Thursday, October 20, 2011
IMMERSION - 'BRIDESHEAD REVISITED'
Regarding blogging, I've been pretty much out to lunch, or dinner, or tea with English folks. For several days now, I've been watching episodes of Brideshead Revisited, which I've seen a number of times before, but one more time is never too much. The 1981 Granada Televison series is superb. Of course, the episodes were meant to be viewed a week apart, but I'm cramming them into several, days taking the occasional time-out away from the screen for daily life. I feel as if I'm in another world, the world of Oxford, Brideshead, London, Venice, France, and coming up is Morocco.
On the journey, I lost my way a bit, what with real life interruptions, having to stop in the middle of an episode and trying to mark my place on the DVD, and then missing out entirely on Venice and having to go back and view one of my favorite parts of the story.
The video above is of a deliciously camp lunch party in Sebastian's rooms at Oxford. If you've seen the series, you know it. If you haven't, then think about watching.
The video below is a conversation between Charles Ryder and Cara, Lord Marchmain's mistress, during Charles and Sebastian's visit to Venice. This post is mainly for those who are familiar with the series. Sorry.
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I enjoyed Gielgud as the father
ReplyDeleteThe scenes with Charles and his father are some of the best in the series. Gielgud is terrific.
ReplyDeleteI just watched the episode when Charles visits Sebastian in Morocco. It's very sad.
The wonder of it all...all.
ReplyDeleteSebastian to Charles on taking care of Kurt:
ReplyDelete“...its a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.”
So much that is quotable!
I hate that scene with Kurt. As you say, Mimi, it is very sad. Kurt is obnoxious. Charles is obtuse. Sebastian is an utter, wrecked, awful mess.
ReplyDeleteI'm old enough (!) to have the record album (!) of the soundtrack to that series.
ReplyDeleteIt made me read the book, but John Mortimer, who later gave us Rumpole, actually improved on the original. Which is a rare thing, indeed.
Someday I'll buy the DVD's, when I can afford to spend time watching them. For now, I content myself with "Downton Abbey."
Cathy, the scene is awful. Kurt...poor fellow. Poor Sebastian.
ReplyDeleteRmj, I'm old enough, too, but I didn't know that there was a record album of the series. I wore out the video set, so I bought the DVD.
I went to sleep last night thinking about BR, and I woke up this morning thinking about the series.
...of course it´s horrible...it´s very real codependency...it´s deadly, it´s terminal, it´s wasteful, it´s about complete selfishness and complete selfdestructiveness dressed up as selfless tenacity -- searching/rationalizing desperately for a thread of reason for being -- the bottom of the hope barrel of self-deceiving -- sometimes it dresses differently and the characters look differently but the scenario is much the same...the deep end of a dead end.
ReplyDeleteSo many decades later, I understand that scene between Cara and Charles in ways I never could have before.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting that, Mimi.
And the other clip: boys playing at being men. Was it ever more perfectly captured?
ReplyDeleteMade me remember, too, the scene at the manor house, where someone (Anthony? I think not) stands at the top of the stairs declaiming "The Waste Land" (again, as in this clip) to the gathered party, who applaud heartily.
Or is my memory bad, and it's this scene I'm thinking of? Anyway, thanks again.
Len, could Sebastian have been saved had he been lift alone, as Charles advised Lady Marchmain? I wonder.
ReplyDeleteRmj, the scene between Cara and Charles is powerful, indeed. And there are so many others of equal power throughout the series.
I believe the party you speak of took place in London, when Charles returned to England for the General Strike in 1926. Charles and Anthony stand on the steps of the house, but Anthony is berating Mulcaster for gawking at the black performers. No Eliot in that scene.
I wonder.¨ GM
ReplyDeleteI wonder too...who knows what ¨influences¨ might have made themselves known...nature, takes it´s course (or not).
Len
WV: actsess (I think that´s the name of the disease)