I had my doubts about the new BBC funded film of Arthur
Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons because of everything I had read about
it. I avoided any possibility of watching it at the cinema and decided to wait
for the DVD release. With the more I read about the film I decided not to
bother to order a copy.
Christmas was coming, and sure enough, a well-meaning family member bought it for me knowing of my enthusiasm for Ransome. After one minute of the pre-credit sequence I turned it off, knowing that without some lengthy mental preparation the film would prove to be, for me, unwatchable.
In that one minute all my worst fears had been confirmed.
The rights to the book had clearly been bought with scant intention of sticking to the plot or the subtleties of the leading characters.
All film and television adaptations of works of fiction have to take some liberties, if only to make best use of the funding made available to the producers and director, but this can be done in one of two ways: either by attempting to stick with original work as far as is possible (as Peter Jackson did with his Lord of the Ring’ trilogy,) or just purchase the book for the title and make the film you wanted to make in the first place with scant reference to the original (as with most of the James Bond franchise.)
The film opens with a small boy, we assume to be Roger, playing with a variety of model sailing boats in a freestanding bath creating a battle between them viewed from under the water. The camera moves above the water and we see that he wears an eye patch, clearly home made from black paper, in the style of a picture-book pirate.
He is then interrupted in his play by a young man, we assume it is his brother John who actually looks old enough to be his father, who tells him to abandon his game as a taxi is waiting to take them to the station to catch a train for their summer holiday. As Roger leaves the boats we are shown the whole bathroom, it has the look of a freshly decorated boutique hotel of the twenty-first century rather than that of a nineteen-thirties middle-class home.
Readers of Ransome’s book know from the opening page of the novel that Roger is interested in steam ships, he only imitates the Cutty Sark in the run up the hill to his waiting mother in deference to his older brother who has told him that “Sail was the thing…” As for pirates – we find out in the first few chapters that these are not to be emulated but feared.
Cut to the railway station, where Roger, still sporting the eye patch, struggles to keep up with the rest of the family; in his haste he drops a well-loved soft toy from his luggage which is returned to him, as the others board the train seemingly unaware he no longer there, by a suspicious looking man observed by an even more suspicious looking man. The toy is returned and Roger runs off to join his family with no mention of what has happened to him.
The following scene is a clear rip-off of Claude Whatham’s 1974 film; we are inside a railway carriage. John is already seated as if aloof of the entire proceedings. Meanwhile, Roger stands on the seat fiddling with a rotating air vent as if trying to break it and is then half-heartedly told off by John for doing so with the obvious indifference of both of them. Titty, though we have yet to learn she is no longer so named, also stands on the seat to put her luggage on the rack.
We have been told by a caption that this is 1935, and as their mother takes her seat holding the baby Bridget, no sign of a trusted nurse or even Susan, she seems unconcerned of her two youngest children’s behaviour telling them off with the same indifference of her eldest son. Her few spoken words reveal an accent of an ordinary woman, not the wife of a naval commander.
By now I had seen enough, pressed the ‘stop’ button and ejected the disk.
There is, of course, a huge, lucrative audience for adventure films that appeal to children and it is good to see one that has no connection to the saccharine and sanitised ones that emanate from the Disney stable. In having avoided this, and in an attempt to be different, it seems Swallows and Amazons wants to be a film of current day children and teenagers, emphasising the bad rather than the good points of them, all transported in to the recent past beyond the memories of nearly everyone who will watch it and so not make critical comparisons between how life was then and how it is now.
Christmas was coming, and sure enough, a well-meaning family member bought it for me knowing of my enthusiasm for Ransome. After one minute of the pre-credit sequence I turned it off, knowing that without some lengthy mental preparation the film would prove to be, for me, unwatchable.
In that one minute all my worst fears had been confirmed.
The rights to the book had clearly been bought with scant intention of sticking to the plot or the subtleties of the leading characters.
All film and television adaptations of works of fiction have to take some liberties, if only to make best use of the funding made available to the producers and director, but this can be done in one of two ways: either by attempting to stick with original work as far as is possible (as Peter Jackson did with his Lord of the Ring’ trilogy,) or just purchase the book for the title and make the film you wanted to make in the first place with scant reference to the original (as with most of the James Bond franchise.)
The film opens with a small boy, we assume to be Roger, playing with a variety of model sailing boats in a freestanding bath creating a battle between them viewed from under the water. The camera moves above the water and we see that he wears an eye patch, clearly home made from black paper, in the style of a picture-book pirate.
He is then interrupted in his play by a young man, we assume it is his brother John who actually looks old enough to be his father, who tells him to abandon his game as a taxi is waiting to take them to the station to catch a train for their summer holiday. As Roger leaves the boats we are shown the whole bathroom, it has the look of a freshly decorated boutique hotel of the twenty-first century rather than that of a nineteen-thirties middle-class home.
Readers of Ransome’s book know from the opening page of the novel that Roger is interested in steam ships, he only imitates the Cutty Sark in the run up the hill to his waiting mother in deference to his older brother who has told him that “Sail was the thing…” As for pirates – we find out in the first few chapters that these are not to be emulated but feared.
Cut to the railway station, where Roger, still sporting the eye patch, struggles to keep up with the rest of the family; in his haste he drops a well-loved soft toy from his luggage which is returned to him, as the others board the train seemingly unaware he no longer there, by a suspicious looking man observed by an even more suspicious looking man. The toy is returned and Roger runs off to join his family with no mention of what has happened to him.
The following scene is a clear rip-off of Claude Whatham’s 1974 film; we are inside a railway carriage. John is already seated as if aloof of the entire proceedings. Meanwhile, Roger stands on the seat fiddling with a rotating air vent as if trying to break it and is then half-heartedly told off by John for doing so with the obvious indifference of both of them. Titty, though we have yet to learn she is no longer so named, also stands on the seat to put her luggage on the rack.
We have been told by a caption that this is 1935, and as their mother takes her seat holding the baby Bridget, no sign of a trusted nurse or even Susan, she seems unconcerned of her two youngest children’s behaviour telling them off with the same indifference of her eldest son. Her few spoken words reveal an accent of an ordinary woman, not the wife of a naval commander.
By now I had seen enough, pressed the ‘stop’ button and ejected the disk.
There is, of course, a huge, lucrative audience for adventure films that appeal to children and it is good to see one that has no connection to the saccharine and sanitised ones that emanate from the Disney stable. In having avoided this, and in an attempt to be different, it seems Swallows and Amazons wants to be a film of current day children and teenagers, emphasising the bad rather than the good points of them, all transported in to the recent past beyond the memories of nearly everyone who will watch it and so not make critical comparisons between how life was then and how it is now.
Thank you Mike for your fresh reaction and informative comments. I have not seen the film but am familiar with the Tarboard comments on same, and yours have added to those. Having over the years seen the 1974 film more than once and read Sophie Neville's fascinating and extensive descriptions of the behind-the-camera activities, I find myself not drawn at all to see this new version. I'm not sure if it rates as a financial success with the makers but time will tell.
ReplyDeleteBTW on another topic, I suspect you might be the same Mike Dennis who made a number of comments to the Rudsdale War Time diary blog.
Thank you for that.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Rudsdale blog, indeed I am!
Thanks for the honest review, Mike.
ReplyDeleteIn watching this, you've clearly 'taken one for the team' of ardent Ransomeites who have no desire to see this version of a classic tale.
...except it isn't a version: it reeks of a complete re-writing, a 're-imagining' (as no doubt the production team would have punted it) of something that I believe isn't broken and doesn't need bringing up to date for modern audiences.
As a child, I didn't feel let down by Swallows and Amazon's lack of chases, spies & seaplanes: the avoidance of such 'thrills' made for a more believable world for me than that of, for example, Blyton's cheaper imagination. The SA series stands on the quality of its characters, the way they interact. Ransome himself comments that the book 'nearly wrote itself', and that - I think during the writing of Pigeon Post - he almost complains that the characters are taking off in all sorts of directions, and that he is not so much an author, but charged with shepherding these individuals to acquiesce to the direction of his plot.
That's his strength as an author. To neglect the depth of character of the children and their imagination, to merely dump them in the world of adult reality, is a major disservice to his skill as a writer.
Andy Goddard
Thanks Andy, I agree entirely (there are some ardent Ransome fans who see the film as a way of gaining new readers, but I imagine such readers would be disappointed!)
ReplyDeleteI haven't watched it yet. I suppose I will at some point. It sounds awful though.
ReplyDeleteMike - I share your feelings - I did watch it all the way through but rather wish I hadn't. The main problem is that they have altered AR's characters. Tinkering with an author's plot is acceptable to make a staging of the story feasible, but not radical alteration of the nature of an author's characters - that amounts to rewriting the book and that's not on. By the way, I do recommend that you fast-forward almost to the end of the film, and watch the scene where the two small boats attempt to prevent a seaplane from taking off from the lake. It is so unconvincing and impractical that it just makes you laugh.
ReplyDelete