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Jamaica Inn (TV)
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (26th May 2008). |
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The Film
 Produced for HTV West. Directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Part One (52:13): ‘The Journey’ Part Two (52:25): ‘Wreckers!’ Part Three (51:56): ‘Retribution’ Network’s latest release brings to DVD the highly-regarded HTV adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic 1936 novel Jamaica Inn. The show was originally broadcast as a two-part telefilm, in May of 1983, with the second part interrupted at the mid-way point by the news. Network’s DVD presents Jamaica Inn in three episodes: the second and third episodes are in reality the first and second halves of the second part of the telefilm, complete with the card at the end of episode two which declares ‘Jamaica Inn continues after the news’. Like many of her other works, Du Maurier’s novel is a dark and brooding Gothic romance whose title has entered popular usage; it has been the subject of a stage adaptation (in 2004) and, most famously, the 1939 film of the same title, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock’s 1939 adaptation took many liberties with the narrative of the novel, and Hitchcock himself reputedly displayed a lack of engagement with the narrative: following The Lady Vanishes (1938), it was the last film Hitchcock made before moving to America to begin his contract with David O. Selznick, and reflecting on Jamaica Inn after its release Hitchcock once noted that ‘I would have preferred to have vanished after The Lady Vanishes’ (Hitchcock, quoted in Chandler, 2005: 116). There was on-set tension between Hitch and the film’s star and co-producer, Charles Laughton, which meant that the film didn’t develop as planned (due to Laughton’s insistence on a larger role, a script change converted Laughton’s character from the film’s hero to being the villain, which Hitchcock felt that made the plot too obvious, considering Laughton’s screen persona); and in order to make the film marketable in America, Laughton’s villain was changed from being a clergyman into a magistrate (see Truffaut, 1985: 121-122). When attending the AFI’s 1979 gala honouring his work, Hitchcock expressed his fear that he would be humiliated or embarrassed at the event by dryly comparing it to the production of Jamaica Inn, stating that it was ‘Worse than dying […] Worse than even forgetting to button your fly. I shouldn’t have accepted. It’s like Jamaica Inn. Walking the plank, you know’ (ibid., 21). Du Maurier was also strongly displeased with Hitchcock’s film and, as a consequence, briefly considered preventing Hitchcock from shooting an adaptation of her novel Rebecca, which was to be Hitchcock’s first American film (see Turner, 1997; Duguid, 2003). On the whole, Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn is considered one of his weakest films, disliked by both Hitchcock and Du Maurier. By contrast, this 1983 telefilm adaptation of the novel is much more faithful to its source material and is a far more satisfying retelling of Du Maurier’s now-classic story, although some changes have been made to the basic plot (for example, the deaths of Mary’s parents are, in this adaptation, unnecessarily connected to the mystery surrounding Jamaica Inn) and a greater focus on the character of Jem, presumably in an attempt to ‘up the ante’ in terms of the romantic subplot that, in the novel, was backgrounded. Du Maurier’s imagery is vivid and compelling, although the narratives of her novels are frequently too detailed to be served well by a ninety-minute feature film adaptation such as Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn. As a consequence, the HTV television adaptation of Jamaica Inn benefits greatly from the added ‘room to breathe’ that is allowed by the two-and-a-half hour running time: it’s much more faithful to its source novel than the Hitchcock adaptation, and furthermore in this telefilm (unlike the Hitchcock movie) the film represents Mary Yellan’s uncle Joss Merlyn as a chilling character who is by turns terrifying and sympathetic, helped in no small part by an amazing performance from Patrick McGoohan (in the role of Joss). Jamaica Inn is set in the 1820s and tells the story of Mary Yellan (Jane Seymour), a young woman from the village of Helston in Cornwall. (In Du Maurier’s novel, Mary is from the village of Helford.) When her father is killed in a ship that is sunk by wreckers off the Cornish coast, Mary finds that her mother Martha (Vivian Pickles) suffers a breakdown. Martha eventually dies, and Mary is sent to live with her aunt Patience (Billie Whitelaw) and her uncle Joss Merlyn (Patrick McGoohan) at Jamaica Inn, on Bodmin Moor. However, she is repeatedly warned of the dark reputation that Jamaica Inn has attracted and its reputation as a haven for violence and criminality: her fellow travellers warn her against going to Jamaica Inn, claiming that it is ‘a place associated with strange rituals that go back before the darkness of time’. Nevertheless, at Jamaica Inn she meets and begins to fall in love with the horse thief Jeremiah (‘Jem’) Merlyn (Trevor Eve), who she later learns to be Joss’ brother. She also meets Francis Davey (John McEnery), a vicar at the nearby St Michael’s Church who tells her of the rituals of the ancient Druids, a key part of the region’s past, and their reliance on human sacrifice and belief in reincarnation. Mary’s path also repeatedly crosses with that of a mysterious man who claims to be a magistrate (Peter Vaughan). From the opening sequence, this telefilm amplifies the horrific aspects of Du Maurier’s novel: the first instalment opens with stormy waters lapping against the Cornish coast. A ship is seen trying to avoid running aground; one of the crew identifies the treacherous nature of the waters around the Cornish coast, stating to the ship’s captain that it is a ‘Dirty coast, sir. Hellish place. Could be off Cape Horn’. Onshore, the lighthouse keeper is murdered and wreckers start a fire elsewhere, luring the ship onto the rocks. The ship is run aground and the crew are swamped with wreckers; the telefilm’s titles play out over the brutal murders of the surviving members of the ship’s crew and shots of blood flowing out with the tide. (This is the first of two stunning and nightmarish sequences depicting the activity of the wreckers, and leaving all other virtues of this adaptation aside these impressively-staged sequences are almost enough reason to seek this adaptation out, as they seem to use full-sized rigs—rather than the model-work that most films of this period would have utilised.) The director was Lawrence Gordon Clark, whose attention seems focused on the more Gothic aspects of the story. During the 1970s, Clark gained directing experience by working on a large number of horror-themed television adaptations of classic ghost stories: he directed several stories within the BBC’s 1970s Ghost Story For Christmas strand (‘The Stalls of Barchester’, 1971, ‘Lost Hearts’, 1973, ‘Treasure of Abbott Thomas’, 1974, ‘The Ash Tree’, 1975, ‘The Signalman’, 1976, and ‘Stigma’, 1977) and he also worked on the 1979 ITV Playhouse adaptation of M. R. James’ ‘Casting the Runes’. His experience with the horror genre is put to good use throughout the telefilm, from the sequence in which Martha dies during a thunderstorm to the sequence in which Mary is forced to listen to Joss’ tortured monologue about how he is haunted by the ghosts from his past. Additionally, from his first introduction the character of Francis Davey is given a ghostly pallour: he is presented with his face caked in white makeup and is presented as an almost spectral figure, like the white-faced ghosts of the children in Clark’s ‘Lost Hearts’ or the ghost in ‘The Signalman’. Davey also displays a seemingly supernatural power over Joss’ dogs, managing to quieten them with nothing more than a glance. Furthermore, the emphasis on discussion of the ‘strange rituals’ that reputedly take place on Bodmin Moor and Davey’s monologue about the Druid’s obsession with sacrifice and reincarnation also give this adaptation a strong association with the horror genre. McGoohan steals the show as Joss Merlyn, a man with an unpredictable temper and a thirst for brandy who, at times, elicits our sympathy due to the way in which he is haunted by his past: he’s a frightening man, but he’s also human, in one sequence protecting Mary from the advances of one of the unsavoury visitors to Jamaica Inn before thundering ‘Any man who lays a hand on my niece hangs on that hook until he smokes like a side of bacon’. As his wife Patience attests, ‘You mustn’t mind your uncle Joss. He has his ways, and strangers don’t understand them at first’. The most striking scene in the whole production revolves around a powerful, chilling monologue by Joss in which, whilst drunk, he reflects on how he is haunted by his past and the men that he has killed: ‘Dead men can’t harm the living. Blotted out like candles, aren’t they. In my dreams I see them. They come, faces and things out of the darkness. I wake up sweating. I see their faces: white, clean faces coming out of the water, their eyes eaten by fish. Some of them are torn, flesh hanging off their bones like ribbons’. The scene is beautifully shot, and McGoohan’s delivery is pitch-perfect. Whitelaw is equally as good, although she’s given much less to do than McGoohan. Her Patience is a woman who has been cowed by her relationship with Joss. She knows that Jamaica Inn has become a haven of iniquity but is unable to do anything about it: ‘There’s things that happen at Jamaica Inn, Mary. Bad things. Evil things. I can’t tell you; I can’t even admit them to myself’. Like many of Du Maurier’s female protagonists, Mary is a feisty and independently-minded woman who is constrained by the fact that she lives in a male-dominated society. When Joss threatens Patience, Mary intervenes and claims that if Joss harms her aunt, she will inform the magistrate. Joss responds by making an observation about Mary’s character: ‘Now we know what kind of lodger we’ve got here […] Scratch her, [and] she shows her claws’. (Later, Joss tells Mary that he will ‘break that will of yours if you go astray. I’ll break your body too’.) Seymour is good in the role: as usual, she looks absolutely gorgeous, but here she isn’t afraid of being put into unromantic positions, covered in water and muck. In the novel, Mary Yellan is in her early twenties; when she played the role, Seymour was in her early thirties, and as a consequence it’s a little jarring when the characters refer to her as ‘young girl’, which they often do. This adaptation also fails to put Jem and Joss together, thus ignoring the opportunity to provide an ironic comment on Mary’s attraction to Jem (which, in the novel, mirrors Patience’s original attraction to Joss), and thus in this telefilm the romantic subplot avoids the history-repeating-itself doomladen subtext that is attached to it in Du Maurier’s novel. Without wanting to spoil this telefilm adaptation for first-time viewers, where the closing chapter of the novel is presented as something of a defeat for womankind, this telefilm adaptation contains a closing scene that is much less downbeat and far more ambiguous.
Video
Jamaica Inn was shot entirely on 16mm film and contains some stunning location shooting. However, it’s not a ‘clean’ and romanticised presentation of the Cornish countryside: this is a dirty and muddy Cornwall, as befitting the story. The visual palette is dominated by deep greens, browns, dark blues and shades of black. Network’s presentation is serviceable and problem-free.
Audio
The audio track (presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono) is problem-free, although there are some scenes in which dialogue is nearly drowned out by background noise (for example, during the first sequence depicting the activity of the wreckers) and by the occasionally over-strident music. Subtitles would have been a helpful addition, but sadly there are none on this release.
Extras
There are no extras. Some sort of reflection on the telefilm’s relationship with the source novel (or, for that matter, the Hitchcock film adaptation) would have been a helpful addition.
Overall
On a personal level, watching this adaptation of Du Maurier’s novel is a great treat for me, as having family in Cornwall I spent a fair portion of my youth traipsing around the locations mentioned in Du Maurier’s novel, including the village of Helston and Jamaica Inn itself. However, even without that experience this adaptation comes with a strong recommendation, thanks to a remarkable performance by McGoohan and some tremendously atmospheric scenes, including the two sequences depicting the work of the wreckers. It’s a sumptuous and faithful adaptation of Du Maurier’s novel, with a great cast and some fantastic location shooting. For best results, watch back-to-back with Hitchcock’s 1939 film. References: Chandler, Charlotte, 2005: It’s Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock—A Personal Biography. Simon & Schuster Duguid, Mark, 2003: ‘Jamaica Inn (1939)’. [Online] ScreenOnline http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/441604/index.html Independent Newspapers UK Ltd, 2004: ‘Let me tell you a story…’. The Independent on Sunday (18 April, 2004) Truffaut, Francois, 1985: Truffaut/Hitchcock. Simon & Schuster (revised edition) Turner, George, 1997: ‘Du Maurier, Selznick + Hitchcock = Rebecca’. American Cinematographer (July, 1997) For more information, please visit the homepage of Network DVD.
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