Daphne | |
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Based on |
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Screenplay by | Amy Jenkins |
Directed by | Clare Beavan |
Starring | |
Music by | Tom Smail |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producer | Kim Thomas |
Producer | Clare Beavan |
Cinematography | Christopher King |
Editor | Clive Mattock |
Running time | 90 minutes |
Production companies |
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Original release | |
Network | BBC Two |
Release | 12 May 2007 |
Daphne is a 2007 British biographical drama film written by Amy Jenkins and directed by Clare Beavan. The film is based on the authorised biography, Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster. It stars Geraldine Somerville, Elizabeth McGovern and Janet McTeer. It premiered on BBC Two on 12 May 2007. It was filmed on location in London, Devon and Cornwall, where du Maurier spent much of her life and most of her works are set.
The story begins in 1945, as Daphne is being sued by an author with the claim that she has plagiarised parts of her novel Rebecca. [1] So she boards a ship and while travelling to New York for an appearance at the trial, she meets Ellen Doubleday, who is incredibly glamorous and elegant, and Daphne is instantly smitten. A close friendship develops between the two women, and once Ellen realises that Daphne has feelings for her, she informs Daphne, that while she believes everyone has the right to love without censure, she cannot return those feelings as she is heterosexual.
Frustrated by the rejection, Daphne writes a play called September Tide , about a forbidden love between a young man and his mother-in-law. She sees the mother-in-law character as being based on Ellen. But when Gertrude Lawrence, a confident bisexual actress, who is friends with Noël Coward, is cast in the role of the mother-in-law, her feelings become confused. Daphne initially thinks Gertrude is brash and slutty, but as she is increasingly drawn to her charisma, they eventually have an affair. The rest of the film is taken up with Daphne's competing feelings for the two women. She pines over the unavailable Ellen, while being cruelly dismissive to Gertrude.
Amy Jenkins, who adapted the book to film, worked with both author Margaret Forster and the du Maurier family to help form the script. Jenkins said that du Maurier was "irreverent, reclusive, funny, and tortured during this period of her life". [2] BBC said the movie is focused on the period of du Maurier's life that followed the success of Rebecca and led up to the writing of her short story The Birds , later made into the classic film by Alfred Hitchcock. [2] [lower-alpha 1] Jenkins used private letters written between du Maurier and Ellen Doubleday, which showed an intense relationship between the two women. The letters were also instrumental in revealing how hard du Maurier tried to come to terms with her own sexual and emotional needs. [2] Ellen is the wife of her American publisher Nelson Doubleday. Jenkins said du Maurier's story is "both tragic and illuminating and you'll never read Rebecca in the same way again." [2] Executive producer Kim Thomas said it was amazing the way her personal life influenced her writing, she also echoed Jenkins thought and said, "once you know this story, it changes the way you read everything" du Maurier wrote. [2]
AfterEllen was disappointed in Geraldine Somerville's performance, calling it "rather limp", but praised Elizabeth McGovern as "radiantly beautiful and warm", and was also impressed with Janet McTeer, stating she "is instantly compelling and glamorous as Gertrude". They concluded the story is well-constructed, and "writer Amy Jenkins does a good job of winding Daphne's two loves together, showing the ways in which they affect and complement each other". [4] The UK Gay News called the film a "superbly-crafted drama...that reveals the untold story of this fascinating writer’s life...perhaps the best-known romance writer in the English language.". [5]
TV critic Rachel Cooke was forthright in her review for the New Statesman , calling the film a "disgrace". Cooke said the biopic focused on only one part of the writer's life – "her lesbianism". She also suggested that du Maurier "would have been horrified" at this depiction of her life, arguing that what the novelist "longed for, more than anything, was literary recognition". Cooke did have kind words for the actors though, saying "Geraldine Somerville...was exquisitely diffident...Elizabeth McGovern...was charming and delicate...and Janet McTeer...managed to pull off the great trick of being rapacious and breezy at the same time". [6]
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist.
Margaret Forster was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic, best known for the 1965 novel Georgy Girl, made into a successful film of the same name, which inspired a hit song by The Seekers. Other successes were a 2003 novel, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, biographies of Daphne du Maurier and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her memoirs Hidden Lives and Precious Lives.
Manderley is a fictional estate in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca, owned by the character Maxim de Winter.
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York.
Rebecca is a 1938 Gothic novel by the English author Daphne du Maurier. The novel depicts an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character.
Eileen Herlie was a Scottish-American actress.
Geraldine Margaret Agnew-Somerville is an Irish-British actress. She is known for her roles in the film Gosford Park (2001) and the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011). Her other roles have included Daphne (2007), My Week with Marilyn (2011) and Grace of Monaco (2014). In 1995, Somerville was nominated for a BAFTA Award for playing Jane Penhaligon in the television series Cracker.
Rebecca's Tale is a 2001 novel by British author Sally Beauman. The book is a sequel to the Daphne du Maurier novel Rebecca and is officially approved by the Du Maurier estate. It continues the original plot and is also roughly consistent with the 1993 sequel Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill.
Jamaica Inn is a 1939 British adventure thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted from Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel of the same name. It is the first of three of du Maurier's works that Hitchcock adapted. It stars Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara in her first major screen role. It is the last film Hitchcock made in the United Kingdom before he moved to the United States.
My Cousin Rachel is a Gothic novel written by English author Daphne du Maurier, published in 1951. Bearing thematic similarities to her earlier and more famous novel Rebecca, it is a mystery-romance, set primarily on a large estate in Cornwall.
Rebecca is a 1997 British-German television drama directed by Jim O'Brien. The teleplay by Arthur Hopcraft is based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The serial was filmed for Carlton Television by Portman Productions in association with WGBH and Tele München.
A Sucessora is a novel written by the Brazilian writer Carolina Nabuco. It was first published in 1934 and was later adapted into the 1978 telenovela A Sucessora.
The House on the Strand is a novel by Daphne du Maurier, first published in the UK in 1969 by Victor Gollancz, with a jacket illustration by her daughter, Flavia Tower. The US edition was published by Doubleday.
Barbara Mullen was an American-born actress well known in the United Kingdom for playing the part of Janet McPherson, the housekeeper in Dr. Finlay's Casebook. Although the role of Janet brought her fame in later years, she already had made her mark in the theatre.
The Loving Spirit was the first novel of Daphne du Maurier and was published in 1931 by William Heinemann. The book takes its name from a line in the poem "Self-Interrogation" by Emily Brontë.
The Birds and Other Stories is a collection of stories by the British author Daphne du Maurier. It was originally published by Gollancz in the United Kingdom in 1952 as The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories, and was re-issued by Penguin in 1963 under the current title. In the United States an expanded version was published in 1953 under the title Kiss Me Again, Stranger: A Collection of Eight Stories, Long and Short by Doubleday including two additional stories, "The Split Second" and "No Motive".
Angela Busson du Maurier was an English actress and novelist who also wrote two volumes of autobiography, It's Only the Sister (1951) and Old Maids Remember (1965). Her sister was the novelist Daphne du Maurier, and her grandfather was George du Maurier, a writer and cartoonist.
The Breaking Point is a collection of eight short stories by Daphne du Maurier first published in 1959 by Victor Gollancz in the UK and Doubleday in the US. It has also been published under the title The Blue Lenses and Other Stories. The stories were written at a time when du Maurier herself came close to a severe nervous breakdown and reflect her own psychological stress. Du Maurier herself acknowledged she had come close to madness immediately before she wrote them; and they were part of her cure – "the means by which she wrote herself back to sanity". The original book had illustrations before each story by Margot Tomes.
The Black Velvet Gown is a 1991 ITV television film, based on the 1984 novel by Catherine Cookson, and starring Janet McTeer, Geraldine Somerville, and Bob Peck. It won an International Emmy for Best Drama.
Mistress of Mellyn was the first Gothic romance novel written by Eleanor Hibbert under the pen name Victoria Holt.