The Mill on the Floss

I am somewhat surprised that 2 out of the 6 reviews of this film were by people who hadn't even seen the film.I would count them as extremely lucky as this is a really dull affair,which at times doesn't even make sense.At the beginning the source of the feud is discussed and the law action started.Mason et al are all young children.We then go forward a few years ,it seems like 20 when Mson et all are adults and it appears that the law case over the mill has just been resolved.Well the wheels of justice may grind exceedingly slow but not that slow.One can only think that the producers were trying to replicate the success of David Copperfield,well it has to be said that they failed miserably.It is an effort to try and keep working out what is going on.At least Mason and Fitzgerald would go on to better things.

Mason plays the supporting role of Tom Tulliver in this adaptation of George Eliot's 'The Mill on the Floss'. Quite frankly, I didn't enjoy any of Eliot's novels so I wouldn't enjoy watching this film. Mason has a minor part, so it's not even worth watching anyway.

I have always been more of a fan of George Eliot's stories than of many of her more, shall we say, "sentimental" contemporaries. Her stories were grittier, with far more realistic characters - and this is one of her best. A childhood feud spills over into adulthood and some unique pig-headedness that maximises the misery for the Tulliver and Wakem families. James Mason takes on his first major cinema role here, and he does it well as the opinionated "Tom", elder brother of "Maggie" (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who is admired by "Philip" (Frank Lawton), but he is from the family that put old man "Tulliver" from his mill after losing a law suit - a fact that "Tom" will neither forgive nor forget... There is a smattering of strong supporting characters from Martita Hunt, Fay Compton and Felix Aylmer to give added richness to this rather sad story of bloody-mindedness (and of the dependence young women had on their men-folks in the 1830s). The production is a bit stagey at times, but really redeemed by the last - tragic - ten minutes, and though this adaptation really does simplify the characters a little too much, it still clings on to enough of the story to make it worth a watch.

'The Mill on the Floss' was one of the lesser novels by Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the male pseudonym George Eliot. I tried to read this dull and very turgid novel years ago, but was unable to finish it. I'll review this film version solely on its own merits, as I don't know how faithfully it follows the original novel.

The film's opening credits are printed in an Old English typeface that suggests the mediaeval period, and so it's a very poor choice for a film with a 19th-century setting. (On the other hand, about halfway into the film, we see a close-up shot of a handbill advertising an estate auction. This handbill is set in authentic Victorian type fonts, and looks *very* convincing.) Most of this film is extremely convincing in its depiction of the architecture and clothing of early 19th-century England. The precise location of this film's story is never disclosed, but - judging by the actors' accents - I'd place it as somewhere in the Cotswolds, perhaps Warwickshire.

The plot, what there is of it, involves a mill that changes hands a couple of times (over a couple of decades) between two rival families, one wealthy and one working-class. I disagree with another IMDb reviewer who claims that James Mason has only a small role in this film. Mason has the largest and most central role in this drama, as the scion of the wealthier family. As the spoilt and petulant Tom Tulliver, Mason is darkly brooding and impetuous. His performance here belongs in a better film: it made me want to see 'Wuthering Heights' recast with Mason as Heathcliff.

As this is a multi-generational saga (something which George Eliot did much better in 'Middlemarch'), several of the main roles in this film are split among two actors apiece: child actors in the prologue, adults in the main narrative. The prologue of this film features a very well-written scene, establishing Tom Tulliver as wilful and bully-ragging from an early age, and young Philip Wakeham as decent and thoughtful. Through hard labour, Philip has earned a halfpenny: Tom tries to bully it away from him, but is unwilling to take the coin by brute force: he wants Philip to *give* it to him. All the child actors in this movie, male and female, are talented and attractive. Unfortunately, all of the children speak their dialogue in posh plummy-voiced accents that are utterly unlike the accents of the actors and actresses who play those same roles as adults. This discrepancy calls attention to the staginess of the material. Regrettably, none of the later scenes are as good as this prologue.

The climax features a crowd of labourers in a rainstorm, much better paced and photographed than the earlier scenes. But modern viewers (in Britain, at least) can no longer take this sort of material seriously. By now, practically every British comedian has done a "trouble at t' mill, squire" comedy routine, parodying precisely this subject matter, so I had difficulty watching this movie with a straight face.

The character actress Martita Hunt is good in a small role, but the opening credits (in that Old English typeface) misspell her forename as 'Marita'. I'll rate this dull movie 3 points out of 10: one point apiece for James Mason's performance, the early scene with the children, and the authentic Victorian typesetting in that auctioneer's handbill.

George Eliot is widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the history of English literature, yet she is undiscovered country as far as the cinema- on both sides of the Atlantic- is concerned. Believe it or not, "The Mill on the Floss" is one of only two English-language feature films based upon her writing. The other is "A Simple Twist of Fate" from 1994, which took the basic plot of "Silas Marner" and transferred it from 19th century England to contemporary America. (There were several adaptations of her novels during the silent era, and a Spanish-language version of "The Mill on the Floss" was made in Mexico in 1940). This neglect of Eliot may be due to the length and complexity of her novels, making them more suitable for adaptations as television series, but length and complexity have not deterred film-makers from tackling many other 19th-century novelists. (Think how many films have been based on the work of Charles Dickens).

This website describes the story as "Romeo and Juliet in 1930s England", which is not really accurate. The film may have been made in the 1930s, but it is set around a hundred years earlier. The comparison with "Romeo and Juliet" is only partially accurate. The story may feature two lovers from feuding families, but Eliot's plot is more complex than Shakespeare's.

The "Floss" of the title is a (fictitious) river somewhere in the East Midlands. The two lovers are Maggie Tulliver, whose father Edward is the owner of the titular mill, and Philip Wakem, the son of a lawyer. The feud between the families arises when Edward Tulliver brings a lawsuit against a neighbouring landowner over water rights and Philip's father, James, acts for his opponent. After losing the lawsuit and being made bankrupt, Edward makes his family swear to have nothing to do with the Wakems, which puts Maggie in the position where she must decide between her family- her brother Tom wholeheartedly supports their father- and her lover. The complexities arise when Maggie also finds herself attracted to another man, Stephen Guest, who returns and encourages her attraction, even though he is engaged to her cousin Lucy.

Eliot's story is a good one on the printed page, but it does not really work in the context of this film, possibly because it is less than 90 minutes in length and a longer running time would have been needed to do justice to all the complexities of the novel. The film is in black-and-white- in 1936 colour was an expensive luxury- and lacks the visual attractiveness of the modern British "heritage cinema" style normally used in modern adaptations of the Victorian classics. The acting is unremarkable, with possibly the best contribution coming from a young James Mason as Tom, something of a hothead and unreasoning in his hatred of Philip, who has never done the Tulliver family any injury, but nevertheless capable and possessed of his own sense of honour and integrity. One thing the film does surprisingly well is the recreation of the great flood at the end of the story; the cinema technicians of the thirties were more skilled in the creation of special effects than we sometimes imagine. (The fire scenes in "In Old Chicago" are another example). The film, however, has little more than curiosity value for modern audiences. 5/10.