Leave All Fair

Last updated

Leave All Fair
Directed by John Reid
Written byStanley Harper
Maurice Pons
Jean Betts
John Reid
Produced by John O'Shea
Starring John Gielgud
Jane Birkin
Cinematography Bernard Lutic
Edited byIan John
Music byStephen McCurdy
Production
company
Release date
  • 1985 (1985)
Running time
90 min.
Country New Zealand
LanguageEnglish

Leave All Fair is a 1985 New Zealand made film starring John Gielgud as John Middleton Murry the husband of Katherine Mansfield. [1] [2] He is presented as a sanctimonious exploiter of her memory, who ill-treated her during their association. Jane Birkin plays both Mansfield in flashbacks and the fictitious Marie Taylor who finds a letter from the dying Mansfield to Murry in his papers. [3]

Contents

The theme was developed by New Zealand director Stanley Harper, but he was fired two weeks before shooting, and John Reid took over the project, introducing the "ghost" element and the two time frames. [4] Shot in France at Moulin d'Ande and St Pierre du Vauvray with finance raised by Pacific Films, the film had to be finished before the 1984 cut-off date for New Zealand tax breaks. [2]

Plot

The film is set in France in 1956, 33 years after the death of Mansfield and a year before Murry’s own death. [5] Murry visits André de Sarry a (fictional) French publisher who is about to publish an edition of her collected letters and journals. Murry is presented as struggling with his conscience as he recalls the ill and alone Mansfield (seen in flashbacks), and decides to publish almost all of her work. [6]

de Sarry’s New Zealand partner Marie Taylor reads Mansfield’s work and among Middleton Murry’s papers finds a letter to him from the dying Mansfield. She confronts him as "another exploitative male" who makes a sanctimonious speech at the book launch. The letter from Mansfield says (rather ambiguously):

I should like him to publish as little as possible …He will understand that I desire to leave as few traces of my camping ground as possible .... All my manuscripts I leave entirely to you to do what you like with .... Please destroy all letters you do not wish to keep and all papers .... Have a clean sweep.... and leave all fair, will you. [7]

Cast

Film reception

Helen Martin says the film is "beautifully shot in the European tradition" and it was described at the London Film Festival[ by whom? ] as "arguably the best film to come out of New Zealand so far", but others[ who? ] criticised the portrayal of Middleton Murry as "simplifying the KM/Murry relationship into a cliché". [1] Variety said it was "an affecting experience". [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Birkin</span> British and French actress and singer (1946–2023)

Jane Mallory Birkin was a British and French actress and singer. She had a decade-long musical and romantic partnership with Serge Gainsbourg. She also had a prolific career as an actress, mostly in French cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Mansfield</span> New Zealand author (1888–1923)

Kathleen Mansfield Murry was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth von Arnim</span> Australian-born English writer, 1866–1941

Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist. Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley for only one novel, Christine, published in 1917.

<i>Women in Love</i> 1920 novel by D. H. Lawrence

Women in Love (1920) is a novel by English author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow (1915) and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula Brangwen and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The emotional relationships thus established are given further depth and tension by an intense psychological and physical attraction between Gerald and Rupert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Middleton Murry</span> English writer (1889–1957)

John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918 as her second husband, for his friendship with D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, and for his friendship with Frieda Lawrence. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.

<i>Priest of Love</i> 1981 British film by Christopher Miles

Priest of Love is a 1981 British biographical film about D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda played by Ian McKellen and Janet Suzman. It was a Stanley J. Seeger presentation, produced and directed by Christopher Miles and co-produced by Andrew Donally. The screenplay was by Alan Plater from the biography The Priest of Love by Harry T. Moore. The music score was by Francis James Brown and Stanley J. Seeger, credited jointly as "Joseph James".

"Je ne parle pas français" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. She began it at the end of January 1918, and finished it by February 10. It was first published by the Heron Press in early 1920, and an excised version was published in Bliss and Other Stories later that year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Mansfield House and Garden</span> Historic house in New Zealand

Katherine Mansfield House and Garden was the early childhood home of Katherine Mansfield, a prominent New Zealand author. The building, located in Thorndon, Wellington, is classified as a "Category I" historic place by Heritage New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Aloe</span> Novel by Katherine Mansfield

The Aloe is a novel written by Katherine Mansfield. A longer version of her short story "Prelude", it was edited and published posthumously by her husband John Middleton Murry in 1930.

Kathleen Jones is an English poet and biographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vincent O'Sullivan (New Zealand writer)</span> New Zealand writer and academic (1937–2024)

Sir Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan was a New Zealand poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, critic, editor, biographer, librettist, and academic. From 1988 to 2004 he was a professor of English literature at Victoria University of Wellington, and in 2013 he was appointed the New Zealand Poet Laureate.

"The Wind Blows" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in the magazine Signature as “Autumns: II” under the pseudonym Matilda Berry. It was published in revised form in the Athenaeum on 27 August 1920, and subsequently reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.

The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, formerly known as the New Zealand Post Katherine Mansfield Prize and the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, is one of New Zealand's foremost literary awards. Named after Katherine Mansfield, one of New Zealand's leading historical writers, the award gives winners funding towards transport to and accommodation in Menton, France, where Mansfield did some of her best-known and most significant writing.

<i>A Picture of Katherine Mansfield</i> British TV series or programme

A Picture of Katherine Mansfield is a 1973 BBC television drama series starring Vanessa Redgrave as writer Katherine Mansfield, Jeremy Brett as her second husband John Middleton Murry, and Annette Crosbie as her life-long friend Ida Baker, known as L.M. The series consists of six fifty-minute parts each including episodes of Mansfield's life interwoven with adaptations of her short stories, dramatized by English novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Robin Chapman (1933–2020).

Anne Estelle Rice (1877–1959) was an American artist who was one of the chief illustrators for the British periodical Rhythm, edited by John Middleton Murry and Michael Sadleir from 1911 to 1913. She established a close relationship with Katherine Mansfield, and famously painted her wearing red.

<i>The Doves Nest</i> Collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield,

The Doves' Nest and Other Stories is a 1923 collection of short stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield, published by her husband John Middleton Murry after her death.

<i>Something Childish</i> 1924 collection of short stories Katherine Mansfield

Something Childish and Other Stories is a 1924 collection of short stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in America as The Little Girl.

On the Rocks is a 2008 play written by Amy Rosenthal and directed by Clare Lizzimore about real events surrounding novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright D. H. Lawrence in the tiny village of Zennor in Cornwall in 1916 in the middle of World War I. It played at the Hampstead Theatre in London from 1 to 26 July 2008. It was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2009.

Margaret Allan Scott was a New Zealand writer, editor and librarian. After her husband's early death in 1960, she trained as a librarian, and was appointed as the first manuscripts librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library. She was the second recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1971.

Brian McNeill is a New Zealand playwright, actor and director.

References

  1. 1 2 Martin, Helen; Edwards, Sam (1997). "New Zealand film, 1912-1996". Trove . Auckland ; Melbourne ; Oxford :Oxford University Press. p. 116. Retrieved 24 January 2023. ISBN   0-19-558336-1
  2. 1 2 "Leave all Fair". British Film Institute. 1985. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
  3. Leave All Fair , retrieved 9 June 2020
  4. "Director Shifts During Filming". Variety . 3 September 1986. p. 82.
  5. "Leave All Fair". NZ On Screen . Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. 1985. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
  6. Leave All Fair (1985) - IMDb , retrieved 9 June 2020
  7. "Poetry Monthly – Kāpiti and Coast Independent" . Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  8. "Leave all Fair review". Variety . 22 May 1985. p. 29.