Some of you might recall I was reading John Galsworthy's A Man of Property back in the summer, before watching some of the original Forsyte Saga TV series; this following the happy discovery of the complete box set when I was sorting out the Tinker's store of DVDs, and it was all very lovely. I'm not quite sure where John Galsworthy's literary reputation rests these days but I thoroughly enjoyed the book, as much as I had back in the 1960s, if not more.
'Just off to the summerhouse,' I would say, where we had installed an old TV (mostly to watch summer sports) and I would settle myself into the comfy chair for another episode.
Summer 'hygge' now I think about it, and is it not a little reminiscent of Fleur and Jon's trysting place in the second series.
I instantly slipped back into that easy familiarity with the old characters...Eric Porter as Soames, Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Susan Hampshire as Fleur, and though I had ordered the newer 2002 version I couldn't see how it would possibly replace the original in my affections. I'm thinking it's all about time and place and resurrected memories too; 1967 Sunday nights and the whole family hunkered down to watch.
Anyway the new box set arrived and it sat there, until finally, a few weeks ago I decided to make a start and of course I loved it.
I now have a wonderful palimpsest of Forsytery in my imagination, Damian Lewis adding a new layer to the role of Soames, bringing something unique and ultimately deeply moving to the character. In an interview given at the time Damian Lewis has this to say about Soames...
He's fastidious, smug, and conceited. But he's also a person capable of love, though unfortunately unable to express it in a satisfactory way, especially to a young woman. He understands life in terms of contracts, property, and duty. And if any of those things is threatened, he falls apart. He can be cruel and small-minded, but that's often generated by this repressed passion that he's unable to express fully, or successfully, or healthily.
Inevitably I started to make comparisons with Henry VIII given Damian Lewis's recent Wolf Hall triumph, and it occurred to me that the same frustrations applied... the power and control, the property, the sense of duty, the building of new houses, the possession of a woman, the obsession with a male heir. Whilst Ann Boleyn most certainly knew her power over Henry, poor Irene was cowed and terrified. There was sufficient menace for Soames to feel dangerous and unpredictable, whilst allowing those chinks of weakness and vulnerability to be revealed. Though not quite chopping off her head, Soames Forsyte comes very close to destroying Irene, played brilliantly by Gina McKee.
Producer and Director Christopher Menaul says this about the casting of Irene...
'We were looking for someone with a real sense of mystique.Obviously we wanted someone beautiful and sexy, because it's Irene's physical attractiveness as much as anything that disrupts the Forsyte family, but she had to be mysterious as well. Part of the appeal of Irene is that you want to unwrap the enigma. Gina has a natural elegance, what I would call a period look -- the sort of style that you see in paintings from the turn of the century, somewhat aloof and untouchable. We saw many very good actresses who could have played the role, but Gina has this quality -- this hauteur -- that makes her right for Irene.'
Mission accomplished and if Gina McKee hasn't played the part of Virginia Woolf in anything yet then surely a trick has been missed. I was constantly reminded of her in the later episodes set after the Great War.
The settings were sumptuous, though the nadir for me has to be the house at Robin Hill. In the book designed by the young architect Philip Bosinney as a home for Soames and Irene, but of course also the architect of their demise and the floundering of the marriage. It's cutting edge for the time, an Arts and Crafts /Art Nouveau haven, a Liberty/style delight, the decoration and costumes superb. It was interesting to discover that this more recent series had been filmed in the north of England, Merseyside, Cheshire and Manchester using Keighley railway station for the train scenes, but what about Robin Hill I wondered.
I found the answers here in the very informative Masterpiece Theatre production notes...
...the home commissioned by Soames from Phil Bosinney clearly suggests that Bosinney is ahead of his time -- not Art Nouveau, certainly not classical, and beyond arts and crafts. 'There are only three real arts-and-crafts exteriors in the North of England, but even they didn't look strong enough, different enough, for Robin Hill," Fineren explains. "I showed photographs to Chris Menaul, and he said we'd just have to build half the set and digitize the rest."
Robin Hill it would seem is a composite of four different architects, 'American Frank Lloyd Wright, the Scottish Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the English Charles Voysey and Edward Godwin,' as the designer explains...
'I tried to some extent to be faithful to Galsworthy's descriptions of Robin Hill in the books, but actually they're not at all practical. There are too many columns crammed into the inner courtyard -- he talks about eight, and I've cut it down to four, otherwise it would have been too crowded. I've stuck to the key things -- there are no interior doors, for instance, which some of the characters find a bit shocking, and was something that Wright liked to do. He just put curtains across interior doorways. The main feature of the interior is the flowing space, which is something Galsworthy talks about... Robin Hill is all to do with freedom -- freedom from London, freedom from convention -- and that's expressed through the sense of light and space that you get nowhere else in the story."
And that sense of freedom is most certainly evident. How unlikely-a home it would have been for Irene and Soames given his wish to imprison and isolate her in rural oblivion, but how perfect it is for the two Jolyons, old and young and family when differences are reconciled, and ultimately for Irene when those planets finally align.
The final scene, when an aged Soames Forsyte delivers the Degas painting ('worthless' says Soames...if he only knew) to Irene, now living alone at Robin Hill was amongst the most moving I have seen since...well since Ann Boleyn's execution in Wolf Hall now I come to think of it. I wanted to weep for Soames and for Irene, and for the lasting damage wrought on the next generation by their blighted love, and the pair of them knew it only too well.
So finally at last eventually I have caught up with the new Forsyte Saga, only thirteen years later, and a not far off fifty years since we all watched that first series, but what a wonderful reading and watching project this has been. I can highly recommend.
If you have seen this second series I would love to know your thoughts...
And perhaps you have read all the books...
Maybe I will read on...
Recent Comments