Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady: unusually Jamesian

Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman)

Dear friends and readers,

I carried on with my study and comparison of films based on 18th and films based on 19th century matter, and earlier this week watched Jane Campion’s brilliant effective film adaptation of Henry James’s novel, The Portrait of a Lady, screenplay Laura Jones, produced by Steve Golin and Ann Wingate.

As with the other Jamesian films I’ve seen, two The Turn of the Screws (1999, 2009) and two Golden Bowls (1972, 2001), while the accent is still a larger portrait of social and/or economic and familial arrangements, the story and characters also present sexual derangements that don’t show up in the daylight world, seem not there at all, but below the surface and in one-on-one moments operate in a frighteningly sinister manner. One should not forget that Daisy Miller dies.

John Malkovich as Gilbert Osmond,

with his typology including Valmont (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and Mr Hyde (Mary Reilly) while at first superficially alluring, is scintillatingly horrible, and Barbara Hersey as Madame Merle, with her typology of amoral ruthless intelligence (she played Daniel Deronda’s mother in the recent film),

also at first seemingly a friend, turns out a grim, determined outraged mother/mistress (of Pansy by Gilbert and of Gilbert). Their presences, how they act, what they say and do are central to the film’s emotional effect.

They are contrasted to the sensitive, well-meaning and intendedly generous kind Ralph Touchett:

played by Martin Donovan,

and the utterly upright Viggo Mortenson as Caspar Goodwood:

Campion’s original cinematography, direction, shots, production-design, and full dramatization of the scenes are equally chief elements making this film the memorable Jamesian experience it is.

On one level, her film is a transposition and more or less faithful to the hinge-points, characters, and themes of James’s novel; but on another, it re-reads the novel from a woman’s point of view. Campion also uses imagery quite different from most of the James’ movies I’ve seen; while I’ve not seen them all, I have seen a couple of the earlier, pre-1960s pop type, where they even change the name of the story and/or characters and are of course free with other elements (like The Heiress), and the 1997 Agnieszka Holland’s Washington Square, screenplay (Carol Doyle). James just lends himself to women’s visions (the 2009 Turn of the Screw mentioned above has Sandy Welch as director).

As a transposition, it really brings out the sinister level of James’s fiction. That’s not easy because to get the full meaning of James’s feeling that our human experience of life is sinister (dreadful, frightening, full of ugly things done to us and by us), you have also to capture the banality, the reality that day-to-day experience feels benign. We do not always have knives at the ready and sharpened. And Campion does that. It’s the acting by Malkovich as Osmond and Barbara Hersey as Madame Merle, that nothing overt or too melodramatic is allowed to happen. When Osmond beats Isabel (now I’m not sure that literal detail is in the novel) it’s through a sharp light whip to her face; he trips her to humiliate her.

Campion also transfers the truly fraught utterances by James: Madame Merle to Isabel over Lord Warburton: “let us [me and Osmond] have him [for Pansy and ourselves). That “us” is terrifying in context. Nicole Kidman has calibrated just the right fear and anxiety and deep embarrassment and helplessness because she won’t admit to others what is the truth of her life this man has more control over her than ever.

The mood and tones “les choses” (as in “les choses sont contre nous”) contribute: the imagery is different, not only the breaks in realism, but the dark outfits, the tight hairstyles, the framing of Isabel in doors, prison-like rooms. The music — quiet but dreadful at the right moments. Chopin I thought was there.

One of Isabel’s semi-Renaissance hieratic outfits, which have the effect of imprisoning her

The woman’s point of view: superb. I have all my life read these novels where the heroine has these several men chasing her for marriage and I’m supposed to think this is just great is the myth. Well, Campion brings out how they all, Ralph too, want to control her. They are after her body and space, crowding her out. No one gives her any space:

In this film to be under an umbrella with a suitor is not joyous, but constraining

Not one man goes away but another comes. Warburton wants to marry Pansy to get at Isabel. How horrible that is, and it’s made creepy. The scene of Isabel’s dream interpreted by some as masochism, is to me a nightmare of their crawling all over her, smothering her. This is not James’s point of view directly, but the underlying mood is.

We are to feel for Madame Merle — who had her child Pansy out of wedlock and is herself controlled and made miserable by Osmond who controls the child. She feels for her and cannot show her who she is. Merle is made a lonely woman.

Shelley Winters as Mrs Touchett (Ralph’s mother too)

The silly aunt’s advice which in other films (pop ones and commercially widespread) is made the warning lesson. Here we see its total inadequacy to the case and the needs of the girl and the environment.

Two further stills:

Osmonds wins out precisely because she obeys the codes of a lady. James shows us the codes taught women (and men too — Ralph Touchett) as a way of protecting oneself, being safe, are precisely those that enable ruthless people to take over us, especially when they are adept at pretending to be adhering to (or are actually) adhering to those norms. This insight is first developed in French 18th century novels by Riccoboni and then picked up by Fanny Burney.

Martin Donovan as Ralph Touchett – the poignant, intensely kindly way the
character is played makes me feel he is a surrogate for James in Campion’s mind.

I liked the breaks in realism which pointed out the parallels in modern life to this story, and also in other films — like the inserts of 1920s films of the Shiek kind of thing (Rudoph Valentino) and the introduction and conclusion of the actresses dressed in modern costume obsessively trying to define what is love, what a worth-while kiss. It pointed out parallels to our world today and Isabel’s then.

I’d say all the luxurious objects were ambivalent. While we want to live in these places and walk amid this art, we see the price Isabel pays for it.

She really does hide behind that fan

They don’t make up for the vile mercenary life, the control the guardedness of manners.

And the urge against ambition I see in all these film adaptations is here too – Ralph is used ironically. What did he think life had on offer so much? What she would do? What nonsense. I should say I’ve always like Ralph as a character and think in James he does carry this theme unironically. In this world nobility is see in perfectly equipped failures. Osmond is the success after all.

My only caveat is the portrait of Kate Field as Henrietta Stackpole goes beyond a totally unfair slander; it exploits the stereotype that an intelligent career woman must be ugly, flat-chested, wear glasses:

Mary Louise Parker as Henrietta made up to look home-ly and grating.

In fact, Kate Field was magnificent and dressed herself glamorously, sexily:

Kate Field by Frank Miller (1881)

I can’t set this adequately in other Campion films because I’ve seen only The Piano. I have taught The Piano, and own the screenplay because of that, and also some critical essays on Campion’s work The connection between The Piano (which I’ve taught but never made a blog on), its sources a later wonderfully good 19th century colonialist novel by a woman (Jane Mander, The Story of a New Zealand River, and modern Bronte costume dramas) and recently Bright Star, and this costume drama ought to be fully explored. For myself, I’ve not seen Campion’s Janet Frame films –though I’ve read Fame’s eloquent and moving depiction of her early adult life.

As to more James films, I do have a copy of 1997 Washington Square and remember liking it, and will try to re-see it and I’d like to see The Bostonians with Vanessa Redgrave next.

I have only a VHS Cassette so have no stills to share as the only reproduction in Laurence Raw’s book is of Christian Bale as the elegant young man chasing Pansy (Valentina Cervi). I also read Laurence Raw’s’s article or chapter on Campion’s Portrait of a Lady in his Adapting Henry James; and, as with his chapters on the 1972 BBC and 2001 Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala Golden Bowl[s], more or less concur and recommend to others.

Ellen