The H E Bates Society
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The H E Bates Society
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For such a prolific writer it was inevitable that Bates' work should appear on film and television, and perhaps the surprising fact is that so little, in fact, has. On film the first I think was The Purple Plain made in 1954, starring Gregory Peck plus a whole raft of British stock players and with a script by Eric Ambler. It is a fairly early technicolour offering and well shot on location, so well done that Peck later told Bates that filming it had, 'damn near killed him.'. The next one was The Mating Game starring Debbie Reynolds and Tony Randall, The Darling Buds of May having been transposed to rural USA and Bates was scathing when he wrote ' the book is as English as pubs, steak-and-kidney pudding and the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer so you begin to see what angers me about the transition of the scene from Kent to Maryland, USA, together with the complete Americanisation of all the characters and the changing of the title to The Mating Game.' The next to be filmed was Dulcima in 1971 starring Carol White and Sir John Mills which was well filmed and acted, and with few areas of fault did justice to the story. This was closely followed by The Triple Echo in 1973, with the strong cast of Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed and Brian Deacon. Somehow the Director seemed to read a gay element into the story which I had not discovered, however the performances, especially of Reed as the sadistic sergeant were excellent. The final filmed offerings were in 1995 A Month by the Lake and The Feast of July. A Month by the Lake starred Vanessa Redgrave, Una Thurman and Edward Fox, and filmed in an extremely picturesque Italian location with creditable performances by all - I think H.E. would have approved. The Feast of July was filmed by the prestigious Merchant Ivory partnership and starred Embeth Davidtz as the ill starred heroine, together with a whole raft of British character actors including Tom Bell and Emma Jones. The finished result I am told was lush, well up to the usual Merchant Ivory standard, but it did not get a wide cinema release in the United Kingdom. On the TV side there have been a number of creditable adaptations, including Love for Lydia, which was well done if a little too much studio centred, Fair Stood the Wind for France which was excellently adapted by the BBC and filmed on location, A Moment in Time and Country Matters have followed, and last but by no means least come The Darling Buds of May and the Uncle Silas stories. The casting and locations for The Larkins series of books was absolutely perfect, and of course made a star of Catherine Zeta-Jones who went on to even bigger things. I think that Richard Bates should be singled out for praise for the way both the last series were done, and I know he was planning to televise The Cruise of the Breadwinner with John Thaw in the title role, before Thaw's sudden tragic death from cancer caused it to be shelved. It is sincerely to be hoped that film and television realise what a treasure chest of work H.E. left behind, only the surface of which so far has been scratched. |
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