Testament of Youth: BBC Films announces a new dramatisation

[Ghazala]

Who of a certain age could ever forget that extraordinarily luminous performance by Cheryl Campbell.

[Moriaty]

I saw the film last week with a friend who is not a WW1 buff but had read the book and seen the BBC TV series, we both gave the film 2 marks out of 5.

[MichaelBully]

Appreciate all the recent posts and photos. Glad that this thread is still surviving longer than the film.

Mark Bostridge ( Vera Brittain biographer ) and Rosie Alison the producer of 'Testament of Youth' will be speaking at the Oxford literary Festival on 25th March 2015

http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2015/wednesday-25/vera-brittain-and-the-first-world-war

Virago Publishing website has a page about the filming of 'Testament of Youth'

http://www.virago.co.uk/testament-of-youth-book-to-film-rosie-alison-producer/

Regards

[Simon Mills]

Saw it a couple of weeks ago...

My thoughts on this one are mixed. The film pretty well covers the standard prerequisites for any WWI movie that tries to depict the horrors of trench warfare, but having read the book I wasn't so impressed with the film's overall treatment of Vera Brittain's memoir.

Admittedly it has been quite a while since I read it, but I for one don't recall Vera finding her brother Edward near-dead at Etaples, nor as far as I can remember did George Catlin feature in Vera's life until after the war, yet the movie depicts him as having known Roland Leighton and being present at his death. It's all added for dramatic effect of course, but unfortunately huge swathes of Vera's service abroad in Malta are also passed over completely and while I accept that with a limited amount of screen time something inevitably has to give, it is a shame that rather than stick to the known facts the script instead resorts to the more hackneyed attempt to create a bit of love interest.

Don't get me wrong, the film isn't dire but lets just say that if I was handing out the nominations then this one wouldn't be getting my tip for best adapted screenplay.

On the other hand, at least the film was part funded by the BBC, which means that they will be screening it before long, so if you missed it at the theatres then it's not the end of the world.

S.

[MichaelBully]

Completely agree Simon. I think that a number of people familiar with 'Testament of Youth ' were frustrated by the distortion of the historical memoir as it were. The implication being that the book is either not powerful enough or that the average audience are too dull witted to understand the depth of Vera's grief at the losses of those men closest to her so need to have it spelled out to them.

For example Vera waiting to spend Christmas with Roland Leighton whilst he's home on leave, only to get a telephone call to tell her that he died of wounds in France on 23rd December 1915 must have been devastating. In the movie they have to also add the fiction that Vera and Roland were actually going to get married then, just in case anyone watching didn't comprehend how traumatic this would have been

Regards

[The Scorer]

The film does seem to have had a very short run, given the subject and the publicity given to it before and after it's launch.

I've looked at two of the big chains (Cineworld and Vue) to see where they're showing it at the moment. The former have only one cinema with the film, which is in Weymouth at lunchtime. The later are a bit better, with six spread around the country, but the times I have seen so far seem to be at lunchtime or late at night.

I haven't seen it, and I guess that I won't now, as it's not being shown anywhere in South Wales. I do have the book, though, and it's next on the reading list .... I'll give it a go and see how I get on.

[Le_Treport]

...and yet I keep reading how Shirley Williams thinks it was an excellent representation of her mother's life/book.

[MichaelBully]

I attended a talk on the movie in Oxford in November with Sea Jane. Among the speakers were Vera Brittain's biographer Mark Bostridge and Shirley Williams. It seems that Shirley Williams took a lot of persuading to endorse the project but got won over.

Shirley Williams' still spoke highly of the TV series from 1979.

Only just realised that the 'Daily Mail' had an article on the film and mentioned the fact that Edward Brittain's possible homosexuality and alleged threat of court martial was left out of the movie. ( Well it's not actually in the book ) .

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2881799/Testament-tortured-youth-Vera-Brittain-s-heartbreaking-WWI-memoir-love-loss-major-movie-s-WON-T-hero-brother-s-suicide-dash-guns-gay-affair-secret.html

As for new revelations er hello Mark Bostridge first raised this 20 years ago , though to the best of my knowledge the first reference of Edward Brittain's possible homosexuality in print. was made in 1987 in a book written by John Catlin, Vera's son and brother to Shirley Williams, titled 'A Family Quartet -Vera Brittain and Family'.

Regards

...and yet I keep reading how Shirley Williams thinks it was an excellent representation of her mother's life/book.

[Simon Mills]

I never realised that Shirley Williams had originally been a bit reluctant to endorse the film.

To be honest I can understand how she may have felt. Knowing what filmmakers can be like (because I am one) people should be wary of having their family stories or secrets up on the silver screen for all the world to see, because the simple fact is that once an author signs over the screen rights to their books then they usually have little control over the adaptation. At the end of the day it is the screenwriter's job to create drama for a cinema audience, and depending on the overall treatment of any historical project, more often than not they will supplement fact with fiction as seems best to them. Shakespeare was no different...

Screenwriters have always taken the occasional bit of dramatic licence when it comes to adapting historical films, but as long as long as they don't take too many liberties with the history or twist the facts out of all proportion then I can live with it -- just!

[MichaelBully]

We seem to be in agreement Simon.

Also there is the argument that if 'Testament of Youth- the movie' is going to be made anyway, then perhaps having Shirley Williams and Mark Bostridge involved could have stopped even more digressions from the historical memoir.

I suppose as a historian I just find something instinctively wrong about deliberately tampering with the historical narrative of 'Testament of Youth' . But that's just my opinion. It may be that Shirley Williams and Mark Bostridge also decided that a movie for all it's drawbacks might ensure greater focus on the book. Besides Vera herself wanted the part women played in the Great War and also the loss of her closest male companions acknowledged, and the movie had such a potential.

However none of my work colleagues who regularly check out latest films has mentioned 'Testament of Youth'. And we can draw the conclusion that 'Testament of Youth' the movie has so far has not led to a great surge in interest in the book from a new audience.

There is still the option of the movie being shown in the USA . To the best of my knowledge nothing has been confirmed yet.

Regards.

I never realised that Shirley Williams had originally been a bit reluctant to endorse the film.

To be honest I can understand how she may have felt. Knowing what filmmakers can be like (because I am one) people should be wary of having their family stories or secrets up on the silver screen for all the world to see, because the simple fact is that once an author signs over the screen rights to their books then they usually have little control over the adaptation. At the end of the day it is the screenwriter's job to create drama for a cinema audience, and depending on the overall treatment of any historical project, more often than not they will supplement fact with fiction as seems best to them. Shakespeare was no different...

Screenwriters have always taken the occasional bit of dramatic licence when it comes to adapting historical films, but as long as long as they don't take too many liberties with the history or twist the facts out of all proportion then I can live with it -- just!

[seaJane]

It will be shown at the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford on Feb 28th (I think) and March 1st. I'm hoping a friend can get me tickets for the 1st as I shall be in Oxford that weekend anyhow.

[MichaelBully]

What's the verdict then SJ ?! Also curious to know what the turnout has been to see the film in Oxford.. So far one of my pals has reported seeing the film in a packed house but nearly everyone else has mentioned how few people were in the audience.

Another link re Mark Bostridge being interviewed about 'Testament of Youth' and the making of the film.

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/entertainment/cinema-film/testament_of_youth_is_a_fitting_tribute_says_vera_brittain_biographer_1_3907260

Regards, Michael Bully

It will be shown at the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford on Feb 28th (I think) and March 1st. I'm hoping a friend can get me tickets for the 1st as I shall be in Oxford that weekend anyhow.

[seaJane]

Hi Michael,

The UPP is not the world's largest cinema; it wasn't packed, but then again it was definitely more than two-thirds full. A Sunday evening may not have been the most popular slot and it could be that the Saturday showing was busier.

You have to remember that *ahem* I have not actually read 'Testament of Youth,' nor do I recall watching the 1979 dramatisation.[**]

And now you've picked yourself off the floor:-

1. I thought the film was excellent: hung together well, with a good story arc; pointed up the contrasts between home life and war life and the different ways that young and old and inexperienced and experienced reacted, without labouring said point; I loved the look of it, the cinematography very good especially in some of the big sweeps of landscape and in matching scenery flashbacks to the poetry (and managed to blur out 21st-century Oxford somehow!)

2. I also thought the acting exceptional: partly due to the fact that I didn't know most of the actors. I have an extremely good memory for film and TV casts, and on this occasion was spared the "oh that's Helena Bonham-Carter in another frock" syndrome that usually afflicts me, despite the fact that there are some well-known names in the cast.

3. Changes to the book: well, as you will have gathered, I won't know about those except from what other people on the Forum have said. But then again, same people have also commented that Vera Brittain adjusted the book at George Catlin's request; so if she can change life, I see no reason why a screen-writer can't make (what seem to me to be relatively minor) changes in her memoir.

Nit-picks:

4. Settings: there was a certain amount of subdued laughter about Somerville (not from me; I don't make a noise in films except when I'm meant to!) Would that it had been so medieval and romantic, instead of the Victorian echoing corridors with rooms off them.... Friend and I had an interesting time trying to work out the college afterwards; we came to the conclusion that it was probably Oriel, which was indeed where Somerville decamped to while their college was an extension to the Radcliffe Infirmary. But the interview could very easily have been filmed in the correct college

5. Other half got the giggles about the railway and the trains, as only he would (possibly) - when disguising Keighley (Keighley & Worth Valley Railway) as London Charing Cross [sic: should have been just Charing Cross] there was a sign for platform 8 when Charing X has only 6.

But that said - the nitpicks were very minor, and the main thing was that all three of us were picked up and swept away on the story, rather than being constantly dragged back by the nit-picks. I'd go and see it again. More importantly, it may at last drive me to read the book!

sJ

[**] Which is a bit odd, considering I spent most of November 1979 at university interviews, including, er, Somerville; and the rest of the month (and about three weeks into December) waiting to hear whether I'd got in (I was the last one in the school to hear). To be honest I don't think I had succumbed to the Great War infection at that point - my reading consisted solely of Leon Wolff's 'n Flanders Fields'.

[The Scorer]

I'll be honest and say that I didn't managed to read the book after all.

I have had (and still have) more pressing things to read and, as it was a library book and I'd already renewed it once, I though that it was only right that I should return it, which I have.

I would like to see the film, though ... I will have an opportunity to do so next month, so here's hoping!

[bruce]

I am still trying to see the film. It seems to be shown at odd lunch times in odd cinemas. I did find that it was to be shown at Theatre Clwyd, but when phoned to book tickets for last Sunday, was told that it was fully booked for the two, five and eight o'clock showings. Does this mean that it is popular? The only place I can find it being shown within a reasonable distance is over in Mold on March 17th, but that is a ten o'clock showing, advertised as a mother and baby showing. Is this really the sort of film Mums might want to take babies to see?

I am getting resigned to the thought of seeing it either on the BBC or when it comes out on DVD.

Bruce

[seaJane]

Bruce said: "advertised as a mother and baby showing. Is this really the sort of film Mums might want to take babies to see?"

I think it's more about getting the mothers out of the house and able to see something than taking the babies specifically - who might even sleep through it, but if not ... !!! The gunfire noise is if anything muted, very effective when it is a constant low rumbling at the beginning of the film.

There are some battle wound scenes whose grue quotient I wouldn't like to comment on as I seem to be more impervious to it since working in a medical library. The camera panned round fairly swiftly, and other half, who is usually squeamish, didn't twitch. The film is certified 12 and I can imagine a sensitive 12-year-old finding one or two scenes in the hospital in France disturbing; but, come to that, my 56-year-old friend passes out on stage blood, so I wouldn't take her either.

The scene that really sticks in my mind is when Vera buys a paper and opens it to pages and pages of casualties. She stands there reading as the rain falls on the pages and into the puddles, and when the camera pulls back from the puddles they are puddles in a trench, not in Oxford.

sJ

[seaJane]

Only just realised that the 'Daily Mail' had an article on the film and mentioned the fact that Edward Brittain's possible homosexuality and alleged threat of court martial was left out of the movie. ( Well it's not actually in the book ) .

I thought it was possible to read a hint of it into Edward's reaction to Victor's last letter in the film, though I may have been over-reading things here. As David Jones said on the BBC radio dramatisation of "In Parenthesis", it's things adaptors put in rather than what they cut out that annoy me, and you can't really say that the new film adaptors have added stuff, thank goodness. Is there any book-to-film adaptation ever that includes all the book?

[Ghazala]

I thought it was possible to read a hint of it into Edward's reaction to Victor's last letter in the film, though I may have been over-reading things here. As David Jones said on the BBC radio dramatisation of "In Parenthesis", it's things adaptors put in rather than what they cut out that annoy me, and you can't really say that the new film adaptors have added stuff, thank goodness. Is there any book-to-film adaptation ever that includes all the book?

I came to the same conclusion seaJane, that there was a hint in Edward's reaction. Am I getting confused though as I thought Edward had possibly been closest in that manner to Geoffrey Thurlow. Reading Vera's letters letters to Edward gave me the impression that she herself felt real warmth towards Geoffrey. Hope you get to read 'Testament' soon. I think you would enjoy 'Letters from a Lost Generation'. I refer to it a lot.

Eddie

[seaJane]

Confusion may well be mine Eddie! I will seek out "Letters from a Lost Generation" too.

When I read "Grey Ghosts and Voices" by May Wedderburn Cannan I was so moved by it that I think I may have built somewhat of a resistance to reading another woman's memoirs; but I must overcome that (I in turn can recommend that title, by the way).

seaJane

[Ghazala]

This thread has induced me once again to dust off my old copy of 'Testament' and start flicking through it (not sure I will read it completely all again though). I found this particular passage very moving...

Vera Brittain visited the cemetery where Edward is buried in 1921......

"How strange, how strange it is,” I reflected, as I looked, with an indefinable pain stabbing my chest, for Edward’s name among those neat rows of oblong stones, “that all my past years-the childhood of which I have no one, now, to share the remembrance, the bright fields at Uppingham, the restless months in Buxton, the hopes and ambitions of Oxford, the losses and long-drawn agonies of the War- should be buried in this grave on the top of a mountain, in the lofty silence, the singing unearthly stillness, of these remote forests ! At every turn of every future road I shall want to ask him questions, to recall to him memories, and he will not be there. Who could have dreamed that the little boy born in such uneventful security to an ordinary provincial family would end his brief days in a battle among the high pine-woods of an unknown Italian plateau?”

Close to the wall, in the midst of a group of privates from the Sherwood Foresters who had all died on June 15th, I found his name “Captain E. H. Brittain, M.C., 11th Notts. and Derby Regt. Killed in action June 15th, 1918. Aged 22″ In Venice I had bought some rosebuds and a small asparagus fern in a pot; the shopkeeper had told me that it would last a long time, and I planted it in the rough grass beside the grave.

“How trivial my life has been since the War" I thought, as I smoothed the earth over the fern. “How mean they are, these little strivings, these petty ambitions of us who are left, now that all of you are gone! How can the future achieve, through us, the somber majesty of the past? Oh, Edward, you’re so lonely up here; why can’t I stay for ever and keep your grave company, far from the world and its vain endeavours to rebuild civilisation, on this Plateau where alone there is dignity and peace?”

But when at last I came from the cemetery, the child, who had been playing with his father near the car, ran up to me holding out a bunch of scabious and white clover that he had picked by the roadside.

“For the little signorina,” he said.

[Ghazala]

When I read "Grey Ghosts and Voices" by May Wedderburn Cannan I was so moved by it that I think I may have built somewhat of a resistance to reading another woman's memoirs; but I must overcome that (I in turn can recommend that title, by the way).

seaJane

Thank you sJ. It is on my list now of books read.

Eddie

[seaJane]

Do let me know what you think. It's not in print, and the copies available aren't going particularly cheap (but not massively expensive either, in my opinion).

[Ghazala]

Do let me know what you think. It's not in print, and the copies available aren't going particularly cheap (but not massively expensive either, in my opinion).

Between £18.00 and £30.00 on Abe Books. Bargain.

[Ghazala]

Digressing a moment... May Wedderburn Cannan wrote on 11th November 1918... "And then across the table G. lifted her glass to me and said "Absent". I did not know her story nor she mine, but I drank to my friends who were dead and to my friends who, wounded, imprisoned, battered, shaken, exhausted, were alive in a new, and a terrible world...".

I'm hooked sJ. Book ordered from Abe Books and will arrive next week. Many thanks.

[seaJane]

Enjoy!