3 Poldark 8 & 9: like a song; previously individual dramatized scenes ….

She will have a headstone (Ross and Demelza, Aidan Turner, Elinor Tomlinson, Poldark 2017, Episode 8)

Warleggan harassing, destroying Drake’s business (Sam telling Ross, David Delve, Robin Ellis, Poldark 1977, Episode 8)

Dear friends and readers,

It’s been too long since I lasted posted on the 3rd season of the new Poldark compared to its source book, The Four Swans, and the previous film adaptation: 3 Poldark 6 & 7: Coerced and reluctant Relationships. I was away for at least two weeks of the intervening month but but something more stopped me.

These last two episodes took to an extreme a tendency seen through this season and the first and second. Both are made up of the shortest scenes, sometimes lasting a couple of seconds interwoven or blended into another. Sometimes the scene itself is a pantomime or has one epitomizing line; but often it’s cut up into several independent shots interspersed with other scenes where this is done. In both episodes there is also much repetition: Ross refuses offers of position first by Sir Francis Bassett (John Hopkins) and then by Lord Falmouth (James Wilby); which scenes are recurred to again and again, and half-repeated. We have Osborne Whitworth (Christina Bassington) forcing himself on Morwenna (Ellise Chappell), praying, at least three times indignant at Dwight Enys (Luke Norris) for telling him to desist demanding sex from Mowenna, and countless seductive moments from Rowella (Esme Coy) which become several scenes where Rowella and her librarian accomplice-betrothed, Arthur Solway (Will Merrick) demand slightly decreasing yet large sums. Repeatedly George Warleggan (Jack Farthing) is a cold bully to Elizabeth (Heida Reed); and when she finally rebels at his cruelty to Drake (Harry Richardson), their paired accusations and defenses are broken up and repeated. The men practice war and confront Ross; we have two rebellions. The women writhe.

Morwenna and Geoffrey Charles (Harry Marcus) when Elizabeth visits the Whitworths with her son

The effect on the mood and acting of the episodes is strong. It’s like a song, where language (the dialogues short) and repeating short scenes become like motifs. This dramaturgy is so consistent and so different (let’s say) from the previous mini-series, and even episodes 1-7 of this season that it must be deliberate. We almost don’t think about what’s happening at any particular time. In the 1970s episodes and in Graham’s book, we have reinforcement of explicit agenda: feminist. Insofar as the love and adultery stories go, and the ones on sexual discomfort and even impotence (in the book Dwight and Caroline, Gabriella Wilde, are not a “sane choral” couple but themselves are straining against Dwight’s deep disquiet and weakness), we are made to think realistically about them more. In 1977 the themes was a frank presentation of women’s sexual experiences and feelings as they emerge or are impinged on by their communities (some forced to marry, others stopped); the individual stories are kept original, the scenes given much more time and we get exploration of angles that emphasize anger and hatred and despair prompted by the disloyalties and human jealousies and ravaging demands of others.

In 2017 I didn’t feel individual decisions made by the women. The blending of the four stories of love (Demelza’s, Elizabeth’s, Emma’s, Morwenna’s) and marriage leaves an impression against marriage. That it is a troubled condition for most. Rowella’s actions reinforce this. Were the 2017 to have been true to Dwight and Caroline in the book (incompatible in values, he half-impotent in bed), the inference would have been stronger.

Ross (Aidan Turner) realizing

In 2017 the other political or male-centered theme is, when will Ross realize he has to engage himself deeply in his community according to his rank and capabilities, to try to bring justice and a decent way of life for himself and his neighbors. George (and others) will just continue to gouge everyone unless he (and they) are stopped. This trajectory of taking responsibility and compromising while it’s there in the book does not control it; it’s not the shaping force in the 1977 film; in the 2017 it seems the climax of the two episodes is Ross realizing he is now working for Warleggan to hurt people starving for bread, seeing he has almost been pressured into gunning these people down, and realizing he must define his own role and its function and can only do that with power. All Ross’s friends, Demelza and Tholly (Sean Gilder) and Bassett, have been trying to get him to see this.

The modern adaptation is melodramatic in the original meaning of the word and it’s fitting the episode 8 almost ends on Demelza’s song, and episode 9 begins with Prudie’s (Beatie Edny), and across them Hugh Armitage’s (Josh Whitehouse)’s poetry to Demelza (from the book) is over-voiced either by Demelza or Hugh, with their respective presences overlapping. The older one is theatrical and the psychology of the scenes subtly nuanced (as in the book). To offer an outline of the modern one is monomaniacal, so for this last blog of this season I’ll switch my procedure and offer a summary and evaluation of the 1977 episodes on the blog itself, with the 2017 sing-song in the comments.

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1977, Episode 8 (click for 2017 Episode 8). In order not to be too mono-maniacal, I’ve made the 2017 concise.

It’s a second (the 7th was the first) where the screenplay is by John Wiles, Richard Beynon producer, directed by Roger Jenkins. (There were hardly any women directors, producers or screenplay writers in the BBC in the 1980s.)

Drake and Emma in Drake’s forge, he working, she talking ….

The episode shows how these one hour programs do fit together thematically. The material taken for it is in different places in Graham’s Four Swans. The haggling over money between Whitworth (Christopher Biggins) is just one scene, but here it’s juxtaposed to the increasing dissension and anger and even dislike between the married couples. The 1977 program has it that Rowella (Julie Dawn Cole) may not be pregnant by Solway (Stephen Reynolds) and she and he hatched her pregnancy to threaten Whitworth with; the book only brings Solway in as a deluded man and is mum on what happened to the pregnancy (it is never mentioned in next book, The Angry Tide). Doing it this way enables the 1970s film-makers to de-emphasize the sexual angle and emphasize the give-and-take conflict which parallels Warleggan’s (Ralph Bates) destruction of Drake (Kevin McNally) out of sheer spite. It is bold of the 1977 team to show and emphasize Demelza (Angharad Rees) committing adultery, which done highly romantically of the pair of lovers with a long tracking shot along the beach. The full context prevents us from taking it romantically though.

Several people threaten to kill someone — their rage against life is so strong: Warleggan would kill his brother-in-law, Drake who his step-son Geoffrey (Stefan Gates) prefers; Whitworth keeps saying he’ll kill Rowella who threatens to expose him as having made her pregnant, Morwenna (Jane Wymark) will kill her child by Whitworth if Whitworth tries to rape her again. Warleggan’s men beat Drake and throw him in the water; he could have died. Elizabeth (Jill Townsend) finally turns on Warleggan and lets him know her life with him is a hell on earth if all that is said about him is so.

It opens with George Warleggan’s mad ride across the countryside with his chief henchman, ruthless bully, gamekeeper, Sid Rowse (Michael Cox), who points to Drake’s forge just outside Warleggan property. George nods. The plot to wreck all that Drake has thus far built is signalled.

We switch to the forge to find Emma (Trudie Styler) talking to Drake complimenting him on what he’s done. Drake asks how’s it going with his religious brother, Sam, and she says “comic” and she’d “poison Sam’s godly life honest I would.” “Do you love him?” “I don’t know what love be, but I can’t be free the way I used to be.” “People say I’m a whore. What is a whore. A woman that’d sell her body. I never selled nothing to nobody.” “Since I’ve seen him … I’ve lost the pleasure of things … I wish to God I’d never met him.” They hear a neighing horse and they rush out to see his place set on fire.

As in Graham’s books there is real sympathy for the promiscuous woman; she helps both Drake and Sam in this episode — the action we see her in is not in the book but the thrust of the presentation is the same.

Switch to Nampara: now Sam is telling Ross at Nampara of all the wrecking and terrorizing that has happened since. A messenger scene in effect: “since then there’s been more trouble, they’ve broken his fences & his streams run dry. Last night someone dropped a dead dog down his well … Water well is poisoned too. Drake losing custom because locals told not to go . it’s Sid Rowse. Under Ross’s question the story of how Geoffrey Charles had spent all his time at Pallys shop emerges, “Mr Warleggan put a stop to it boy went on with his visits just the same …”

Then interthreaded are a series of scenes where Rowella and her apparent off-screen lover, a librarian (a little joke of Graham’s own — he seems aware of how librarians are ridiculously despised) gradually negotiate and bully Whitworth into paying a substantial sum to them. In the book there is a scene of bargaining, but it’s not threaded in in this dramatic way. The emphasis in the book is the sex, particularly the sadistic sex between Whitworth and Rowella. This the films avoid and erase altogether — we’ve no idea what sex between Whitworth and Rowella could be. It seems hard to imagine they could manage with her hypocrisy and his crudity.

So we see Vicarage Whitworth in satin yellow reading, Morwenna in green. She says it’s time for Rowella to go home, she seems to spend most of her time with you. She’s just 16, that is why I feel she needs companions of her own age .. Rowella appears. She will go immediately; but both say no. Morwenna says will resume some of her duties … meantime go to her bed. Whitworh doesn’t mind as he has Rowella. Rowella “She knows” .. she tells him “I am pregnant” and he looks appalled.

Back to Nampara, Demelza working on her flowers, Ross talking of what George Warleggan is doing to Drake: “intolerable .. he’s trying to ruin the boy …” Demelza clearly angry about something and it’s not Drake. She refuses to talk, and says going out “Don’t ask me … ask his wife” (Elizabeth).

Back to scene of Whitworth now horrified “go away do you hear … do not touch me.” Rowella offers to take “nostrum’ and he agrees eagerly, she “sometimes they are dangerous to the mother … loud quarrel ..shall I see you later … after blustering, he says yes. Whitworth cries — yet we do not feel for him.

Nampara, Ross reading something; Demelza comes in late, she had a disturbed night out-of-doors (with Hugh? Brian Stirner), he is riding over to Drake. It’s an acceptance from Sir Francis Basset (Mike Hall) to come to dinner. Demelza “I am no society hostess,” Ross says ask “Caroline (Judy Leeson) to advice you, I’m sorry my dear we are committed to receive them … tells her Hugh Armitage is returning to his squadron … I thought you’d like to know .. ” (quiet sarcasm).

Ross rides to Drake’s place and it’s all in ruins. Drake tied up, “who did this to you?” Drake lying to protect Ross himself: “I don’t know twas the middle of the night .. “I’ll turn the other cheek.” Ross at first rejects Drake’s response: “Well then Christ be a fool for twas his advice,” to which Drake replies: ” Ross, oh spare me” Drake determined to hold out, you put me here, tis my place well.” So Ross plunges in to work with him.

Osborne Whitworth bothered — in suit with book, knock, it’s Rowella who tells of her librarian (who we saw briefly in Part 7), Mr Arthur Solway from county library; he may expect something of a dowry … how much how much…”

Then the dinner party — a fine gay and witty scene. Bassetts, Caroline and Enys (Michael Cadman); the rebuilding of the library. Caroline very witty, and gay, how is it Hugh Armitage has not returned to sea again; he has returned to lodge with Lord Falmouth (Hugh Manning); Caroline to Demelza: “strange Demelza I thought you would have heard ..” Ross’s jealousy clearly aroused: “why should she have heard …:

Now bargaining scenes are threaded in: the librarian obsequious but determined … Whitworth offers the sum of 20 guineas .. “you see Vicar there is just one thing” … Solway knows she’s pregnant and he has no money but a tiny salary as a librarian.

Switch to Nampara with Demelza and Bessy Martin polishing the table. Bassett comes in, he wishes Ross had accepted and stood for parliament … Bassett asks what is the cause of bad blood between Warleggan and Poldark … they are all courtesy to one another.

The bargaining between Whitworth, Rowella and Solway continues: Whitworth is heard shouting “Out I say out out.” Whitworth says that Rowella is a penniliess girl pregnant without hope or prospects,” how can Solway dream of “1000 pounds!” Rowella comes in, and says she thought “at least 100 pounds.” “Oh you thought that. did you?”

Nighttime storm, Nampara; Demelza and Ross. He: “damn the weather.” She: “I said jealousy and bad feelings shouldn’t be between people … but he’s a man” and then she turns the conversation “Look why shouldn’t I have heard that Hugh Armitage is back … why shouldn’t he write to me why shouldn’t anyone write to me?” Ross stalks out and she sits over fire; a voice-over of Armitage reading his poem to her aloud

Demanding money

Another bargaining scene: shot of Solway and we hear “30 pounds” “a thousand” “40 pounds” “a thousand” “45 pounds” The librarian seen shaking his head, a thousand .. there 100 pounds that it’s …shakes head “a thousand”

Now vicar and Rowella are talking in attic, and she cites the miserable conditions of Solway’s large family. “100 pounds that”s what I’ve gone to try him once mor. “Oh Osborne do

Librarian “My final word: 120 pounds, 900, I cannot go below 900” Vicar: “Are you mad?” We now see Rowella nods to Solway: we can see, they are in cohoots. Solway: “it will take us all of 700 to support ward and child, then there’s the question of a cottage.” She mouths to him and he says “and the furniture” Now Whitworth goes up to 200 pounds; Rowella signals to Solway and he turns and says 850. Whitworth: 210 He: “800 not a penny less”

Morwenna upstairs in bed listening

Drake tries to pass gate to get to Mrs Warleggan and is beat up badly It begins with him saying to the gamekeeper and his bullies “I”ve come to ask a favor or Mrs Warleggan that maybe she’ll see me for five minutes.” They accuse him of poaching; beat him badly, then they throw him in river to drown and die. We see only the water

Rowella now writing, and she finds and reads aloud a letter about a vicar suspended for 3 years for getting young girl with child. Whitworth comes in as she’s reading : “I shall kill you” Rowella now says he may be persuaded to take a somewhat lower figure of — 600 pounds! Whitworth’s reply: “I’ll see you dead first,” to which she replies “I should think it quite likely Morwenna heard too …”

Now we are in Drake’s forge and Emma and Sam comforting and nursing him. “They could have killed thee.” “Course” he knows. He’s now determiend to go to Truro and speak with Misstress Warleggan. He feels she would be fair. (She is pro-hierarchy but fair).

Whitworth in attic (we hear church bells). He now threatens to return Rowella to her mother: “I know nothing of any baby.” Rowella: “I shall accuse you Vicar I’m a dean’s daughter,” and she knows details about his anatomy “You have a scar on your belly made by a boy you were tormenting at school …” Whitworth again “I will see you dead before I pay a penny to you.” Now she says 500 pounds. He looks down defeated.

Church scene, the marriage and we see Solway and Rowella laughing together and we wonder if the baby is his after all. (In the book this is not so, it is Whitworth’s.)

Ross tells Jud to saddle my horse he has a list of addresses of people he must go to. Ross getting involved in politics slowly. The dinner was the first sign he sees he must.

Demelza with Drake in his forge: “What do you think she can do …:” Drake: “She can talk” Demelza says that Ross off with volunteers at Falmouth — so French politics impinging too.

Morwenna

Morwenna sewing, Whitmore reading. Now she is strong and bitter. (This is most unlike book where she remains abject until she finally flees to Drake.) She says she was conscious of the liaision every day every minute of every night. Then the startling threat (which is in the book): If he resumes his physical approaches to her, she will kill his son. “This is how it will be until the day death separates us.”

Now at Truro and the Warleggan mansion there (a set): we see Jill Townsend as an indignant Mrs Warleggan: “How dare you” It emerges Drake is there and he stays controlled, respectful: “Everyone has seen them.” When he cites as one of George’s motives “the business of Miss Morwena,” she jumps up “I don’t wish to hear about it.” She knows she did Morwenna wrong to marry her to Whitworth at least. George comes in, becomes an ugly bully to Drake, threatens to kill him. George turns round to demand she go to London with him, to which she replies: “to London … if what I Just heard is true, I would rather go to hell first ..”

Demelza and Armitage

Then the final very long sequence which ends in love-making between Armitage and Demelza: Armitage come to see Demelza (Ross gone from house) “I am begging you” to come with him to the islands of seals they spoke of. She says the seals are not there, “to lead you to something that doesn’t exist.” “To grant me a favor .. ” Then she yields “oh wait I’ll have my horse saddled — then series of long tracking shots, over the countryside, round the cliffs, then sea by coast. We hear a bit of conversation: the seals are several cliffs away, in a place that look like a cathedral beyond cove and cove .. (where all) booms and crashes. Flute music as they run amid the rocks. When he tells her he’s not on leave, he’s going blind, she finally yields and it ends on a passionate kiss …

Freeze frame.

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1977, Episode 9 (click on comments to see 2017 Episode 9 tapestry). The 2017 kept shorter though material confrontations so fascinating.

I will keep this summary more compact too; merely saying the dramaturgy is as the eighth episode above. Much of real interest, and a good deal sheer transposition from the book. Ross is coerced by Bassett into putting into jail the leaders of the miners and agricultural workers who had attacked a granary and corn place and taken the corn. They were starving and the price never came down nor did the government provide a subsidy. Ross loathes having to do it, but he does obey this law. He is made to see that were he an MP he might have power to ameliorate — he could have pardoned the man whose body we see hanging and rotting on a gibbet as the community returns from a ritual Sawle Feast (3/4s through the Part).

Elizabeth trying and failing to reach George

Elizabeth now threatens to leave George. She will not live with him if he carries on his horrible behavior to Drake; he tries to deny what he is doing, trivialize it, but she is having none of it. He demands to know if she loves Ross and she laughs, then they finally confront one another over the issue of whose son Valentine is. She on the Bible swears she has never had sex willingly with any man but her first husband and George. George does not recognize the gap in the oat,h but in any case he gives in only because she would indeed leave him.

The role is very hard to play: Elizabeth is supposed an upper class woman taught repression and guardedness, also a kind of frail character unable to act out high emotional scenes; at the same time high self-esteem and adherence to hierarichal norms governs here. She is destroyed by these norms acted out by George and Ross over her pregnancies and children — she tries to make her third child appear to be 8 months by a dose which brings on a labor that kills her (the plan Ross hatched in the church meeting which in 1977 occurred in the 7th episode). She is also highly intelligent and realizes just how imprisoned she is, straining at the frustration, anger, itself partly at herself for having married George. She does refuse to go with him to London full-stop even if he wins the new election.

Sawle Feast done superlatively well. Like the Rudruth fair, done with real flair, not overproduced, the height a wrestling match between the bully henchman of George, Sid Rowse, and Sam Carne, egged on by Emma who offers to come to church for 3 months if he fight. Sam almost wins but at the last moment throws the hard struggle because he sees her wanting him to win and he actually fears she will pull him from his strong adherence to his God and faith which is central to his world view and self-esteem.

the 9th episode of 1977 takes us much further along in The Four Swans. As in soap opera aesthetics (which most of these mini-series costume dramas use) the fair is a place where we see all the characters come together and interact characteristically. Ross has bet George 100 guineas, but the guineas are to go to a fund for the starving — so when Sam loses, it matters not to Ross. Whitwoth is there with Morwenna now holding her own through her threat and having made her body off-limits; he has discovered Rowella was not pregnant and she is again making up to him (for his money). Demelza and Drake hover over Sam.

At Falmouth’s house where Demelza again meets Hugh

We have the visit to Falmouth’s house, an election where we understand the electors vote publicly and are under pressure from who they owe money to (Warleggans), vote by personal liking and other norms of admiration. Ross makes it by one vote.

Another thread of the series is the real love affair of Hugh Amitage and Demelza. Part 8 ended with them making love on the seals’ beach. IN this part as at the end of The Four Swans Armitage dies; his blindness a symptom of a larger disorder gotten in the prisons of France; Demelza called to his side. Threaded in are scenes where Ross is aware she is in love with this man and tolerant of it; in one he tells her of his continued affection for Elizabeth and how he can understand hers, but he cannot it seems when he discovers a compromising poem tolerate physical infidelity. The last scene has her having wandered out in the moor and come back to find Ross incensed. Where have you been? he angrily asks and so the episode comes to an end (the previous ended on her adultery).

The 1977 film most differs from the book by its presentation of Rowella and Whitworth and Solway, the librarian husband. The film softens this enormously: that Rowella and Whitworth enjoy nasty sex together is central to the book’s story, and not here (but it is so in the 2017), and Solway is a lower class innocent sensitive man who is quite unaware of the liaison between Whitworth and Rowella; and when he discovers this reality, that the vicar is giving Rowella money his love turns to rage and murder (another motif in Graham but more in evidence in his murder mysteries).

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Touching moment (pun intended) as he reaches our to her and she slips into his arms: Demelza and Ross as 2017 season ends

It’s telling that the older series was much more interested in the fates of women, while this new one has imposed a new trajectory so the story of Ross gaining power and respect becomes the central interest. The final season of the new episode 9 centers on the inner life of Ross as much as the inner life of Demelza. Both mini-series, 40 years apart try for depictions of 18th century lives while mirroring analogous situations for the years they were made in: Marriage, customs and politics too.

In 1977 the next episode or The Angry Tide started the following week; this year we have to wait a whole year for the ending of The Four Swans and The Angry Tide.

Ellen