A DOLL'S HOUSE

UK, 1972, 90 minutes, Colour.
Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Richardson, Denholm Elliot, Anna Massey, Edith Evans.
Directed by Patrick Garland.

Ibsen's play is most interesting and, in these days of equality for women, most forceful. What must have been its impact 100 years ago? Claire Bloom's performance is well worth seeing, a compelling change from silly, pretty doll to independent woman. Anthony Hopkins as the insensitively arrogant husband is also excellent. A pity, then, that the film is basically a filmed play. Visual techniques are well done, but in a theatre, the time effect is so different from a cinema. A three-act play has intervals allowing the audience to assimilate character changes. Three acts in 90 continuous minutes is too rapid for the drama to be as convincing as intended.

1. How much was the impact of the film affected by the fact that this was very much a filmed play - confined sets,, stage-style performances, the lack of intervals between acts to distance the time-span of the action?

2. Considering that Ibsen wrote last century, how much ahead of its time was the play and its message?

3. How valid and significant a dram on women is A Doll's House? What impact does its theme have today? (More or less than when it was written).

4. How did Claire Bloom's performance carry the film?

5. Although set in Norway, how universal is the plot and theme?

6. What kind of woman was Norah and how did the film show this: the initial ride, and return from shopping; the talk about money and Norah's performing tricks for it; Norah as giddy - dresses. parties. dancing; her love for her husband; the situation regarding Krogstat and the loan; her motives. her predicament, her inability to tell her husband; her love for her children relationship with the nurse; her love for Dr. Rank, the impact of his imminent death; the encounter with Krogstat, her attempts to persuade her husband; her friendship with. Kristine and the contrast of her own life and marriage; the help of Kristine and the possibility of all being smoothed over happily; the tarantella the party. being decorative and tasteful for her husband; the confrontation and the opening of her eyes. the change for her; her inability to see her husband's principled viewpoint.

7. What kind of man was Torvald - his work, his principles, ruthlessness, coldness, possessing of his wife and controlling her, his inability to think of her as an equal?

8. How evil a man was Krogstat? The sequence of his meal with his son? His manoeuvring of Norah and Kristine? His relationship with Kristine in the past? His change of heart?

9. Kristine as a person, in relation to Norah, in relation to Krogstat. The Kristine-Krogstat? sub-plot as an echo of the main plot?

10. Dr Rank - his place in the film? Friendship, the meaning of life and living and death?

11. The impact of the final encounter in the film? How telling? How important for the theme of the film and its message? The technique of filming, especially the use of close-ups; Torvald's immediate reaction, thought of himself and his reputation, his savage attack on Norah and her irresponsibility, his wanting her away from him and the children; his superficial sudden change on the good news. His trying to go back on everything; the complete selfishness, pharisaic hypocrisy of the man; his inability to feel for or appreciate Norah; Norah's explanation of why she was leaving - how convincing? Her self-understanding? Her insight into the nature of love and marriage? How was it possible for her to walk out on her children as well as her husband? What future did she have?