Lady Chatterley's Lover

[patch]

Brace for a shock: the Chatterley is chaste

BBC's latest adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover may shock readers with its lack of female flesh

It shocked the world with its obscenity and provided one of the most memorable and entertaining trials in the history of English law.


But the BBC's latest adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover may shock readers for another reason: its lack of female flesh.


The modern version of D H Lawrence's classic novel has been reconstructed into something very much for the ladies, with Poldark-style topless scenes to keep the women of Britain swooning.


While Richard Madden, who plays the famously gruff groundsman Mellors, is seen hammering without a shirt, Lady Chatterley herself, played by Holliday Grainger, is kept firmly under wraps for even the most delicate of scenes.


Instead, her character will be "empowered", made festier and more decisive to suit a modern day heroine.


 The new television version is likely to be better received than the 1993 version. Then, it was watched by 12 million people but excoriated by critics, who called the "pornographic" broadcast "risible", a "travesty", and with sex scenes akin to "ham-fisted assault".

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11805048/Brace-for-a-shock-the-Chatterley-is-chaste.html

[Beanfan]

Rob Stark as Lady Chatterley's Lover?


--->The modern version of D H Lawrence's classic novel has been reconstructed into something very much for the ladies, with Poldark-style topless scenes to keep the women of Britain swooning.

While Richard Madden, who plays the famously gruff groundsman Mellors, is seen hammering without a shirt---<

Almost funny.
What did Sean do?

Sorry - this clip is bad quality - but ..you know what I mean. ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feb25k4jTJ0

[patch]

What, no nudity? BBC covers up Lady Chatterley in new version of classic book which was banned for 32 years

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199624/What-no-nudity-BBC-covers-Lady-Chatterley-new-version-classic-book-banned-32-years.html

The latest adaptation will be much tamer than the BBC’s 1993 version, starring Joely Richardson and Sean Bean. The nude scenes in that version were so explicit that they sparked complaints from viewers.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199624/What-no-nudity-BBC-covers-Lady-Chatterley-new-version-classic-book-banned-32-years.html

but also this article  very conflicting stories.

BBC's new Chatterley 'is so explicit it's practically porn': TV version of classic erotic novel is set to feature some VERY graphic sex scenes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199672/BBC-s-new-Chatterley-explicit-s-practically-porn-TV-version-legendary-erotic-novel-set-feature-graphic-sex-scenes.html

[Amber]

Oh I'm so not a fan of the 'classics' being faffed about with.  Having said that, I do love a bit of "The Muppets' Christmas Carol" but that's as much as I want, I don't like my Shakespeare set in WWII Germany even if it is Ian McKellen, I like my Shakespeare as it was intended, codpieces and tights, France Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" - thank you very much!

And I already hate the sound of this re-make.  Okay, so Seanie's version was a little 'florid' shall say, but that's Ken Russell for you, if you don't know what to expect from him, then you're daft!  But you just can't go around changing the fabric of the novel - she isn't feisty, she's a bored drippy girl looking for boredom relief and sex and getting a lot more than she bargained for.  You can't just decide to re-write the novel, you can't make the character as different as it sounds as though they have done, just to please a modern audience.  If they don't want to see a faithful adaptation - something the Beeb is know worldwide for - then go write, make and watch something else.

What's next "Jane Eyre" with a Bollywood style dance number as Thornfield Hall burns, a one episode adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" where Darcy isn't proud and Lizzie has no prejudice, "Anna Karenina" is a feisty heroine and Vronsky is her lesbian lover - bloody hell!

Off to the bookcase to find Seanie's version! 

[Rebecca]

After the OP, I was going to say, sounds B-O-R-I-N-G, but after the second Daily Mail article, who knows?

But having Lady C "be 'empowered', made festier and more decisive to suit a modern day heroine," sounds dead boring. Revising literature or history to conform to current politically correct attitudes... yawn.

Oh I'm so not a fan of the 'classics' being faffed about with.

Me neither.

And I already hate the sound of this re-make.  Okay, so Seanie's version was a little 'florid' shall say, but that's Ken Russell for you....

It's also DH Lawrence for you.  The Ken Russell version used loads of dialogue straight from the book, which was great. I'm not actually very keen on Lawrence, but if you're going to make films of his books, then do it right.

Almost funny.
What did Sean do?

Sorry - this clip is bad quality - but ..you know what I mean. ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feb25k4jTJ0

Haha. 
Nobody splits wood better.

I find it hard to imagine anybody else portraying Mellors. I can think of scenes where they aren't even having sex, but the effect is so erotic... thanks mostly to Sean's voice and eyes.

[Amber]

I think Ken Russell 'embellished' shall we say, the sex scenes - hey, am I complaining - NAH! - but I don't remember the taking M'Lady from behind in the shed bit being in the book - I think that was just Ken being saucy, and as Rebecca said, the rest was D.H.Lawrence, and who at the Beeb has the audacity to presume they can write better than Lawrence - wow - talk about arrogance.  Unless it's Andrew Davies, who can do no wrong with adaptations as far as I am concerned, and I don't think it is - what a nerve! 

I would sue if you fundamentally altered something I had written - breach of intellectual property rights and all - but I suppose it depends on how badly the series mutilates the story, and how badly the Lawrence estate needs the fees they have already accepted for the rights. 

And whilst it is quite amusing, to think of the *cough* torch - tee hee! being handed from fictional father to son, I so now need to see Seanie's version again, *need*!!!!!!!!!!!

[moonflower]

It was a nice addition to my afternoon to see the photo that patch posted and the wood chopping video.  I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the movie again either!

[Rebecca]

I think Ken Russell 'embellished' shall we say, the sex scenes - hey, am I complaining - NAH! - but I don't remember the taking M'Lady from behind in the shed bit being in the book

In the book, it's in the cottage, the night she spends with him there,  after the meeting with her sister. (Sean was great in that scene with the sister). Hmm.... yes, definitely time to watch the film again.

[crossing-sweeper]

Sodomy was an obsession with Lawrence. That's why he made that scene a centrepiece of Lady C - and in the novel she is made to enjoy it (in the adaptation rather less so). It is his worst novel. Why don't the BBC try adapting one of the better ones such as the Rainbow?

[Amber]

I stand corrected - it's been a long time since Uni. and it was one of the books I sold at the end of the term I studied it, and it just didn't engage me in quite the same way as it does now for some strange reason! 

Or "Sons and Lovers" which I really loved.

[Rebecca]

I have an unfair advantage because I read it fairly recently. In fact, I was finally motivated to read it after watching Lady Chatterley. I tried reading it years ago and was bored stiff. Much more exciting when you can picture Sean and Joely while you are reading!

 

[patch]

BBC's adaption of Lady Chatterley's Lover says more about Britain than about DH Lawrence

Next month, the BBC will screen the latest among several adaptations of the novel. The self-exiled author had wrestled with two alternative versions before completing the final Lady Chatterley in 1928. Both Ken Russell, in his 1993 mini-series, and Pascale Ferran, in her 2006 film, made use of earlier drafts.

After its clearance on an obscenity charge that Penguin Books had invited in 1960, the book began its misleading afterlife as a Sixties icon of sexual liberation. Now, 55 years after the Old Bailey jury closed an era by scorning a dinosaur prosecutor (Mervyn Griffith-Jones) who asked “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”, no one can claim unfamiliarity with Lawrence’s prophetic – as much as erotic – testament.
 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/bbcs-adaption-of-lady-chatterleys-lover-says-more-about-britain-than-about-dh-lawrence-10459684.html

[crossing-sweeper]

Modern British period telly dramas always purport to be about the 'state of Britain' - with lots of sex thrown in. It's still a rotten novel.

[patch]

New version

Lady Chatterley's Lover: Trailer - BBC One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH5AWN-c4b8

[Amber]

Ha - I saw that minutes ago and I just know that little Rob Stark is just not man enough to fill his father's erm, *boots* shall we say?  I don't know if I'll even watch it to be honest; when you've seen the best Mellors you are going to see, why would you bother with a pale attempt at a substitute?

[Rebecca]

The trailer doesn't entice me in the least. They're mad to redo this when Sean and Joely Richardson were so perfect.

[patch]

Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Director Jed Mercurio on why DH Lawrence's novel 'is not an obscene story'

Having watched Mercurio’s adaptation, in which Richard Madden (Robb Stark in Game of Thrones) and Holliday Grainger play gamekeeper Oliver Mellors and Constance Chatterley, I can faithfully report that the sex scenes are not VERY graphic at all, indeed not nearly as explicit as Lawrence’s novel. What’s strange is that today’s headlines could have been simply re-printed from 22 years ago when Ken Russell’s BBC version elicited the same Pavlovian response.

And yet go on to YouTube and you will see Sean Bean and Joely Richardson gambolling in the naked woods like escapees from Woodstock and garlanding each others’ heads with flowers (in the book they florally decorate each other’s pubic hair). It’s about as pornographic as a Timotei advert.

Has Mercurio watched Russell’s version –

“I saw a clip of it [Russell’s 1993 BBC adaptation] when Sean Bean was on Fantasy Football and they showed a clip of him in-flagrante and made a joke about him looking like he was shagging Barry Venison [the mullet-styled former Sunderland and Liverpool player]”, says Mercurio. “My only real relationship was with the book... I wasn’t thinking of other versions at all.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/lady-chatterleys-lover-director-jed-mercurio-on-why-dh-lawrences-novel-is-not-an-obscene-story-10478804.html

[patch]

‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ review: Restrained, melancholy and poetic

In 1993, the BBC produced Lady Chatterley: a four-part dramatisation of the DH Lawrence novel directed by Ken Russell, starring Joely Richardson in the title role and Sean Bean as her gamekeeper lover Mellors.

A generation of horny teenagers tuned in, but in spite of the workmanlike woodland grunting from Bean (not to mention the infamously dreadful post-coital line, ‘We come off together that time – it’s good when it’s like that’) and both leads flashing enough flesh to upset the Broadcasting Standards Council, the series was about as sexy as a press conference by Iain Duncan Smith
 

http://www.cultbox.co.uk/reviews/episodes/lady-chatterleys-lover-bbc-2015-review

[Rebecca]

the series was about as sexy as a press conference by Iain Duncan Smith

  I guess the guy wouldn't know sexy if it bit him on the a***.

[patch]

Talking of Thrones, Madden decided not to ask his on-screen father Sean Bean, who played Mellors in the iconic 1993 BBC miniseries, for advice when he bagged the role.

“I didn’t want to! I have watched his version, [but] I’ve blocked it out of my mind because it was a while ago and I didn’t want to revisit it again just to prevent myself being influenced by it in anyway.”
 

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-09-06/richard-madden-talks-a-grittier-lady-chatterleys-lover-gratuitous-sex-scenes-and-game-of-thrones