Far from the Madding Crowd **** (1967, Julie Christie, Peter Finch, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp) – Classic Movie Review 1,762

Director John Schlesinger’s beautifully produced 1967 British epic period drama film of the 1874 Thomas Hardy novel Far from the Madding Crowd is a gorgeous-looking and emotion packed intimate epic.

Julie Christie, Peter Finch, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, John Schlesinger, Nicolas Roeg and Frederic Raphael – British cinema truly had giants in the Sixties! It is supposed to be an icon of the Sixties British New Wave cinema, but this is the very kind of lumbering, backward looking epic that spelt the end of it.

It is bland and characterless heritage cinema that could be made in any era, not what you would hope for from the director of Billy Liar, Midnight Cowboy and Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Not that it is a bad film, it is just that there is no personal stamp here on Schlesinger’s direction. Anyone could have made it.

It centres on the beautiful, wayward, willful, flirty Wessex countryside sheep farm girl Bathsheba Everdine (Julie Christie), who unexpectedly inherits a large farm. Looking for a suitor among three very different men, the solipsistic Bathsheba causes profound chaos when she becomes romantically involved in the lives of poor, devoted sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), rich, 40something squire William Boldwood (Peter Finch) and the caddish, violent swordsman Sergeant Frank Troy (Terence Stamp).

Luckily Hardy provides plenty of interesting characters and incidents for screenwriter Frederic Raphael to fill out the nearly three-hour running time, in a film that stays faithful to the novel while tweaking it to keep up the high level of entertainment value. Though it is an excellent, handsome, romantic cast, only Finch really gets under the skin of his character and into the piece, and provides a truly special, haunting performance. Nevertheless, a perfectly cast Bates plays his role extremely well and iconic 60s beautiful people Christie and Stamp are ideal actors working at the top of their games.

Schlesinger’s direction is painstaking and careful, lacking urgency and dynamism, though that’s the nature of the piece and he does still manage to hold the attention throughout. Above all, however, Far from the Madding Crowd is a triumph for Nicolas Roeg’s dazzlingly imaginative 35mm blown up for 70mm widescreen cinematography on Dorset and Wiltshire locations, smeared with mud and sheep dung in a grimly realistic recreation of the early 19th-century Westcountry.

It is the kind of film you expect to have won Oscars, at the very least for Roeg’s cinematography, but did not win any, though Richard Rodney Bennett was nominated for his haunting Best Original Score. Even more surprisingly, it won no Baftas either, though it was nominated for Best British Cinematography (Colour) and Best British Costume (Colour) (Alan Barrett).

The budget was $3 million, 80 per cent from MGM and 20 per cent from Anglo-Amalgamated.

It performed fairly well in the UK but was a commercial failure in the US and Canada (taking $3.5 million). Poor reviews, especially in the US, translated overall into underwhelming box office. Stamp says: ‘I was rather shocked by the reaction. I thought it had everything.’ Stamp didn’t respect or like Schlesinger: ‘He didn’t strike me as a guy who was particularly interested in film. Plus I wasn’t his first choice: he really wanted Jon Voight. He wasn’t exactly hostile, but he really didn’t help me. I was working on my own, really.’

Stamp bonded with Roeg, in a friendship that led to them secretly filming extra footage, including the famous scene where Stamp waggles his sword to Christie’s squealing delight. “I’ll say this for Schlesinger, when he got in the cutting room and realised he had all this extra footage, he used it. He understood it then. But I didn’t have a lot of time for him.’

It was Schlesinger’s third film with Christie, so they probably got on a lot better.

The cinema release runs 170 minutes and the cut home viewing version only 157 minutes. Spruced-up and spring-cleaned, it is re-released in UK cinemas on March 13 2015.

Shot on 35mm film, it was blown up for 70mm giant screen exhibition at London’s Odeon, Marble Arch, where Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon attended its premiere on 16 October 1967, before transferring to the Metropole Cinema in Victoria for a five-month run. It US release was the following day, 17 October 1967.

There is also a 1998 TV movie version with Paloma Baeza, Nigel Terry and Nathaniel Parker, and 2015 brings a new cinema movie of Far from the Madding Crowd with Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba, Tom Sturridge, Michael Sheen, Matthias Schoenaerts and Juno Temple.

The cast are Julie Christie as Bathsheba Everdene, Terence Stamp as Frank Troy, Peter Finch as William Boldwood, Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak, Fiona Walker as Liddy, Prunella Ransome as Fanny Robin, Alison Leggatt as Mrs Hurst, Paul Dawkins as Henry Fray, Julian Somers as Jan Coggan, John Barrett as Joseph Poorgrass, Freddie Jones as Cainy Ball, Andrew Robertson as Andrew Randle, Brian Rawlinson as Matthew Moon, Denise Coffey as Soberness, Jonathan Newth as gentleman at cockfight, Peggy Ann Clifford as fat lady at circus, an Bryan Mosley as barker.

Far from the Madding Crowd is directed by John Schlesinger, runs 170 minutes, is made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Vic Films, is distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is written by Frederic Raphael, based on the novel by Thomas Hardy, is shot by Nicolas Roeg, is produced by Joseph Janni, and is scored by Richard Rodney Bennett.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,762

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John Richard Schlesinger (16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003).