial It isn't helped by some amateur dramatics style acting, particularly from a way below par Ian McKellen and Janet Suzman. A pet hate of mine is the lazy generic Northern accent adopted by most actors doing D H Lawrence. Ian McKellen made him sound as though he was brought up in Yorkshire rather than Notts. Admittedly the Nottingham/Derbyshire accent is hard to do. Robert Lindsey does it well, but then he comes from Ilkeston.

The other thing missing in this film is a sense of D H Lawrence's wit and humour, which can be seen very well in his letters, short stories and some of his poems. I also didn't like the way the script writer (Alan Plater in his soap writing mood) somewhat lazily bought into the feminist critique of the 1980s. D H Lawrence, who wrote very sensitively on women's issues, is made to seem as though he was a male chauvinist. Again, a more careful reading of his works would have shown this to be untrue.

So, overall, a pleasant enough journey round the world with some nice scenery and some good support actors. As another reviewer has pointed out, a bit like a dramatisation of an encyclopedia entry.