The 1998 version of 'Our Mutual Friend' is one of my favourite TV book adaptations, but I am pleased that this 1976 production is finally available again. It is well worth discussing in detail as a stand-alone production in its own right, but I will leave that to other reviewers. What intrigues me is how two comprehensive dramatisations of the same book came to be so different.
This version is the most faithful to Dickens in both story-telling and performances, but that is not always a merit.
Inevitably, both versions have many scenes in common, but there are some slight differences. This version includes scenes (and expanded scenes) that I would have liked to have seen in the 1998 version. For example, the early scene with Charley and Lizzie looking into the embers of the fire helps establish their relationship and her 'fancies'. The scene where Harmon (in disguise) gets Riderhood to retract his accusation against Gaffer Hexham redresses the most questionable aspect of Harmon's behaviour and is sorely missed in the later version. This version also makes it slightly clearer that Charley's selfish objections to Eugene Wrayburn aren't completely unreasonable (he fears the seduction that Wrayburn eventually contemplates) and it is more specific about the burying and unearthing of the various wills.
On the other hand, I regret the loss of the Laemmles, which is symptomatic of the major weakness of this production: we don't see enough of the fashionable world into which the Boffins and Bella are abruptly pitched. This was probably due to budgetary constraints, but it means we only get half the story. One of the triumphs of the later version is the startling visual contrast between the murky world of the poor, with its muted, muddy tones, and the glittering world of the rich - flooded with light and saturated with vibrant yellows and greens.
Overall, I feel the 1998 version tells the story more effectively - partly because it doesn't try to replicate Dickens's own method.
Dickens disperses his complex plots over a wide range of characters. Each chapter just inches the story forward, but is worked up into a richly detailed scene, reflecting Dickens's love of the theatre. However, this means that characters disappear for long stretches so it is easy to lose track of them and their role in the story. Dickens can mitigate this by prefixing each scene with a retrospective narrative bridge.
This 1976 version is structured in a similar way, with a stately procession of lengthy scenes, but without the narrative bridges, so at times it feels a bit disjointed
This is partly dictated by the medium. Videotape is difficult to edit, so directors tend to shoot whole scenes in a single take with multiple cameras, switching from camera to camera while the scene is in progress. This favours fewer, but longer, scenes - as in a stage play. Actors often prefer to work this way, but it does mean they don't have the luxury of fine-tuning their performances, line-by-line, as movie actors can. It also means that the camera is not always in the best position to punch up a line or capture a necessary reaction shot.
The 1998 version was shot on film and is structured more like a movie. It trims individual scenes and sharpens up Dickens's sometimes prolix dialogue. It continually inter-cuts between the various plot strands, keeping everything in better focus and inserts Dickens's narrative bridges in correct chronological sequence so the story flows better. In this version, I was struck by how long it takes to introduce all the main characters. For a while, I feared that Mr Venus had been cut altogether.
The use of cinema technique means that the staging in the 1998 version is much more precise, so the big set pieces are all more powerful and emotionally affecting (compare the two versions of the big revelation scene that exonerates Mr Boffin). Basically, the camera does much more work.
Then there are the performances.
In virtually every case the later ones are vastly superior. In this version, even when we have good actors giving good performances, such as Leo McKern, Warren Clarke, Jane Seymour and Ronald Lacey, they are still overshadowed by Peter Vaughan, David Morrissey, Anna Friel and Timothy Spall. In most other instances, the discrepancy is even greater. The 1998 version is already an unparallelled feast of great acting when, at the very end, up steps Robert Lang's Mr Twemlow to steal the whole show with his only speech (sadly missing here). In Hollywood, they will tell you: "If a performance is good, that is the actor. If all the performances are good, that is the director." Take a bow, Julian Farino.
However, these performances are not necessarily more faithful. For example, while Dickens had enormous sympathy and respect for the poor and dispossessed, he was a man of his times and found it hard not to patronise them. This is evident in his treatment of Silas Wegg and Rogue Riderhood and is accurately reflected in the playing of Alfie Bass and John Collin. But in the 1998 version there is no hint of condescension in the fierce, envious malice of Kenneth Cranham's Wegg and the cool, calculating villainy of David Bradley's Riderhood. Dickens might well have approved of this change of emphasis.
From the Fifties through to the end of the Eighties, the BBC utilised live broadcasting and videotape to bring us consistently excellent dramatisations of classic books. This version of 'Our Mutual Friend' is a good example of what they could achieve and it deserves to find a whole new audience today.
However, in the Nineties these serials were upgraded to film. Actors may regret this, and the extra cost may mean there will be fewer classic book adaptations in the future, but a comparison of the videotape and film versions of 'Our Mutual Friend' shows that there is no going back.
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