A short sad story of how an ageing Don Juan seduced his nineteen-year-old orphan charge Tristana; how the girl became a virtual prisoner in the man's house; how she met a young spirited artist, fell in love and began to dream of escape, happiness and freedom. You think it is a tiresome piece of romance with a scandalous flavour? Then you are wrong ( Read more... )

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I have got here three posts about adaptations of Pérez Galdós for cinema. The first one is Luis Buñuel's extraordinary film Nazarín (1959). I saw the film a year ago, wrote this post, lost the draft, then read the book and found the post. My first impressions here as they were, unadorned ( Read more... )

The Lost Moment (1947) is a film directed by Martin Gabel, with Robert Cummings and Susan Hayward, loosely based on Henry James's novella The Aspern Papers. It was the second time that the American writer's work was adapted for cinema (the first adaptation being Berkely Square in 1933).

Let me remind you what the original novella is about.

( Synopsis of the whole story )

Well, bye for now, dear Governess, Quint, Miss Jessel, Miles, Flora and company! It's been nice meeting you, but all things must come to their end, including the series of The Turn of the Screw posts in this blog! (I can almost hear a huge sigh of relief from whoever has been reading them, lol.) On a serious note, it has indeed been a fine ( Read more... )

I wanted to watch this film very much, because, you know, Joffrey de Peyrac as Peter Quint is weird enough to make one at least mildly interested! (Sorry, I meant Robert Hossein. :))

Le tour d'écrou was filmed for TV in 1975* by the director Raymond Rouleau (who also adapted another Henry James novella, The Aspern Papers, in 1971, and directed The ( Read more... )

Tim Fywell's The Turn of the Screw (2009) is the latest adaptation of Henry James's famous novella and a BBC production. Still, we all know that BBC turned away from literal adaptations of the classics years ago, preferring to give some obligatory twist to stories and some provocation. Such is the film in question. It may be quite difficult to ( Read more... )

Those Italian adaptations of British-American classics are... unusual. Such is Marco Serafini's film Il Mistero del Lago that was inspired by The Turn of the Screw.


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The years 2000 have produced The Turn of the Screw screen adaptations that are, in a word, strange. Such is In a Dark Place (2006). Despite the participation of the famous actresses Leelee Sobieski (as the heroine) and Tara Fitzgerald (as Ms Grose), the film is almost universally acclaimed as a failure (see reviews anywhere in the Internet). I am ( Read more... )

As I said, the year 1999 produced two adaptations of The Turn of the Screw: one 'classical' by Ben Bolt, another 'provocative' by Antonio Aloy. Today it is about the second one. Presence of Mind is a debut by a young Spanish director; there are two versions, dubbed in English and in Spanish. The Spanish title is El Celo. The film features Lauren ( Read more... )