THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY
UK, 1970, 96 minutes, Colour.
Joanna Shimkus, Franco Nero, Maurice Denham, Kay Walsh, Fay Compton, Honor Blackman, Mark Burns, Norman Bird.
Directed by Christopher Miles.
The Virgin and the Gypsy is a D. H. Lawrence short story. The film version is an attempt to transfer the Lawrence philosophy (or faith) on to the screen. For this purpose, the original story is embroidered and enlarged. A number of Lawrence experts have judged the film successful in its aims.
It is more accessible to the public than Women in Love, with which it has a lot in common, in its period atmosphere and in the drives and yearnings of its heroines.
But The Virgin and the Gypsy is more direct and straightforward and 1s worthwhile seeing to gain some basis for understanding Lawrence. Director Christopher Miles (brother of Sarah Miles) was about thirty when he made this film. He has captured the narrow Victorian bickering of the English village and the clash between this way of life and the emancipated girl of the 20's. Love, (something on a different level from appetite), is a solution and we find Yvette confronted by the elemental gypsy as well as the conflict of outlooks on life between her family and Mrs Fawcett and Major Stephenson.
The issues come to a symbolic climax and Yvette has to make her choices about her own life. Joanna Shimkus gives a restrained but vital performance as Yvette and is supported by a strong cast of English character actors. Photography is beautiful.
For those interested in Lawrence's formative influence on twentieth century thinking, this is a good introduction.
1. D. H. Lawrence excelled at descriptions of the English countryside in which his characters played out their dramas. How effectively did this film impress its setting on the audience - the village, the rectory, the green, the weir (and progress), the water?
2. What did Yvette and her sister represent in terms of the modern woman? Why was Yvette frustrated? How much emancipation had she achieved, what was lacking?
3. Why was Yvette fascinated by the weir - it was modern, dangerous, hemmed in, and water was released as it broke its barriers?
4. How effectively were the scenes of clerical life portrayed? What was so narrow and constricting about life in the rectory and in the village? Why were the family immersed in trivia, even in their code of behaviour and morality? Why were the older generation frustrated?
5. How saintly was the minister? How much did he resent his wife and how did this affect him? Why did he compromise for peace in the house?
6. How was the narrowness of Victorianism conveyed - the concert, the can-can, Yvette's dress, the Fawcett's?
7. Why did Yvette want to fall violently in love? Why did she feel she needed to? Why was she bored, suffering? Why did she resent the family's implying that she was from her mother's bad stock?
8. Why was she fascinated by the gypsy? What mystery did he represent for her? Why did she fantasies about him?
9. How real was the gypsy? Was his character developed in the film or was he just an emblem? A seller, pursuing her, a romantic figure on a horse, a sensuous knight?
10. Why were Mrs Fawcett and Colonel Stephens on introduced? How did their 1920's world comment on the village life and contrast with the world of the gypsies? Their world was cars, modern homes, cigarettes, Charleston, divorce, bathing and not worrying about public opinion.
11. How did their world appeal to Yvette? How did she feel part of it?
12. The screenplay makes the distinction between desire and appetite. Which is superficial? Which is deep?
13. Was the consummation that of love or appetite? How real Was it? Why was it made to the breaking of the weir? Was this symbolism overdone?
14. What was the significance of Grandma drowning in her home but in the floodwaters?
15. What had Yvette learned by the end of the film? What had she achieved? What would she do?
16. Does Lawrence give insights into human nature, love and sexuality? Does he offer substantial answers?
