Women in Love (1970)

Interesting...

I think it is a love story between the two men and the women were just incidental.
The women had magnificent breasts, can't say the same about the men's equipment - of course, poles were half-mast. But Bates is really gorgeous. Also, I think Jeanie should have had the Oscar instead of Glenda. Interesting!!

Smudge Trio: First of all I am not a girl. And I don't know what you mean by me being a "pre-pubescent girl". You not only got the sex wrong but you sound like one of these sex-predators that lurk around chat-rooms looking for an easy prey. Fat Foreigners are getting caught almost everyday in India trying to buy sex from rag-pickers. Again, that is your level. Do we have to reckon with a pedophile now? November 13, 2008

Great performances but dated

The performances are first rate: Glenda Jackson certainly deserved her Oscar, Alan Bates is always wonderful and Oliver Reed captures your heart by his very presence. The story is filled with the personal obsessions that drove Lawrence--finding some sort of truth in physical passion being the most obvious one. This film adaptation is hardly subtle--driving the same ideas home again and again---starting with the lesson of the parts of the flower in the opening schoolroom scene. Then there's the famous picnic scene where Alan Bates likens the fig to a woman's sexual part. Then there are all of explicit love scenes, including the nude male wrestling by the firelight scene between Bates and Reed.

I guess all of this was pretty hot stuff when the film was made, but it strikes me as almost silly at this point in time. Likewise the dialogue, discussing over and over the nature of love stikes me as way overly ponderous. Especially because no one solved any of their problems that way. I guess that's one of Lawrence's demons--over intellectualizing and then trying to compensate by some sort of physical activity, mainly sex. I'm sure many others have analyzed Lawrence's psyche endlessly so I won't bother, here, except to mention that the incredibly creepy mother of the Reed character certainly bears attention.

The cinematography is great, the costumes are good, the English countryside and shots in Zermatt are beautiful. There's a lot of entertainment value in the film if you don't take it too seriously. Ken Russell did, and obviously most of the readers here did too.
August 8, 2008

Russell Does Lawrence Proud

This early Ken Russell film is certainly one of his top efforts. Stunning performances! Glenda Jackson won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Gudrun. As true to the Lawrence novel as it is possible to be on film. Not a silly, happily-ever-after lightweight, this is also D H Lawrence at his best. A MUST-HAVE for all fans of Ken Russell and D H Lawrence. June 23, 2008

Women In Love - DVD

A most superb and touching period piece which unfolds the struggle of 4 adults - 2 couples - to come to grips, literatlly, with their sexuality including the homoerotic yearning of one of the males. August 10, 2007

Women in Love

This intelligent, passionate adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel by British director Russell fuses romantic classicism with frank talk, as the frolicking foursome openly discuss their philosophies of love and desire, friendship and commitment. Reed and then-unknown actress Glenda Jackson are especially compelling as the couple whose marital life is corrupted by her frivolous affair with a bisexual painter in Switzerland. Russell has an eye for the extravagant, like the nude fireside wrestling match between Gerald and Rupert, but such daring, unexpected episodes are part of the film's great appeal. What's not to "Love"? July 6, 2007

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