Anon-code: 58238
Word-count: 1,498
This is essay is based on my presentation on the 14th of March.

From the Critical Fiction to the Critical Film

John Fowles’s narration, opinions and authorial dilemmas have a great impact on the reader’s interpretation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969). It is the combination of these features that make the novel a ‘critical fiction’. Karel Reisz, the director, and Harold Pinter, the screenplay writer, collaborated to turn Fowles’s novel into a film in 1981. What I hope to establish is how Reisz and Pinter transposed these multitasking efforts of the narrator and author of the novel, onto the screen, and if it has the same impact on the audience as the novel did on its readers. The film’s self-reflexive stance is symbolised in the opening shot of Sarah/Anna’s face in a compact mirror. As the film that we are watching starts, so does the film that Anna and Mike are making. After the director shouts “action”[1], the title sequences start to roll on screen and the soundtrack begins. We hear “track”[2] and the camera that the audience is looking through tracks Sarah. By allegedly letting the audience see ‘behind the scenes’, and the actors’ relationship, the film keeps us at a distance from Charles and Sarah by reminding us that the story is imaginary. This could be likened to how Fowles steps out of the role of narrator within the text, to show that the author and the narrator are indistinguishable. In reference to Sarah, Fowles writes, “Certainly I intended at this stage (Chap. Thirteen – unfolding of Sarah’s true state of mind) to tell all.”[3] In this way Fowles reminds us that he is telling us a story that exists only in his mind. We are effectively seeing ‘behind the scenes’ of the novel, in the respect that we witness Fowles’s intentions for the novel, or at least what Fowles wants us to believe to be his intentions. The novel blends postmodern techniques, such as this and the choice of ending, with traditional literary techniques, such as chapters and epigraphs. The film’s traditional techniques can be uses in the use of master shots – a classic Hollywood style. However, Reisz’s dilemma was due to the fact that, “Classic narrative cinema, no matter what genre, must have closure”[4]. Ambiguity within the novel is not resolved. Fowles makes the reader aware that he does not want to influence the choice of ending, “The only way I can take no part in the fight is to show two versions of it”[5]. The two endings of the film are successful in the audiences’ minds because we have accepted that there has been two love stories existing coherently through out the film, where as in the novel there is one story, so we only expect and require one ending. However, has the film, in this sense, conformed to the conventions of classic narrative cinema? The two couples’ fate is not left open to interpretation as the novel’s couple is. Just as Fowles creates no illusion about his roles as both author and narrator, he makes no attempt to disguise the fact that he is writing from a modern perspective. He compares the two periods, “clothes style-quite as sharp as a ‘mod’ of the 1960s”[6]. Anna and Mike’s scenes function in the same respect, as they insinuate the comparison of the time periods. Fowles lightly mocks the Victorian’s standards of morality, “How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?”[7] In the film, Anna and Mike do the mocking, as well as highlighting the sexual liberation of modern times. In the scene with Anna and Mike in bed together Anna says, “They’ll fire me for immorality”[8]. The contrast is made further poignant by placing this scene directly after Charles’s proposal to Ernistina, in which the thought of a kiss is so overwhelming that a hug suffices their passions more adequately. As well as mocking the Victorians Fowles gives information on Victorian culture in the epigraphs and narration, “where one in sixty houses in London was a brothel”[9]. Anna says this to Mike and shows her contempt for the statistics – the modern liberated woman is revealed in this scene along side an immature Charles who calculates these statistics to determine how much sex the average Victorian gentleman could have had. This scene shows Anna’s growing empathy with Sarah, which leads to the ultimate identification with the character, when at the end of the movie, Mike screams out “Sarah!”[10] as opposed to Anna. In the text Sarah’s identity as an outcast of Lyme, and of the Victorian Period, is evident in her unconventional attitude, “I have a freedom they cannot understand”[11]. Charles and Sarah repeatedly meet outside. Perhaps the novel and film are implying that it is only in nature that the characters can interact freely. Their meetings outside are contrasted with the rules of Victorian society that are subjected on them when they sit in the parlour with Mrs. Poulteney. This scene, in the film shows how out of place Sarah and Charles are – Sarah with her secret behaviour, when she passes Charles the note, and Charles with his unconventional point of view regarding Mary and Sam. The film goes a step further to show their comfort on the undercliff. In the first scene where Charles meets Sarah at the undercliff, Sarah is lying at the bottom of the tree. Her dress matches the bark, so she appears as an extension to nature. Identifying the characters with nature, a feature of the world that stays the same no matter what century, juxtaposes the social rules of the parlour, and identifies the characters as belonging somewhere outside of the Victorian age. In the novel, the only clue we are given that Sarah could be lying about her sexual encounter with the lieutenant, is Fowles’s narration about cases where women have done cruel things for no reason. The clue is translated into the film in a different way. In the scene where Sarah tells her tale of the lieutenant, Mike cradles his arm, as if wounded – alluding to how she will eventually hurt him by breaking his heart – as apposed to Sarah’s heart that should be broken, if her tale was true. In contrast to Charles, Sarah talks confidently with her head held high. She swings her body round a tree trunk, a clue to how she is playing with him. The narrator’s mandatory role is to give the reader further insight. This is achieved on film through, “not only camera but speech, gesture, written language, music, colour, optical processes, lighting, costume, even offscreen space and offscreen sound”[12]. How has this been executed? One example from the text, where Fowles’s narration adds extensively to the drama, is in Sarah and Charles’s sexual encounter, “a lust a thousand times greater than anything he had felt in the prostitute’s room”[13]. This description helps the reader acknowledge the extent to which Charles’s feelings have been suppressed before this moment, and the enormity of the social taboo he is about to commit. Reisz has emulated this through camera. The camera is hesitant before following Charles into the bedroom and once in the bedroom the camera appears handheld for the first time in the film. This implies anxiousness. The unconventional features that Fowles brought to The French Lieutenant’s Woman add to the enjoyment of the novel. Therefore, it was necessary for Reisz to compensate for these features in the film adaptation if he wanted to have the same success. The film’s self reflexivity achieves many of the aspects that Fowles, as a narrator and author, accomplishes. We see the making of the film, within the film, and the making of the novel, within the novel. Both of these techniques have the same effect on the reader and viewer – they distance them from the story, reminding them that the stories are fictional. The narrator’s functions of comparing time periods and giving historical information are achieved by Anna and Mike in the film. The novel’s narrator has the task of providing additional information to enhance a reader’s understanding and give clues about future plot developments. Reisz does this in his direction and use of camera techniques. Themes read into the novel can also be easily read into the film. The theory of Sarah being a modern woman in a Victorian world is supported by Anna’s identification with the character and the director’s choice of costume and camera shots. On the other hand, although the film provides two endings to the lovers’ relationships, Reisz has given conclusive endings. The novel does not do this and it is an important feature because of it’s associations with postmodernism. However, the films audience does leave the film with both a happy ending and a sad one, like the novel. Overall Reisz and Pinter have successfully adapted the unique features of Fowles’s novel for the screen and provided their audience with the same impact as the novel gave its readers.
-----------------------
[1] Karel Reisz, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, (Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Europe, 1981)
[2] Karel Reisz, The French Lieutenant’s Woman,
[3] John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, (Vintage, 2004) p. 97.
[4] Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts 2nd edition, (Routledge, 2004) p 65.
[5] John Fowles, p. 390.
[6] John Fowles, p. 47.
[7] John Fowles, p. 85.
[8] Karel Reisz,
[9] John Fowles, p. 258.
[10] Karel Reisz,
[11] John Fowles, p. 171.
[12] Brian McFarlane, Novel to Film, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996) p 17.
[13] John Fowles, p. 334.