The French Lieutenant's Woman [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Karel Reisz Karel Reisz

Overview

John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. How does one convey this time-frame dichotomy on film? The decision made by director Karel Reisz and Harold Pinter was to frame Fowles' basic plot within a "modern" context of their own making. While we watch as Sarah (Meryl Streep), a 19th-century Englishwoman ruined by an affair with a French lieutenant, enters into another disastrous relationship with principled young Charles (Jeremy Irons), we are constantly made aware that what we're seeing is only a film. This is done by surrounding the story with a modern narrative, focusing on a movie production company which is on location--filming The French Lieutenant's Woman. Meryl Streep doubles in the role of Sara and the American actress who plays her, while Jeremy Irons essays the dual role of Charles and the handsome Briton playing Charles. Likewise, everyone else in the cast is seen as "themselves" and as their French Lieutenant's Woman characters. Not surprisingly, the "real" Streep and Irons enter into an affair which closely parallels their characters' relationship. The commercial TV version of French Lieutenant's Woman eliminates 30 minutes' worth of "extraneous" scenes.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/11/2015
UPC:	0715515154017
Original Release:	1981
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	2:03:00
Sales rank:	15,521

Special Features

New interviews with actors Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, director John Bloom, and composer Carl Davis New interview with film scholar Ian Christie Episode of The South Bank Show from 1981 featuring director Karel Reisz, novelist John Fowles, and screenwriter Harold Pinter Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Meryl Streep	Sarah Woodruff/Anna
Jeremy Irons	Charles Smithson/Mike
Hilton McRae	Sam
Emily Morgan	Mary
Charlotte Mitchell	Mrs. Tranter
Lynsey Baxter	Ernestina
Jean Faulds	Cook
Peter Vaughan	Mr. Freeman
Colin Jeavons	Vicar
Liz Smith	Mrs. Fairley
Patience Collier	Mrs. Poulteney
John Barrett	Dairyman
Leo McKern	Dr. Grogan
Arabella Weir	Girl on Undercliff
Ben Forster	Boy on Undercliff
Catherine Willmer	Dr. Grogan's Housekeeper
Anthony Langdon	Asylum Keeper
Edward Duke	Nathaniel
Richard Griffiths	Sir Tom
Graham Fletcher-Cook	Delivery Boy
Richard Hope	3rd Assistant
Michael Elwyn	Montague
Toni Palmer	Mrs. Endicott
Cecily Hobbs	Betty Anne
Doreen Mantle	Lady on Train
David Warner	Murphy
Alun Armstrong	Grimes
Gerard Falconetti	Davide
Penelope Wilton	Sonia
Joanna Joseph	Lizzie
Judith Alderson	Red-haired Prostitute
Cora Kinnaird	2nd Prostitute
Orlando Fraser	Tom Elliott,Actor
Fredricka Morton	Girl
Alice Maschler	2nd Girl
Vicky Ireland	Actor
Clare Travers-Deacon	Actor
Harriet Walter	Actor
Janet Rawson	Actor
Mia Soteriou	Actor
Mary McLeod	Actor
Rayner Newmark	Actor
Beverly Garland	Actor
Carl Davis	Composer

Technical Credits

Harold Pinter

John Fowles

Leon Clore	Producer
Karel Reisz	Director
Harold Pinter	Screenwriter
Don Sharpe	Sound Editor
John Fowles	Screenwriter
Ivan Sharrock	Sound Effects
Ken Weston	Sound Effects
Allan Bryce	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

One of England's most highly regarded playwrights, Harold Pinter was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for his sly, self-reflexive adaptation of The French Lieutenant's Woman. The conundrum for Pinter and director Karel Reisz was how to translate John Fowles' enigmatic novel to the screen without losing the author's blend of the Victorian world with a modern sensibility. They settled upon a movie-within-a-movie structure. The narrative device of having both a "fictionalized" and a "real" component complementing each other is nothing new to dramatists, and it is a favorite trick of the movies as well: to greater or lesser degrees, such films as Children of Paradise, 8 1/2, Le Mepris, and The Last Metro all use such a "meta-fictional" technique. As the two actors playing the two characters, Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons manage to keep their respective roles distinctive, yet parallel. Streep was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, her first of six in the 1980s. This was Irons' first major motion picture after making a splash in the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited.

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