SusiGo wrote:

Another question: In the scene in part 5 when he meets General Campion in the trench after he's been wounded - what do you make of the use of light when Campion walks away? It looks a bit irreal when he's walking into the light. 

Ah, this is an interesting shot and of not easy interpretation without the novel background. The easiest way to read it, would be to see it as yet another of surreal elements which are increasingly present in the episode (Christopher is definitely "losing it", seeing Valentine's face everywhere etc.). But I think it far more to it than this. Consider that it is the conclusion of Tietjens's war "career": in this episode we have finally seen him doing something well and being appreciated for this by the soldiers: he proves to himself and to the others that he is a good C.O and then he also does something truly heroic, saving a soldier's life under enemy fire. Logically, he should be definitely going for his "chance of glory" (do you rember earlier convesation of Sylvia with Campion?). And how does it end? Typically Tiejtens-like: General Campion shouting at him and taking command and glory from him. (In the novel it is all explained far more clearly and painfully about Tietjens being forced to abandond his only chance to restore his reptutation and spending last month of military service doing something he is loathing: to be a goaler of German prisoners). So Campion arrives like a deux-ex-machina, ruins Tietjens and disappears in the mist, just as his last hope for "glory" disappears for ever.

Oh, Campion was there all right. He was quite real: Inspecting General. And he was about to take over the Army. AND the "Glory": you can see him all clean and elegant about to be declared a war hero and to become governor of India (with little Sylvia's help) after the war, while Christopher, the true hero, is once again left in dirt and no recognition.
Campion in the last episode becomes an ambigous figure, in any case. Earlier he seemed rather a nice and decent fellow, although not too bright, but in the last episode he seems to fall under Sylvia's spell and to develop hostility towards Tietjens (yet another ungrateful soul! - Tietjens as well as offered  him Groby for his disposal). It is more evident in the novel, perhaps - he says clearly that he was told that the battalion has a "damn smart C.O" but once he discovers this "damn smart" officer is Tietjens, he kicks him out. 

Hi Anja, so lovely you decided to do the "outing": please do not limit yourself to secretly following the discussion, would be graet to have another voice in the conversation 

Thanks to you both. Hopefully I can put something in after my Easter vacation, after watching PE for a third time (my second is a longer time ago...). Enjoy the break then!

back from holiday... no computer, but I did take my PE book with me. I'm re-reading it now, slowly, and it adds much delight to the film, since I am able to see more and more details of Tom Stoppard's excellent work on adaptation. I am really impressed by his creative intuition and his ability to bring together different elements, which in books are sometimes so far away one from the other, even not in the same volume.
There is, for example the "breakfast scene" in the first episode: it is very important one, because practically the ONLY one about Christopher-Sylvia everyday married life, before she bolts and their relationship is altered for ever. On the surface, it seems just an ordinary breakfest with some meaningless conversation, but in fact every sentence of the dialogue is important (and, what's even more impressive, every sentence is actually taken from the book): Stoppard picked up bits from different part of the novel and put them together in a perfectly natural conversation. But there are also things not said but shown: for example, Sylvia's mother dressed rather absurdedly in a neglige AND an enormous hat. Of course, Sylvia seems to be a dominant figure in the scene (well, she is), bored, mercurial and trying her best to force her husband into some kind of reaction: while she is talking she is glancing at him  all the time. But Christopher, for all his apparent calm, is conveying a range of emotions here. The dominant, I think is the repulsion: he hates the atmosphere of the house, he is annoyed by the gossip conversation at the table and by his wife and mother-in-low behaviour. There is a very subtle wince on his face when Sylvia asks quite rudely the servant to bring  her a cup of te (in contrast to his polite "thank you" before), and he is yet again annoyed when his mother-in-low presumes that he wants more coffee. Even the way he has his eyes obstinately fixed on Enciclopedia Britannica tell volumes. The whole scene takes about 2 minutes (add 30 seconds for the servant kitchen scene)  and yet manage to convey more things than Downton Abbey would probably need an entire episode to do, 

SusiGo wrote:

The breakfast scene is brilliant, as you said. It sheds light on many important aspects of the story. And it makes me wonder what happened between the marriage and the situation they find themselves in by this point. When did they realise that they cannot live together? . FMF and Stoppard dont't present us with an easy answer. 

Yes, indeed, if I have a complaint about Stoppard's script, it is that he was a bit over-respectful towards the original text. There is not much told about first years of Tietjens marriage in the book and in the movie - for all really clever condensation of meanings -  and I was left with a sense of "hunger for more". Stoppard gives us exactly 18 minutes before the crisis arrives: I guess in an average period drama it would take at least two episodes, lol.
May be the problem stems from the fact that in the novel it is said quite clearly that Sylvia is not a passionate woman: quite the contrary, she is kind of frigid and only enjoys her power on men. Also, initially she positively hates Christopher and only after her escapade with Potty she realizes that in fact he is the only man she could love. But could she?
In the movie it is not really clear what are her feelings about her husband: we have few scenes to consider. At the very beginning she says to Drake that she "wants to die" - a very strong statement just before the marriage. In the carriage, when they are going to the church, she is behaving viciously. However, breakfast scene, the conversation with a friend and the ball scene suggest she cares for Christopher.
I think we could suppose that initially she was convinced that Tietjens is exactly like the other men: easy to be manipulated: after all she managed to seduce him in a train: quite an achievement, I would say! Once she discovers that he is able to resist her, although in a passive way, a sentiment of love-hatred develops. 
 

SusiGo wrote:

 I'm not sure if she really loves him. She can't get away from him, tries to tease out emotional reactions from him, is sexually attracted by him. But if you compare this to Valentine's feelings and attitude it somehow appears to be a very distorted form of love. I don't think that she's capable of selfless love. Not towards her own child and not towards Christopher. 

In the novel Mark at certain point says to Christopher that his wife is "soppily in love with him", but still, I am not sure she is capable of true love. In the opening scene with Drake she seems genuinely taken by him - he calls him "darling" and she makes love with him even if she is at the same time furious at him, because he would not leave his wife. She understands it is "not fair" (an understatement!) to have sex with her fromer lover on the pre-wedding night, but she cannot resist him.
In the book we learn that she was kind of seduced/raped by Drake, even if she fell for him eventually.
He "let her down" (Christopher says that much in the third episode) and this is probably one of the main reasons for her hatred towards men and her vindictiveness.
Her seducing Christopher on the train was clearly a way to find a husband ASAP - she tells to Drake that she needed to "save herself from ruin". I am still wondering how on earth she managed to do it! 
But what happened once they were married? In the "bad dream scene" they are sleeping together in one bed (not  an obvious thing at that time) and even embraced. And in the breakfast scene (really crucial in this first part of the film) both Sylvia and Christopher faces conveys a range of emotions. 
Now I wonder: what are Christopher's feelings at this point? They are not easily to decipher, either. He 
knows he has been "bitched" into marriage, he knows about Sylvia's lover (s) and still he thinks that there is "something glorious about her" (I love BC face when he is saying it!)

 

SusiGo wrote:

As for Drake: In the last episode after she slept with him once again she mentions that he was a brute. BTW, she's taking some kind of contraceptive measure in the bathroom, isn't she? Something you rarely see in a film.

Oh, Drake was a brute ok. Here you are an interesting quote from the novel:

"In her own case--years ago now--she had certainly been taken advantage of, after champagne, by a married man called Drake. A bit of a brute she acknowledged him now to be. But after the event passion had developed: intense on her side and quite intense enough on his. When, in a scare that had been as much her mother's as her own, she had led Tietjens on (...)-there had been dreadful scenes right up to the very night of the marriage."

And then she was constantly "longing for the brute who had mangled her... she knew it was longing merely to experience again that dreadful feeling. And not with Drake..."

This is a very revealing passage which shows us Sylvia as a kind of "Belle du jour", doesn't it? In any case she is not passionate about Drake any more, this is made clear in the last episode, once she goes to bed with Drake again - I think she does it more to prove to herself, that he is no better than all the men she managed to manipulate before and reall doesn look radious like Scarlett after the forced love night with Rhett Butler! Anticonception scene was rather bold and well thought, it underlines furtherly that there is absolutely no sentiment or passion involved here.

SusiGo wrote:

The seduction on the train: Yes, that would be interesting to know.  I read that they had a lot of fun doing that scene because they know each other so well.
BTW, why does Christopher say that he knows her name? Is there any explanation in the book that he knew her before?
We simply don't learn much about their marriage up to the moment when she runs away with Potty. I suppose Christopher realised quite soon what he had gotten himself into but did not leave her because of his principles of monogamy and chastity. Or he couldn't believe at first that such a "glorious" woman could be such a bitch at the same time. 
 

No, there is no explanation about how did he know her name in the book. But her being a socialitate, constantly being mentioned in newspapers, she was probably quite well known. And here is another rather saucy quotation from the book about their train intercourse:

"he had had physical contact with this woman before he married her; in a railway carriage, coming down from the Dukeries. An extravagantly beautiful girl!

Where was the physical attraction of her gone to now? Irresistible;reclining back as the shires rushed past. . . . His mind said that she had lured him on. His intellect put the idea from him. No gentleman thinks such things of his wife."

Ok, so it was definitely the physical attraction which triggered the trap, and although he knew, in fact, that he has be "bitched" he still was thinking she is "glorious". I think what put him off, later, was the
incompatibility of their attitudes, values and mentality, in fact there is another interesting passage (I am in a mood for quotation today, lol) which explains with much insight his feelings:

"There came back into his mind, burnt in, the image of their breakfast-room, with all the brass, electrical fixings, poachers, toasters, grillers, kettle-heaters, that he detested for their imbecile inefficiency; with gross piles of hothouse flowers--that he detested for their exotic waxennesses!--with white enamelled panels that he disliked and framed, weak prints--quite genuine of course, my dear, guaranteed so by Sotheby--pinkish women in sham Gainsborough hats, selling mackerel or brooms. A wedding present that he despised. And Mrs. Satterthwaite, in negligé, but with an immense hat, reading the Times with an eternal rustle of leaves because she never could settle down to any one page; and Sylvia walking up and down because she could not sit still, with a piece of toast in her fingers or her hands behind her back. Very tall, fair, as graceful, as full of blood and as cruel as the usual degenerate Derby winner. In-bred for generations for one purpose: to madden men of one type. . . . Pacing backwards and forwards, exclaiming: "I'm bored! Bored!" Sometimes even breaking the breakfast plates. . . . And talking! For ever talking: usually, cleverly, with imbecility; with maddening inaccuracy, with wicked penetration, and clamouring to be contradicted; a gentleman has to answer his wife's questions. . . . And in his forehead the continual pressure; the determination to sit putt; the décor of the room seeming to burn into his mind."

This is a beautiful and psychologically profound description: take the mention of the "continual pressure in his forehead" I do recall a similar sensation sometimes, when I happen to meet really annoying people who love to talk too much about nothing!

Now if you re-watch the famous breakfast scene with this passage in mind you can see this repulsion towards the whole context he is forced to live in conveyed by BC facial expression: it is priceless!
 


 

Well, I started watching DA and I liked very much the first episode, a bit less the second and after the third I got bored, it was like watching a lavish gossip column, nice and well acted, but not at least thought-provoking. On the other hand, just watching the breakfast scene (yes, always the breakfast scene!) in PE tells you volumes about the master - servant relationship and then Christopher's sarcastic comment is brilliant.
BTW I remember some American critic complaining that he didn't catch who is "Hullo Central", but it is explained by Sylvia in the conversation with her friend - the fact is, you really have to pay attention while watching the movie, because every detail is important (I have been a HUGE fan of TS since I first saw his Rosencranz and Guildernstern are dead). Probably that's why many American reviewers were complaining that PE is "difficult to understand".

SusiGo wrote:

As for Hullo Central: It is indeed explained but quite a long time after she's mentioned her in the letter to Christopher about keeping her as a condition for going back to him. Stoppard and White are keeping us on our toes constantly.  

No, it isn't! In fact, Sylvia mentions it as soon as her first conversation with her friend, immediately after the breakfast scene: they are talking about a fun to go away with a different man every week and Sylvia says something like that it could be only for weekend, because one needs her maid during that week and she would be lost without her "Hullo Central". It shows you how careful TS was to include every important detail on the one hand, but how close attention we have to pay to the show, on the other.

As for explaining difficult details... I suppose this is a kind of problem with all period dramas: you need to accept that not only clothing and dinner menu were different, but mentality, values and code of honor as well. 
I read this hilarious text by Stoppard about his writing the script and the imput of HBO on it. I didn't know HBO (TS calls them "Mr Darcy) at one point withdrew from the project, which was a disaster financially, but at least gave Stoppard a possibility to work as it pleased him. Once they were back they began to torment him with the requests to make the script less difficult and more explicit. (I will look for and post some nice quotations next time!)