Far From The Madding Crowd

When this film was made back in 1967, Julie Christie was very much THE face of the time and it marked the third collaboration with director John Schlesinger.

Here featured as Bathsheba Everden, Thomas Hardy’s headstrong heroine, Christie plays a sheep farmer in rural Dorset. At that time there would not have been many female sheep farmer – this was generally deemed to be man’s job. But our Bathsheba is no ordinary woman – she is well spirited and has very much a mind of her own! It goes without saying that such a woman as this would be a magnet of attraction for a number of men. A case in point being fellow sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates) who has always loved her and proposes to her at the very beginning at this epic opus – but Bathsheba simply doesn’t love him and refuses his offer. Many a woman loves a ‘bad boy’ and our heroine is no exception: cue the entrance of handsome soldier boy Sergeant Troy (the dashing Terence Stamp). Like Christie, Stamp was very much in vogue at the time. It doesn’t take our sergeant terribly long to win and woe Bathsheba’s favours, velvet-tongued rogue that he is. It also doesn’t take him long to ditch his somewhat simple-minded and pregnant girlfriend Liddy (Fiona Walker) on their supposed wedding day when she accidentally goes to the wrong church and makes him look stupid in front of his best man. Within no time it’s wedding bells for him and Bathsheba.

These rogues are always so much fun at first… however, Troy does have a bit of a conscience which plagues him. Meanwhile, thoroughly decent egg Gabriel Oak, like poor little Bo-peep has gone and lost all of his sheep. The entire kamikaze pack breaks out of their pen and like lemmings go over the cliff edge. Perhaps not such a good idea to locate a farm in such a position!
The flute-playing Oak who has a way with sheep apparently that no one else has – despite his terrible bad luck he ends up in the employ of the woman he loves after he weaves his magic on her ailing pack of sheep. Sergeant Troy, upon learning of the death of his former girlfriend and the newly born child, is grief-stricken and guilt-ridden and appears to commit suicide by drowning, although no body is found. Bathsheba has yet another admirer, middle-aged and wealthy landowner William Boldwood (Peter Finch). Despite her reservations and the fact that she doesn’t really love this man, she agrees to marry him should Sergeant Troy fail to re-appear after six years.

When Boldwood takes Bathsheba to a travelling circus, little do they know that the man who charades as highwayman Dick Turpin in the circus ring, riding his Black Bess, is none other than Sergeant Troy. The disguised Troy recognises her in the crowd though Bathsheba has no inkling as to the real identity of the artist in question. Before long, the wedding day for Boldwood and Bathsheba is set, but this is Thomas Hardy country – Wessex – and things are never that simple!

Christie makes for an interesting Bathsheba with her sensitive and feminine inner quality, but unlike Bates fails to convince as a ‘Wessex’ personage and still sounds very Darling… and suggests more Swinging Chelsea. Regarding Finch performance, it is fine although not overtly memorable. Stamp is great fun with the East London accent that he could never really shake off, and gives the film that extra dimension. In this regard, the four leads complement each other only too well. Furthermore we have a stalwart bunch of British character actors on hand as well.

Schlesinger did a sterling job here and we can hardly go wrong with Nicolas Roeg’s scenic photography, further emphasized by this gloriously restored re-release of Far From The Madding Crowd. Plaudits must also go to Richard Rodney Bennet’s evocative score.