Highlights Archives
Classic Book & Movie Club — "Mrs. Dalloway"
The 1997 movie version of British writer Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel "Mrs. Dalloway" will be presented in a free public screening at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 9, in the auditorium of the Historical Society's headquarters building at 816 State Street in Madison. Woolf's novel tells the interwined stories of two very different people on a single day in London around 1920. Clarissa Dalloway is a middle-aged, affluent hostess preparing to stage a lavish party when the unexpected appearance of an old flame prompts recollections of her youth and doubts about her marriage. She travels around the city preparing for her party and reflecting on the way her life has unfolded.
Septimus Warren Smith, on the other hand, is a shell-shocked British soldier pushed to the edge of insanity by what we would today call post-traumatic stress disorder. With his refugee wife, he wanders around the city aimlessly, alternately possessed by fear, horror and confusion (states of mind which Woolf knew all too well from her own psychotic episodes). Clarissa and Septimus walk on the same streets, see the same sights, and hear the same clocks tolling, but they live in entirely separate worlds — until the very end, when their lives tragically collide.
Woolf wove this tapestry of sensations, memories, hallucinations, and interior monologues through her trademark "stream-of-consciousness" prose. Translating that method into a visual medium gives the film a subtlety, richness and emotional power very different from the typically heavy-handed, fast-paced Hollywood drama. Instead, we come to see and know — almost to be — Clarissa Dalloway.
This film adaptation of "Mrs. Dalloway" came about in large part due to the talent and perseverance of three remarkable women: lead actress Vanessa Redgrave, Dutch director Marleen Gorris and actress-screenwriter Eileen Atkins.
Vanessa Redgrave had spent almost a year surveying the body of Virginia Woolf's literary work in preparation for a stage role, but she was struck by the wonderfully cinematic qualities found throughout Wolfe's evocation of Clarissa Dalloway and her world. Redgrave asked her friend and fellow actress, Eileen Atkins to consider writing a version for the screen. (Eileen Atkins had actually portrayed Virginia Woolf in a 1990 British television version of Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," which was shown on "Masterpiece Theatre.")
With Atkins' screenplay in hand, Redgrave went to Marleen Goris, whose "Antonia's Line" had won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Gorris was enlisted to direct the project, bringing a strong feminist perspective to the film — a perspective supported by Atkins' script and Redgrave's luminous performance.
"Mrs. Dalloway" premiered at the 1997 Toronto Film Festival and is considered to be one of the most sensitive and successful adaptations of Virginia Woolf's literary genius.
The Classic Book and Movie Club is a joint venture of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, and The Capital Times.
:: Posted April 3, 2006
|
