I was inspired by Sheila’s older post on the world tour music of her CD rack to flip through my own measly collection of films not bought or produced in America, where I live. Having relatives in both England and Russia, I learned some time ago that a multi-region DVD player is essential for the world traveler, as well as those interested in world movies who might, like me, live a very long way from a place that would show foreign films.
My in-laws keep me well-stocked with fantastic British television series, like Jeeves & Wooster and Barchester Towers . My Russian connections send me recent Russian blockbusters, as well as longer serial versions of classic books. My spouse, on his way back from business trips, usually picks up packs of cheap DVDs from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. The collections are eclectic — the last one included The Scarlet Pimpernel, Murder on the Orient Express, and a couple of Dutch cartoons that I haven’t yet deciphered.
I can’t say I avidly pursue foreign cinema, although I do like a great majority of movies produced in France, and my favorite movie of all time is Babettes gæstebud , or Babette’s Feast, based on the story written by Danish author Isak Dinesen (better known for Out of Africa, although I highly recommend her Seven Gothic Tales, as well). There is also Krzysztof Kieślowski’s very eerie collection of ten one-hour movies, The Decalogue , which take place in his native Warsaw and each of which is based on one of the ten commandments. (You might know him from the more widely-known French trilogy Blue, White, Red .)
As everyone knows, some of the very best and very worst movies are those adapted from great books. Among my Russian collection are BBC-like adaptations of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Tolstoy’s War and Peace, both very long with sometimes humorous subtitles. But I have to admit I’m much more inclined to watch The Turkish Gambit and The State Councilor , recent action/thriller movies based on the mystery novels of Boris Akunin , an author who exploded into Russia with Harry Potter-like popularity, and only about half of whose Erast Fandorin mysteries have yet been translated into English. The film version of Turkish Gambit was not, last time I checked, produced with subtitles, which is a pity as it’s one of the most vivid and, well, fun movies I’d seen in a long time when it came out in 2005.
This post was prompted, though, by a recent acquisition of a new production of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey . The UK’s ITV network this year decided to reproduce four of Austen’s novels, this one among them, and I have to say I was heartily both impressed and pleased.
ITV made the right choice in hiring Andrew Davies for the job, since he wrote the screenplays for both the BBC’s beloved Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth , as well as a fantastic production of Dickens’s Bleak House and, of course, Bridget Jones’s Diary . Davies has a knack for getting to the heart of the story. And, like writer/director Patricia Rozema’s 1999 Mansfield Park, this film drills past the assumptions that Jane Austen was a staid Victorian writer and reintroduces prejudiced viewers to one of the book’s unspoken but very present themes: sex. Sex, sex, sex. And flirtation. Which leads to sex.
The genius stroke in this case was in integrating Gothic novels , especially those of Ann Radcliffe , more fully into the story than they are even in the book. Austen’s contemporaries would have known exactly the stories she was satirizing in Northanger, but modern readers and viewers wouldn’t (unless, like me, you’re a big enough fan to have gone back and read them — I recommend it, highly entertaining). Davies brings stories like The Mysteries of Udolpho back into play, with all the implications for a young, innocent girl’s fantasies.
Purists might complain that the film simplifies some plot details, and overextends others, such as the sex theme, but to me it’s much more important that viewers understand the purpose and wit behind Austen’s work. I found it thoroughly enjoyable, and the acting was almost spot-on, with Felicity Jones (as main character Catherine Morland) reminiscent of Kate Beckinsale in Cold Comfort Farm , before she got all Hollywoodified.
You don’t have to be a snooty arthouse buff to like foreign movies. Just because a movie is produced somewhere other than Hollywood doesn’t mean it has to be less entertaining or less professional. You just have to keep a lookout for what’s going on, filmwise, in the country you’re visiting, and make friends (or, preferrably, marry someone) who will keep your supply of the fun, funky, witty, and enlightening coming.
