Amants et fils

This is perhaps Jack Cardiff's best known film as a director, and it is certainly not a letdown. 'Sons and Lovers' was DH Lawrence's most autobiographical novel, and here, although some aspects have been shorn down or removed, the substance of that novel comes through.

In the main roles we have US actor Dean Stockwell as Paul Morel, the son who is suffocated by his overbearing mother, and derided by his miner father. His parents are played by Wendy Hiller and Trevor Howard, and they are brilliant in difficult roles. Stockwell, less so, although he certainly looks the part.

The women in Paul's life are played by Heather Sears - another annoying part as Miriam which reminds me of her 'Room at the Top' performance a few years earlier - and Mary Ure, who is a little bland but watchable as Clara. Somehow Ure never really found her niche on the screen.

The film looks sumptuous and the black and white photography is exactly right. There are moving scenes and moments of comedy, plus a wicked cameo appearance by Ernest Thiesinger as an art collector.

This film is much less known than more showy Lawrence adaptations such as 'Women in Love', but it is excellent, well-paced, and is far from a disappointment.

Two mothers in this story control the destiny of their children and not in good ways. Believable performances across the board. Dean Stockwell seems to have acquired his "English accent" from Roddy McDowell but it only slips a few times.

Highlights of casting: the penultimate appearance of DR. Pretorius (Ernest Thesinger) and an early, all too brief, Donald Pleasance with an amazing combover.

Not a "fun" movie but enjoyable.

Freddie Francis's cinematography is in some ways the star. It is not showy or intrusive. It's totally organic to the unfolding of the plot. Yet it is exquisite -- both with landscapes and with actors. This is especially true with Trevor Howard, very powerful as a boozy miner.

The other star is that great actress Wendy Hiller. Her role is far from entirely sympathetic. She suffocates her favorite son, well played by Dean Stockwell. She is demanding in a quiet way and selfish in a manner passing itself off as martyrdom. But what a gorgeous performance! Mary Ure was a fine actress. Somehow, though, the character she plays doesn't entirely work in my view. It seems more from kitchen-sink realism, like the Shelagh Delaney plays that were filmed around this time. (And where have they gone? Why don't we ever see "A Taste of Honey" or "The Leather Boys" anymore?) Heather Sears is good but I have to admit, to my embarrassment, I found it hard to shake her excellent performance in the tile role of "The Story of Esther Costello" from my mind. Her being a bright young woman taken with Stockwell, therefore, startled me throughout. That is my own failing and surely not hers.

This is a superb movie. All of it is good. But for me, the scenes involving Hiller are the most compelling. Howard, too, is superb. And Stockwell as Paul. The family story is heart-wrenching.

In this fine adaptation of the Lawrence novel, the son of a coal-mining family aspires to become an artist. The only American in a British cast, not only does Stockwell flawlessly adopt an English accent, but he also turns in an excellent performance. This is certainly one of the high points of a career that has spanned a remarkable eight decades from the 1940s to the 2010s. Howard and Hiller play his parents and the latter is particularly good. Supplying the love interest are Ure and Sears, two actresses who both died too soon. After a long, distinguished career as a cinematographer, Cardiff scored his first directorial success with this drama.

Sons and Lovers (1960)

D. H. Lawrence is at an all time low in popularity--both his books and the movies based on them. Why? Good question. It's more than just passing tastes. I think it has to do with the precious boundary breaking that once made Lawrence a daring darling of the literary set. Sexual taboos have since been so radically eclipsed, from Henry Miller to John Updike, not to mention hundreds of less mainstream authors, Lawrence is almost stuffy and pretentious.

Or so it would seem. "Sons and Lovers" is a love story set in a tough mining town in England early in the 20th Century. It's filled with the longing of a man to rise out of these pits and be "something" in the world--namely, a successful painter. The girl who loves him is overly devoted, and after a tryst (that was the radical part) there is a falling apart of things. How true this can be! I mean, this is great stuff--a sensitive story about the feelings most of us have had, where desire is mistaken for something deeper, where the world is calling and love, or shades of love, are not enough to keep you home.

The filming is straight out of the gritty, short period of British films known rough as the British New Wave or the Angry Young Men (or both). These films, a grown out of French New Wave and early Italian neo-realism, were a reaction against the slick and vacuous big studio filmmaking (Hollywood especially) from this period. There are more typical films from this group than "Sons and Lovers" but it's certainly part of that mood, looking at working class life, filming with great economy and directness, and using actors in a realistic, vaguely documentary way. For insight into this kind of film, try "Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner" or "Look Back in Anger." Even the first Beatles film, oddly enough, is influenced by this movement ("A Hard Day's Night"), in the raw, fast, black and white style.

But if that's the context, you still have to ask if this film is any good. And the answer is quite. It's a big movie, a deep movie, emotional and deeply serious. It is sad, too, overall, or perhaps melancholy is a better word, and this gloom is slightly wearing after a bit. Some people will find that talking about love is a peculiarly British and indirect way of being in love--the literary overwhelms the truth.

Director Jack Cardiff is a cinematographer above all. This might explain the visual emphasis, the sublime, restrained photography. Lead young actor Dean Stockwell is a perfect visual cast, and he really is good, somehow, in a way that is convincing, though he isn't always commanding. A small part of me didn't care what happened to anyone in the movie. It was all plain to see, and I knew what I was supposed to feel, but I didn't always get the force of those feelings.

The movie, like the book, is patient and deliberate, and quite nuanced and beautiful.