JamesHitchcock

"Lord Jim", based upon a novel by Joseph Conrad, is set in South-East Asia during the late Victorian era. The title character, Jim, is a young officer in the British Merchant Navy. (He is not an aristocrat; his title of "Lord" is one he acquires later). He is regarded as a promising young man, and rises to the rank of First Officer, but destroys his career when, in a moment of weakness, he, along with the rest of the crew, abandons his leaky, unseaworthy ship during a storm and jumps into a lifeboat. Jim is branded a coward and banned from working as a seaman.

The rest of the film can be described as Jim's attempt to regain his self-respect and to redeem himself, in his own eyes if not in the eyes of society. This part of the story is complex, but it involves Jim accepting the task of delivering a cargo of weapons to the distant town of Patusan where a group of rebels are fighting a local warlord known as the General. Exactly where Patusan is supposed to be is never made clear; the country involved appears to be an amalgam of Thailand, Indonesian and Cambodia. The main characters from the area are played, however, by Japanese actors, although Jim's love-interest is played by the Israeli actress Daliah Lavi. The Production Code was still in force in 1965, and there seemed to be a rule, in any film destined for the American market, that relationships between white men and Asian women were OK, provided the woman was played by a white actress.

Jim helps the rebels to defeat the General's forces, following which they hail him as a hero and reward him with the title of "Tuan", or "Lord". There are, however, to be more trials in store for Jim when some of the General's associates raid the town hoping to steal treasure.

The traditional epic film generally dealt with stories from the Bible or from Classical antiquity. In the 1960s, however, there was a trend towards adapting the epic style to tell stories derived from more recent history or literature. The director most associated with this trend was David Lean in films like "Lawrence of Arabia", "Doctor Zhivago", "Ryan's Daughter" and, belatedly, "A Passage to India". ("Lawrence of Arabia" also starred Peter O'Toole, who plays Jim here). Other films in this style include "Khartoum"..........

It seemed to me that director Richard Brooks was trying to turn "Lord Jim" into an epic of this sort. I have never read Conrad's novel, so cannot say if it is a book suitable for the epic treatment, but from those of his works which I have read he does not strike me as a particularly "epic" author. (Something more intimate, like Carol Reed's version of "An Outcast of the Islands", seems more suited to his style). I can say, however, that this style does not work here. The first part of the film, dealing with Jim's early career, the fateful storm and the subsequent inquest at which Jim is disgraced, is not too bad and can hold the viewer's interest. Once the action moves to Patusan, however, the film starts to go downhill. The second part is overlong, sprawling, confusing and difficult to follow. Even the appearance of an actor as talented as James Mason can do little to rescue it. Mason received second billing behind O'Toole, but his is a relatively minor role, and he does not appear until near the end.

O'Toole himself has never been my favourite actor, striking me as all charisma and no substance, and this was not a performance I liked. On an intellectual level I could sympathise with Conrad's Jim, a gifted young man destroyed by a moment of madness. On an emotional level I could never empathise with O'Toole's Jim, who seemed little more than a hollow façade. I am not alone in my views of the film or of O'Toole's contribution; when it first came out in 1965 it was much hyped- in Britain it was given the honour of being selected for a Royal Film Performance- but it was a failure at the box office and was hated by the critics. Today it occasionally turns up on television, but is little known even among film buffs. One of those big films which has ended up with a small reputation. 4/10.

In 1971 BBC Scotland adapted for television "Sunset Song", the first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's trilogy "A Scots Quair". ("Quair" is a dialect word for "book"). At the time "Sunset song" was probably intended as a one-off project, but in the early eighties the BBC eventually filmed the two other parts, "Cloud Howe" and "Grey Granite".

All three parts of the trilogy are set in the north-east of Scotland and have as their main character a young woman, Christine "Chris" Guthrie, the daughter of farmer from the (fictional) rural village of Kinraddie, in Gibbon's native Kincardineshire. "Sunset Song" was set during the 1910s and deals with Chris's relationship with her overbearing, autocratic father, John, and her marriage to another farmer named named Ewan Tavendale, who dies in the First World War.

"Cloud Howe" is set during the 1920s. Chris is now married to married to Robert Colquohoun, an idealistic young clergyman in the Church of Scotland. Robert is originally the minister of Kinraddie church, but he later moves to the small industrial town of Segget, dominated by the jute industry. Scotland (in common with the whole of the United Kingdom, and most of Europe) is a very different place to what it was before the war. Robert hopes to inspire people with the love of God, but he finds that the Kirk no longer holds the dominant position in Scottish society that it once did. Church attendances have fallen, as people begin to question how God could have allowed the horrors of war. Chris herself, despite her marriage to a minister, is quite openly an unbeliever.

The other consequence of war is a growing radicalisation of society. Men who fought in the trenches hoping to come home to a "land fit for heroes" find their hopes disappointed in the depressed economic climate of the twenties, and begin to turn against the Establishment. (They may have been the prosperous "roaring twenties" in America, but less so in Britain). Many turn towards socialism, a few towards its bitter rival fascism, although the latter ideology had little mass appeal during the twenties. Like Gibbon himself, Robert has sympathies with the socialist cause, and makes his position clear, especially during the General Strike of 1926, something which does not endear him to many of his flock, especially the wealthier members.

Other significant characters include Chris and Robert's maid Else Queen, who becomes involved with the disreputable farmer Dalziel of Meiklebogs, and Stephen Mowat, the owner of one of Segget's jute mills. Although Mowat is ostensibly a pillar of society, he is in reality just as disreputable as Dalziel, a Fascist sympathiser who treats his workers harshly. He eventually disappears with the proceeds of a financial fraud; he represents Gibbon's critical view of the capitalist system. Although Mowat is Scottish, he was educated in England and affects what he believes is an upper-class English accent.

Gibbon's view of his fellow-countrymen, in fact, was often a negative one. Mowat is far from being the only unsympathetic character. The townspeople of Segget can be narrow-minded, censorious, hard-drinking and backbiting. They take a particular delight in spreading malicious gossip; when Else becomes pregnant, popular opinion holds (quite falsely) that Robert is the father of her child.

At first I did not enjoy "Cloud Howe" as much as its predecessor "Sunset Song", one of the BBC's most powerful dramas of the seventies. The first two episodes struck me as rather dull and slow-moving. The pace and power of the story began to improve, however, in the latter two episodes, with the ending being particularly gripping and moving. There is a fine performance from Vivien Heilbron as Chris, reprising the role she had played in "Sunset Song", and perhaps an even finer one from Hugh Fraser as Robert. (He reminded me strongly of a close friend of mine, another idealistic Christian socialist). I have also recorded "Grey Granite" and look forward to watching it. 8/10.