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actor212

I happened to catch the Alec Guinness version on Easter, Lance, and thought of you.

It was...horrid, but then I was never that big a Dickens fan.

Lance

actor, did you watch both parts? I saw that one a long time ago. I don't remember much of it, except that Derek Jacobi was too elderly, chubby, diffident, and ineffectual as Arthur. There was no reason for Little Dorrit to fall in love with him. He was her father without the vanity. Arthur is supposed to be prone to depression but not to inaction. He's the only active, grown up and unselfihs male Amy's ever encountered. Matthew Macfayden is much better casting. I'm not sure the current PBS/BBC production is much better though. It's a lot easier to take it in 10 minute doses online than to sit through a four and a half hour movie.

actor212

Lance,

They showed both parts in one four-hour (at least it felt that long) scouring of my braniwaves.

Funny you mention Derek Jacobi and his relationship with Amy. I had this "ick" moment when I realized what little Amy was discussing with Arthur, precisely because it was a little like me asking one of my daughter's classmates (she's twenty) to marry me.

Only much much worse, of course. I had to refresh myself by reminding myself this was a step up from the era of Henry the VIII and "The Other Boleyn Girl" (which has yet to be filmed properly, but would probably end up being censored as kiddie porn if done truthfully to the book).

I sat thru it, waiting, watching, wanting for something to happen to justify what Amy was going through. About the only scene that really stuck in my head (apart from the ick moment) was the dinner when Dorrit has his breakdown and slides into the delusion of being back in The Marshes again.

Lance

Claire Foy is a much more dynamic Amy than whoever played her in the Guinnes-Jacobi films. And it's no surprise that her Amy's drawn to Arthur because, besides the fact that he looks like Matthew Macfayden (who himself looks closer to 30 than to 40), is the only other dynamic character in the story who isn't a clown or a monster. The age difference doesn't matter between the last two adults in London. But it's funny. The reason Arthur's oblivious at first to Amy's falling in love with him isn't the age difference. It's that he's in love with someone else, Pet Meagles, who's about Amy's age, and around her Arthur is aware of being old enough to be her father. That's what keeps him from declaring his love to Pet. His rival for Pet's affections, Henry Gowan, is a younger man but also an obviously inferior man, selfish, careless, purposeless, and above all incapable of love. Pet is making a big mistake in preferring Gowan to Arthur, but Arthur knows why she does and he backs off. I don't remember if in the novel when he finally realizes he's in love with Amy the same worries about the age difference crops up, but even if they do he gets over them in an instant. What I think this means is that Dickens and his audience probably felt something of an "ick" at the thought of an older man marrying a much younger woman, but I think they were more used to making exceptions---the sheer number of people who did not make it out of their 20s and 30s guaranteed that the marriage pool included lots of widows and widowers, and a 25 year old widow with three children would more likely think of herself as having more in common with a 40 year old who'd been around the block than with a man her own age who was barely more than a kid in outlook and behavior. Amy isn't a widow, of course, but she's been the "mother" in her family since she was old enough to go out to work. In the new production, when a decent and likable young man Amy's own age proposes her, you can see at once that he is fact way too "young" for her and there's no way she could keep herself from thinking of him as a mere boy.

Ironically, the guilty secret in Arthur's family arises from the fact that his mother was older than his father.

Mac

I love the way you portray the relationship between you and your son.

actor212

Sarah Pickering played Amy in the Guinness version.

One thing I did like about the story (and why I suspect Encore played it at weekend) was the "plus ca change, plus ce meme chose" aspect of the entire town being swindled by Merdle, sort of Bernie Madoff in aspic, and how that event pulls the cobwebs away from so many frauds in the family. That's what happens when a tragedy befalls a house of cards so carefully built, as the suicides of at least two of Madoff's victims has shown.

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