Hedda

Glenda Jackson is superb in the title role. Ibsen's play "Hedda Gabler" gets a first-rate treatment in this adaption. Hedda is a restless, free-spirited and ruthless woman who enjoys playing with other people's lives and ultimately destroying them. Glenda Jackson gives the performance of her life in this movie. Peter Eyre gives an equal impressive supporting performance. Highly recommended for theater lovers.

Not only is this one of the best productions of Ibsen's arguably best play but it is in my opinion one of Glenda Jackson's greatest performances. The set is traditional, and that means a cluttered, claustrophobic room divided by a curtain where the final tragic action takes place. It starts also quite conventionally with just a little too much of a whiff of the ' theatre ' but then Patrick Stewart and Glenda Jackson take control, and her repressed love for the writer Stewart plays pushes the play over the edge into madness. Jackson moves slowly into that destructive and vengeful impulse that she has so far kept in rein, and the inevitable decline begins. Her acting is so precise and precisely unhinged that I could not imagine another actor achieving such heights and depths again in the role. Quite simply she is the greatest Hedda Gabler I have ever seen, and I cannot imagine another actor acting quite so perilously. Timothy West is perfect in his role of Judge Brack, and it is he who has the last terrifying words. I must add that this film is hard to find and that saddens me. It should be out there for all to see. .

Seriously, image quality of VHS is washed out, players stopped selling like 20 yrs ago and not a not a small part of the charm of this rendition of "Hedda Gabler" is in it's photography. Criterion release sounds like a good venue for achievement as important as this one. If whoever owns copyright absolutely refuses to make money :-) they should just do a single pass digital scan and release it as "archive" material as a cultural contribution to humanity.

Well thought out photography is actually part of the story telling rather than just a background and provides important atmospheric aspect that Ibsen would be proud of if he knew about cinema. That however is just the beginning since this is really Glenda Jackson's underrated masterpiece.

"Hedda Gabler" is a tough theatrical nut to crack and this rendition did just about everything right. Glenda Jackson and her director did theatrical production first with full scale Stanislavski process, and the result was much more consistent that any other film rendition of always elusive and still avant-garde play.

Jackson's Hedda is different enough from usual interpretations that spelling it out would be the actual spoiler. She doesn't try to elicit misplaced sympathy from the audience but gives you a naked Hedda with her cold hearted insanity out in the open. If you end up feeling sympathy for her you need an analyst :-) To that extent this rendition is not literary "naturalist" but operates on a slightly heightened ground that didn't exist as a concept at Ibsen's times but sits very well with his work.

While one wouldn't call this film the ultimate in "Hedda Gabler" (that would require the time and budget reserved for blockbusters) it provides very interesting angle and shows how many things can be done right with some careful thinking.

1. Barry Lyndon 2. Professione: reporter 3. Dersu Uzala 4. Promised land (Ziemia obiecana) 5. The Man Who Would Be King 6. Nashville 7. Gabriela (a Brazilian TV soap opera with 135 episodes) 8. Three Days of the Condor 9. Moll Flanders 10. Five Red Herrings 11. Love and Death 12. Chronique des années de braise 13.Night Moves 14. Hedda