The Good Soldier | |
---|---|
Based on | The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford |
Screenplay by | Julian Mitchell |
Directed by | Kevin Billington |
Music by | John McCabe |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producer | Peter Eckersley |
Cinematography | Tony Pierce-Roberts |
Editor | Edward Mansell |
Running time | 105 minutes |
Production company | Granada Television |
Original release | |
Network | ITV |
Release | 15 April 1981 |
The Good Soldier is a 1981 British television drama film directed by Kevin Billington, starring Robin Ellis, Vickery Turner, Jeremy Brett and Susan Fleetwood. It tells the story of two couples that fall apart due to lies and infidelity. The film is based on the 1915 novel of the same name by Ford Madox Ford. It was produced by Granada Television. [1]
John and Florence Dowells, and the aristocratically English Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, met regularly and pleasantly in a small German spa town for nine years. Then, with shocking suddenness, the even, stable and civilized pattern of their lives are broken under the impact of a series of brutal events and dramatic revelations.
The Good Soldier premiered on British television in 1981. [1] It was broadcast on the American network PBS in 1983 as an episode of the series Masterpiece Theatre . [2]
In a contemporary review, the New York Times wrote the series was "adapted beautifully" and "it has been transposed to the television screen splendidly... This is a powerfully intelligent and insightful work." [3] In a 2015 review of the book, Kevin T. Di Camillo called the adaptation "pretty forgettable". [4]
“Hymn to Proserpine” is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in Poems and Ballads in 1866. The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone, but laments the rise of Christianity for displacing the pagan goddess and her pantheon.
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were important in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Peter Jeremy William Huggins, known professionally as Jeremy Brett, was an English actor. He played fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in four Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994 in all 41 episodes. His career spanned from stage, to television and film, to Shakespeare and musical theatre. He also played the smitten Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 Warner Bros. production of My Fair Lady.
Mystery! is a television anthology series produced by WGBH Boston for PBS in the United States.
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by the British writer Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I, and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham and his seemingly perfect marriage, along with that of his two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique that formed part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. Ford employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect, as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life, specifically “the agonies Ford went through with his wife and his mistress in the six preceding years."
Anthony Robin Ellis is a British actor and cookery book writer best known for his role as Captain Ross Poldark in the 29 episodes of the 1975 BBC classic series Poldark, adapted from a series of books by the British author Winston Graham. He also appeared in Fawlty Towers, Cluedo, The Good Soldier, Elizabeth R, The Moonstone, Bel Ami, Sense and Sensibility, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, She Loves Me and Blue Remembered Hills. In 2015–17 and 2019 he appeared in the Poldark series remake as Reverend Halse.
Isobel Violet Hunt was a British author and literary hostess. She wrote feminist novels. She founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League in 1908 and participated in the founding of International PEN.
Susan Maureen Fleetwood was a British stage, film, and television actress, who specialized in classical theatre. She received popular attention in the television series Chandler & Co and The Buddha of Suburbia.
Sherlock Holmes is the overall title given to the series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations produced by the British television company Granada Television between 24 April 1984 and 11 April 1994.
Kevin Billington was a British film director, who worked in the theatre, film and television from the 1960s.
Vickery Turner, born Christine Hazel Turner, was a British actress, playwright, author and theatre director.
Events from the year 1873 in the United Kingdom.
The Crucifer of Blood is a play by Paul Giovanni that is adapted from the Arthur Conan Doyle novel The Sign of the Four. It depicts the character Irene St. Claire hiring the detective Sherlock Holmes to investigate the travails that her father and his three compatriots suffered over a pact made over a cursed treasure chest in colonial India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
The Love School is a BBC television drama series originally broadcast in 1975 about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, written by John Hale, Ray Lawler, Robin Chapman and John Prebble. It was directed by Piers Haggard, John Glenister and Robert Knights. It was shown during January and February 1975. It includes six episodes, each episode is 75 minutes in length.
Leonora is a feminine given name which is a variation of Eleanor. It was relatively common in the 19th century in Western countries, ranking as the 314th most popular female given name in the United States in 1880. The name has declined in popularity but remains in use. Sixty-four newborn American girls were given the name in 2020.
The Newton Letter is a 1982 novella by John Banville. Drawing comparisons with Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier and John Hawkes's The Blood Oranges for their use of the unreliable narrator, The Newton Letter was described in The New York Times as Banville's "most impressive work to date". Colm Tóibín has stated that the book, among others by Banville, ought to have won the Booker Prize
The Crimson Field is a British period drama television series that was broadcast beginning on BBC One on 6 April 2014. The series shows the lives of medics and the patients at a fictional field hospital in France during the First World War.
Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill is a British television period serial made by Thames Television and broadcast in 1974. It stars Lee Remick in the title role of Jennie Jerome, who became Lady Randolph Churchill. The series covers the time period from 1873 to 1921. In the United States, the series was aired as part of PBS' Great Performances.