If you're expecting the collieries and dukeries of north Nottinghamshire, no, this is a very Parisian version of D H Lawrence's landscape. The hunt, seemingly peopled by orchestral musicians, chases wild boar, the mines are remarkably clean and Wragby Hall is a chateau.
But don't dismiss this film - the themes of class, love and fidelity work in a French forest too, and a great piece of drama unfolds.
English actor Leo Genn plays the war-crippled Sir Clifford, his slow English accent increasingly infuriating as it signals a stubborn, chilling determination to maintain the class divisions of the hunting aristocracy ("The gong has gone for dinner and you haven't even dressed!"), and a dismissive indifference to the exploitation of workers and the landscape.
Lady Constance struggles to overcome her tenseness at being tutoyer-ed by Mellors, the manly gamekeeper (played by Italian Erno Crisa). But away from him her frustration shows as she restlessly rides her horse in circles. When Sir Clifford complains that she is late for the Pouring of the Tea, she snaps. "It's not a religious ceremony! The world won't collapse if I don't serve the tea!"
And if you're hoping for a bit of Bertolucci here, I'm afraid you'll have to do with the unbuttoning of the top button of Constance's blouse, but this is the wonderful Danielle Darrieux. Her expressions as she helps Mellor to push her husband's wheelchair through the woodland mud are sensuous enough for anybody.
