The Good Soldier (1981)

Best movie ever!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This video (I watched it on YouTube) doesn't come close to developing the central ideas of the novel. In fairness, I don't see how any filmed version could. The story in the book is told from the pov of an enigmatic narrator who doesn't always know the full story, may have reasons for not being 100% square with the reader, and appears emotionally dim and stunted. He has no real intimacy with any of his fellow characters, who succeed in betraying him over the course of years despite their physical proximity. He is bitter, but too phlegmatic to be vengeful. His views on men, women, love, marriage, and human nature are fascinating. The book is terrific and really worth reading, but the film captures only the action and none of the heart. On video, the narrator comes off as some rich clueless slob whose wife and friends do a bunch of random things that inexplicably result in suicide and insanity. Pointless, in my opinion. But Jeremy Brett is handsome, hence a few stars.

Wow...the current reviews for this one are all over the place--with two 10s, a 9 and a 1! As for me, I think it's neither as wonderful as several folks think but it certainly doesn't seem like it deserves a 1.The film is about two couples at the early part of the 20th century. One couple is American and the other British. Each year, these folks vacation together in Germany at a health spa. During these times together, apparently the British hubby (Jeremy Brett) has been having an affair with the American wife. Oddly, however, you never really see any of this. In fact, almost everything that occurs is talked about...again and again. Heck, it's all talk--and often large and important parts of the story are simply explained through narration--a strangely disconnected sort of storytelling. While there are a couple deaths and a few twists, none of it is particularly interesting. Well acted, yes, but not terribly interesting. Worth seeing if you can stand the slow pace and style.

I saw the Granada production of The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford when it screened on Masterpiece Theatre in the early 80s. It was stunning then, and now out on DVD, it has held up as a fine piece of ensemble acting. A story of "screaming hysterics," duplicity, infidelity, and madness, the superior cast of Jeremy Brett as Edward Ashburnham, a good man, his equally good wife, Leonora (Susan Fleetwood), the American cuckold husband, John Dowd (Robin Ellis), his deceptive wife, Florence (Vickery Turner), and "the girl," Nancy (Elizabeth Garvie) is situated in 1904 and follows the upper-middle class lifestyle set in a German spa town and English country. It is an orderly, polished, and genteel setting of women dressed in white, men in flannels, an altogether civilized arrangement of two married couples John describes as a 'minuet.'That having "a heart" describes not a positive situation but the opposite, Edward is unable to control his romantic sexual urges, a 'condition' that nearly wrecks his good name and that of his wife, who takes over the husband's finances to keep them from total ruin and disgrace. In voice-over narration, the tale of recriminations and thwarted love affairs is told through John in a non-chronological reverie. It leaves the state of marriage a demolished failed situation of lies and stiff upper lip British hypocrisy. Not wanting to create a scandal by divorcing Edward, Leonora tortures him with Nancy's virginal innocence, and reveals to Nancy the truth of Edward's affairs. When faced with the truth about Edward, Nancy offers herself to Edward, but he rejects her instead of corrupting the one pure individual he's ever loved. Summoning the widower, Mr. Dowd to their home, he is ready to marry Nancy, but she is shuffled off by Edward to Ceylon to join her abusive father instead. It is Edward's one unselfish act which his heart is capable. He later tells John that he's gotten over Nancy, she was only a passing flirtation. When Nancy sends back a cable that she is "having a good time," the news pushes Edward to commit suicide, and drive Nancy insane. In the end, John, living in the former home of his first wife's people, as well as the Ashburnhams, finds himself again the caretaker of Nancy, another sick woman, who instead of being John's wife, is sadly, a broken "shuttlecock" from her own sickness of the heart.Adult, very British, and slowly paced, it is one of the finest performances by Jeremy Brett before his Sherlock Holmes days.

I would make a set of underrated, though wonderful movies or series that ended up on Masterpiece Theatre. This movie is one that would surely end up on disc. One of many beautiful period pieces, it is distinguished by the emotional impact the storyline has. Neither of the two couples involved in the story are young, and yet still their love stories are spellbinding. Sex is not the issue here, it is what happens when one person in a marriage loves but the other does not. Yet these are passionate people, and their passions bring about their downfalls. Some of Britain's greats (the late Jeremy Brett and the late Susan Fleetwood and Robin Ellis from Poldark) give deeply emotional performances. That this movie, and most other Masterpiece Theatre's little gems (like Memento Mori) will never be available on disc is a true loss to lovers of this PBS show.Edited to add: Wonder of wonders--this movie is now scheduled for a DVD release on April 24, 2007. It is truly worth a rental, if not a blind buy. One of Jeremy Brett's best performances. Enjoy.