Sons and Lovers (1960)
Directed by Jack Cardiff

Film Review

There is hardly any doubt that Jack Cardiff is the greatest of all British cinematographers, but his dozen or so offerings as a film director are largely forgotten, implying that a director needs to have more than just a keen visual sense to be a master of his art.  Cardiff's fourth directing credit was on this visually sumptuous but otherwise disappointingly anodyne adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's classic novel, Sons and Lovers.  The constraints of censorship and public good taste placed severe limitations on what Cardiff could put up on the big screen in 1960 and so the raunchier passages of Lawrence's sexually explicit novel are conspicuous by their absence.

On the acting front, Trevor Howard turns in the most fully developed and credible performance, his character being far more believable, indeed more sympathetic, than the others, who are underwritten and too vague to be anywhere near as interesting.  Great actress though she is, Wendy Hiller struggles to make her character, a possessive and manipulative mother hell-bent on destroying her sons' happiness, any more than a mere shadow of the incredibly complex picture that Lawrence paints in his novel.  The biggest let-down is the casting of Dean Stockwell in the central role, an impossibly handsome young American actor parachuted in presumably to help boost box office returns in the United States.  Unable to provide even the vaguest approximation of an East Midlands accent (which immediately sets him apart from  the rest of the cast), Stockwell looks horribly out of place, and whilst his performance is actually quite good the script makes it hard for him to establish himself a as credible character.

The film's strongest suit is its beautifully expressive black and white photography, particularly the locations scenes around Nottingham that provide a potent sense of the stifling drabness of an English mining community in the Edwardian era.   Freddie Francis won an Oscar for his cinematography, and deservedly so.  From the first shot to the last, Sons and Lovers has an intoxicating beauty about it that connects far more successfully with the grimly realist poetry of Lawrence's novel than the heavily literary dialogue, overly emphatic score and generally uninspiring performances.  The upshot is that whilst Sons of Lovers is an engaging visual feast it deals too glibly with the devastating truths that Lawrence was able to articulate in his novel (in particular the destructive power of the mother-son relationship).  It ends up being little more than a wordy coming-of-age story, a passionless and synthetic treatment of one of the most revelatory works of 20th century English literature.

Film Synopsis

In an English mining town of the 1910s, Paul Morel has aspirations of pursuing an artistic career, encouraged by his possessive mother.  He regards his father, an alcoholic miner given to violent mood swings, with contempt and fails to comprehend why his mother married him.  Mrs Morel is displeased when her son lets slip that he may be falling in love with a childhood friend of his, Miriam.  Paul is soon persuaded by his mother that Miriam is not the girl for him and turns his attention to another, older woman, Clara Dawes.  Although a married woman, Clara has been separated from her husband for two years and has no qualms over starting a love affair with her eager new admirer...