Books into films

Last term I joined a film club in my home town. The club is run by a retired professor of film history who wanted to share her knowledge and promote discussion about films. We meet at the local Neighbourhood Centre and make a small donation to the Centre. Our leader provides us with copies of the films so that we can watch them at home before we meet to discuss them. The films come from a man with a very large film library who copies the film for us onto CDs, purely for purposes of study. It's like a book club but with films, led by a person with special knowledge. It's a wonderful example of sharing and free access to knowledge.

So far we have looked at three films that have their origins in novels or stories. The Servant, a 1963 film directed by Joseph Losey, and starring Dirk Bogarde, was based on a story of the same name by the British writer, Robin Maugham. Babette's Feast (1987) came from a story by the Danish-born Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), and the Hitchcock film, Rebecca, is based on the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.

I read Rebecca prior to watching the film and that reading shaped my response to the film. I disliked the book intensely, was appalled especially by the treatment of female characters - clueless, nameless, female narrator; evil nymphomanic dead Rebecca; vampirish evil Mrs. Danvers etc. I could not see how such a lineup of hideous female characters and their vacuous male counterparts could possibly translate into a good film. While the film redeemed the book in many ways because of its sumptuous mise-en-scene in some sections, such as the encounters between Mrs. Danvers and the young Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca's hallowed bedroom, (with lesbian undertones), or Hitchcock's beautiful framing in many instances, it could not enhance or negate the reactionary sexual politics which tainted the whole conception of both film and book for me.

Each of the participants in the group reacted to the film, and some also to the book, in very different ways from enthralling to cliched, melodramatic, entertaining and disappointing. All these various reactions led to an interesting discussion, especially about whether one can judge the sexual politics of a previous era (Rebecca was made in Hollywood in 1941), and whether the film ought to be seen as a well-made melodrama. No conclusions were reached, but the threads of this discussion and others are bound to be taken up again as the group looks at other films and develops enough common language and experience to be able to cross-reference ideas.