VHS : Far From The Madding Crowd [1967]

Rating: - Well acted and faithful to the text
One of Thomas Hardy's best-loved novels is sensitively and accurately dramatised in this 1967 classic.

Upon inheriting her uncle's farm, the beautiful and assertive Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) is the most sought after maiden in the whole of Weatherbury. She's forced to choose between the affections of three very different men; local shepherd Gabriel Oak, gentleman farmer Mr. Boldwood and the womanising Sargeant Frank Troy. Here, Hardy's classic tale of love, betrayal and tragedy is faithfully dramatised. Personally though, I think the 1998 Paloma Baeza version is even better!

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Rating: - Far From The Madding High Quality We're Used To...
It bemuses me to read some of the opinions expressed on here from those who are willing (inexplixably) to ignore or overlook the poor transfer of this fim onto VHS and DVD.
Far From The Madding Crowd was an event when originally released in 1967.
We sat back in our theatre seats and watched an epic on widescreen that was both enchanting and mesmerising. Julie Christie was a major star back then and dominated the screen with her portrayal of the headstrong Bathsheba.
Peter Finch,one of finest character actors ever - played the obsessed wealthy landowner Boldrewood, Alan Bates playing the romantic lead Gabriel,in another rivetting, earthy performance, and Terrence Stamp as soldier Frank Troy also turned in a fine performance. .
Prunella Ransome was unforgetable as Fanny Robin, the woman doomed to die
in child birth. This role should have been the one to catapult her career to many leading roles, but puzzlingly, it didn't,although she did have a major role in televisions "A Horseman Riding By," some years later.
John Schlesinger was a great director who previously to directing Madding Crowd,had directed Julie Christie in Darling and Bates in Stan Barstows A Kind of Loving.
He followed on afterwards with Midnight Cowboy, and then again with Finch in the immortal Sunday,Bloody Sunday,co-starring Glenda Jackson.
Studio butchers removed 10 minutes from the finished film length of 165 minutes of "Far From the Madding Crowd," without any thought for story line continuity whatsoever.
The film quality itself cries out for a company like Criterion to get on board, restore it to its original beauty and picture quality and return the 10 minutes of film,cut from the original.
I have emailed Criterion in the past about Far From The Madding Crowd, and any like minded soul reading this should do the same - approach them or the film company to restore the picture and re-release it to us the put upon public in all its original splendour.

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Rating: - Forty years on ...
The last thing I want to get into is a discussion of the technical elements of film-making here. For the time being, this is the DVD we have, even if the transfer could be better and a couple of small cuts could be opened - and it's much better than nothing.

First of all: I last saw this film when it appeared in 1967, I was a student, and I had just discovered Hardy a year or so previously. Memory can only last so long, so that the re-visit yesterday was as if it was a new experience. The film has worn very well; I wasn't disappointed.

The Frederic Raphael screenplay - a masterpiece of its kind - is remarkably faithful to the novel in a number of very pleasing ways. Hardy tied this book, perhaps more so than his others, to the cycle of the seasons; the weather and the landscape have the two lead roles, and acquit them very well. The two most memorable scenes of the film involve Alan Bates in a supporting role, as it were - Oak piercing the sick sheep's hides to let the air out of them, and the covering of the ricks before the storm. What's elemental dominates.

There's some superb acting here. The only real problem is that the main characters are perhaps too well-spoken - Boldwood's standard English fits, and Serjeant Troy (a brilliant performance from Terence Stamp, possibly his best) still has his Irish lilt, but surely both Oak and Bathsheba would have spoken with Dorset accents. Both Julie Christie and Alan Bates can "do" accents. Why not here? But, all said and done, FIVE wonderful performances - yes, Christie, Stamp, Bates, and Peter Finch all included. The fifth, probably the most magnetic of all, is Prunella Ransome's Fanny Robin; when she's on screen, you see no-one else, and full justice is done to this most pitiable of Hardy's characters. Ransome makes the beautiful servant-girl into a true plaything of Fate, in the best Hardy tradition.

My two bits of nit-picking both end up in the cinematographer's lap. We associate Nicolas Roeg with the wonderful camera work of his early films - "Walkabout", "Don't Look Now", and even the otherwise awful "Bad Timing" - but his hand has never been more visible, more a force toward good, than in "Far from the Madding Crowd." One fault is really Hardy's for going in for too much melodrama to provide a deus ex machina at the end, and the mistake Roeg makes is to dwell too much on the gore; but the other is all his fault. Troy's demonstration of swordplay to Bathsheba is probably the most erotic scene in all of English literature the way Hardy wrote it, and the film makes it - suitably martial, but otherwise antiseptic.

These are small quibbles. We have a masterpiece before us here; let's recognize it as such.

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Rating: - Beautful, evocative filmaking..
A beautifully crafted film from a period before cinema's descent into multi-platform merchandising, brand based promotion, demographic manipulation and ruthless commercial cynicism.
This is a work that actually elicits emotional understanding, sympathy and compassion in the audience.
In style it's both poetic and realist; a homage to a long gone rural world that avoids both sentimentality and cliche.

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Rating: - Nearly 40 Years Ago So What
The reviewer who is indifferent to the picture and sound quality on this DVD is somewhat misguided. Studios that have worked on films like Spartacus, Ben Hur, My Fair Lady have received critical and public acclaim alike for the restoration work and some of those films are 50 years and over. This was a beautifully made and photographed film in 1967 and deserves considerably better than this traversty of a transfer from a dodgy old print. Some of us won't stop prattling on until good films are restored to the quality they were when originally released and this is one of them.