Lady Chatterley's Lover [Blu-ray]

I own various film version of this D H Lawrence novel as well as the book. It's free to stream on Netflix but I wanted the video to see if there were any extras or deleted scenes, there are not. However one can turn sound to DTS format that improves it. The settings and costumes are superb and the acting is good, there is nudity and steamy sex but it is not exaggerated. The director is working with Richard Madden on this BBC adaptation of DH Lawrence's classic novel notoriously banned in Britain for many years. Very recently the same pair made Bodyguard, a BBC drama seen by millions. I have seen a few film adaptations of the novel and this is a good one; it compares well with Lady Chatterley with a young Sea Bean in the role of Mellors (the gamekeeper Lady Chatterley falls for). Sea Bean's earthy Yorkshire accent makes the role better to my ear although Richard Madden is not far behind. This is a good disc to keep when the film is no longer featured in Netflix.The novel is much raunchier than the screen adaptations, it is easy to understand why it was banned in pre 60's Britain for so many years.In today's freer society the book is probably soft porn but at the time it was written this was Edwardian Britain with very deep class divisions, for a Lady to fall in love with a working class gamekeeper was tantamount to social suicide.

Lawrence was an outlaw. Certainly this is true in a literary sense. No one wrote like him because they couldn’t. He was way, way ahead of his time, modern before modern existed. But he was also unconventional socially and culturally. He married an older woman (six years older) who had three young children. Or he married her after she divorced the husband she didn’t love. Plus she wasn’t English. She was the enemy — German. This happened in the tragic year of 1914.So Lawrence had a talent for making himself persona non grata. His books were banned and his paintings pilloried by critics. They hated him because they weren’t him. Envy was one of the Seven Deadly Sins and they were all sinners. He loved the green fields and forests of England, the running brooks and streams. But he didn’t like the English, or most of them. He couldn’t stick the narrowness of mind and provinciality of the place, its island mentality. He went into exile from his homeland as an outcast, preferring the wilds of New Mexico and later the vineyards of Italy and France. He was Continental in make-up, worldly in spirit. It had all been a big mistake for him to have been born in England.These things inform Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence’s rebuke of class, privilege, entitlement, arrogance and condescension. Conversely, the book celebrates nature, passion, love and freedom. Love cannot be owned and fenced in as land might be. It isn’t protected by boundary markers, threats and shot guns. Not at all. It’s an emotion given freely, wholeheartedly, or else it’s nothing at all, just rhetoric, an empty, hollow word.Constance Chatterley feels this, though not exactly at first. In the beginning she is dutiful and caring for Sir Clifford, her husband. Now it is 1920. He is paralysed, crippled by the ghastly, pointless, depressing war. He was an officer. He was dutiful too. But here is the result of this obligation to duty, his manhood stripped from him, his personal freedom and autonomy destroyed. Naturally, he’s bitter and hates his new existence. He’s debased and shamed by it. He despises what he has become, a dependent invalid. Connie loves him anyway, yet he feels he’s cheating her, robbing her of her youth and vitality, turning her into a nurse and caregiver instead of her being a wife and woman who can properly be physically loved. That’s the problem and it can’t be mended: he’s paralysed below the waist and can no longer make love. He’s emasculated, neutered, castrated, or so he feels, fairly or not. He’s a failure as a man. At first, coming home, the concept of war hero had some traction. He could feel some pride and value in it. But now as time passes and the war begins to fade from memory his crippled legs remain, a constant reminder of his impotence and uselessness. He feels it even if Connie doesn’t. She tries her best to cheer, support and encourage him. Yet some things are inevitable through the force of life. Or seem so. She’s young and attractive. She’s vital and has sexual needs, a longing for physical love. These needs were always there, even when she subconsciously suppressed or denied them.Mellors the gamekeeper is minding his own business. He’s a loner who doesn’t want trouble. Plus he knows the rules of the game. He’s working class, essentially a peasant, a man of the soil. Connie is gentry or nobility, the mistress of Wragby Hall, the large family estate of Sir Clifford. The classes do not mix socially. Nor erotically (at least not openly). Their love is taboo and both know it. They play a dangerous game. Why? Because of how humans are. They don’t like being lonely. They want to love and be loved. How can class have anything to do with these feelings? Class only does so within the narrow range of a certain mindset. At first Mellors has this narrow range of thought. He knows his place. But Connie in both senses does not, her thinking not narrow, her social position not fixed (in her own mind). She wants to be loved and comes to realize that its physical expression is just as important as its emotional one.What makes the story so interesting, enduring and honest are the two arcs of trajectory that meet. Mellors comes from a place of complete caution and wariness. He’s doubtful and careful. He eventually understands Connie’s feelings and knows what this means, or can mean. Actions have consequences. How can or will these be dealt with if the action ensues? Connie is lovely, beautiful, kind, feminine. These are her dangers for Mellors. For her he is his strong, able-bodied, independent, self-reliant, authentic. He plays no games. He’s simple but not simplistic. His simplicity is only something on the surface, whereas in fact he’s sensitive and Connie feels it. This forms his complexity. For all these reasons she finds him immensely attractive.If all this seems inevitable, the two of them destined to become lovers, in fact it never is. The first part of the story and film do not hint at it. Connie loves Clifford and never stops loving him in her way. Had he not been injured by the war it’s highly unlikely Mellors would have appeared in her life. Or, we can’t imagine it because there would have been no point to it. But Mellors does appear, filling a crucial void in Connie’s life. Only when the void is seen and understood by each of them do things seem inevitable. It’s why their love is so pure. It happened naturally, spontaneously, without premeditation. It was an honest thing. And above all Lawrence wants us to see and know this.When the book was banned in 1930 in England it affirmed the truth of what Lawrence always knew about the ruling class. The book was meant as a rebuke of their hypocrisy and so it proved to be. His novel in a moral sense was greater than England. He triumphed. It lost. Or so goes the verdict of history, as his view of life won out.The story of Connie, Clifford and Mellors is so well known that there’s no need to narrate any of the plot of this film here. The spirit of Lawrence is strong in it. However, it’s not my favourite version. To my taste Joely Richardson (Lady Chatterley, BBC, 1993) embodies Constance Chatterley. She was the right age then (about 26) and had the right look (beautiful but not overly glamorous). She satisfied my image of Connie. She also had her paradoxical character: shy, modest, vulnerable, open, eager, curious, hungry. Lovely in the role, she displayed the passionate nuances of Connie perfectly.A French film of the story was also made: Lady Chatterley (2007, directed by Pascale Ferran, French with English subtitles). It’s also excellent, especially the way in which the sensitivity of Mellors is revealed — beautifully understated. This production shows clearly how Connie could have fallen in love with Mellors. Highly recommended.As for this production (BBC, 2015) why be too critical? It’s not really in a league with these previous two productions. For starters, it’s short, just 90 mins., and feels rushed. The passion between Connie and Mellors develops too quickly. It feels forced because of time constraints. This affects the chemistry of the lovers, diluting it. We’re asked to believe they love each other instead of feeling it.Also, Holliday Grainger who plays Connie is no beauty. She’s rather plain, even in the fine, sumptuous clothes she wears. Jodie Comer, who plays the working-class servant Mrs. Bolton (and assistant to Sir Clifford), is far more beautiful. Thus a bad case of miscasting seems to have prevailed. In fact it’s a wonder in a way that Sir Clifford and Mrs. Bolton (a widow) don’t have an affair, even with Sir Clifford’s handicap. One scene in which she is washing him in the bath looks as though it could lead to some intimacy, but it does not.This production is also unusual by showing Sir Clifford whole, hale and hearty before the war. He’s strong, confident and stands on his own two legs. He even dances. Strange to even imagine him before the war because Lawrence never wrote about that. Sir Clifford is an invalid throughout the book, half a man psychologically, so we can only imagine Connie’s courtship with him instead of seeing it here in some time-wasting detail. Also, more time is wasted in the trenches on the Western Front. No point in being there because we know how Sir Clifford was injured and do not need to see it to understand its consequences.Why remake a classic? Because classics are challenging and new people like to try their hand at it. This production does not fail and is beautifully filmed, but it’s quite inferior to both the Ken Russell and French versions. Four stars may even be a bit generous. It’s not the fault of the actors. They do well. It’s the fault of the film’s structure and should have been better written.How would Lawrence have felt? Impossible question of course. But he was always on the side of emotional honesty. The worst for him was pretence, artifice, hypocrisy, insincerity. This runs through all his novels. The characters we love (like Connie) are honest. They do not deny themselves life through false values. Mellors is honest too, or comes to be this way through his love of Connie. In a way Connie redeems him, makes him a man through the power of her passion for him. They may be an unconventional couple, but they are real. Besides, Lawrence suggests, what has convention got to do with love?Bob Dylan said — or sang — that to live outside the law you must be honest. Lawrence was a shining example of the truth of that enigmatic insight.

Didn;t rate the actors

Good viewing

Shows how times have changed. What is acceptable in 2024.

Excellent, item as described

I liked this interpretation of the book. I had recently watched the 1993 version and it is curious that Lady Chatterley is different, but convincing, in both. I found Joelly Richardson's version more likeable, but Clifford is so loathsome in the BBC version that you wonder why on earth she married him in the first place. This Clifford is flawed man of his time, deeply wounded in every way by the war, and manipulative, but he evokes much sympathy; this makes the film challenging. Madden gives a restrained, subtle interpretation of Mellors which communicates well his fury about class oppression and about war. In all three cases you feel that there is much more that you don't know about the characters. While the 1993 film explores the way Connie and Mellors grow through sex, and is much more explicit, I don't think it was necessary in this film - it could have taken over the film. - I did miss Mrs Bolton though. In the 1993 film she was riveting, ambiguous... the little extortionist in this version left me cold. I also thought the butler was interesting - he did not say much but knew what was happening and communicated a great deal in tone and in small expressions. So: two different versions, and on the whole I prefer the BBC miniseries (because it was longer, it could explore so much more) but liked this one.I wonder if someone could tell me whether in the book(s) Mellors was afraid of reprisals from fellow villagers? if so, of course, the scene at the fair was a bit daft even if it served a purpose in the film.

I think I've watched it 3 to 4 times and it is because it is a good programme and not because Richard Madden is insanely hot.

Came in good condition, earlier than anticipated.

Penso che il film sia bello ma è tutto in inglese nemmeno i sottotitoli in italiano.Avendo un inglese scolastico capisco poco dovreste togliere sul sito che è anche in italiano.

La película viene en inglés.No se especificaba convenientemente.

Très belle histoire d'amour, superbement interprétée par Richard Madden, James Morton and Holliday Grainber.Toutefois, j'ai trouvé ce filmé un peu court (90 mn). C'est une version très soft que j'ai beaucoup appréciée.

Ein wundervoller Film,voll Zauber und wunderschöner Musik.Die beiden Hauptdarsteller harmonieren ganz fantastisch.Unbedingt ansehen .Eben typisch BBC.Wieder eine durch und durch gelungene Verfilmung eines Klassikers.