When Aunt Ada Doom was just a small child, she saw "something nasty in the woodshed". John Schlesinger and Stella Gibbons, author and director, geniuses both. Rarely do I see a film much better than a really good book, but this is it. Only Kate Beckinsale (who is not the world's most brilliant actress, although she was competent here, was allowed to be a beauty.
Even Elvine, playing a mini Eliza Doolittle role (an obvious pastiche) was rather average and the sex-obsessed and over-fertile girl had been made up to look like an unwashed farm girl. I don't think it could have been made in the US as most of the actors weren't remotely good looking. In an earlier decade it would have been an Ealing film. If you like British films, this is so typical of gentle British humour. The ending was also an improvement on the 5* book. Everything had been thought of - the lighting, colours and even face makeup of the women changed to reflect the lessening of the stranglehold Aunt Ada Doom had on the Starkadders and the lightness that Robert Post's child, Flora, brought to the farm. The cast is fantastic, some of the best actresses around including Eileen Atkins and Joanna Ab Fab Lumley, Stephen Fry and Ian McKellan. It's very affectionate, and very much played for gentle laughs. It's even better than the book, by a long way. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.Update I've just watched the film. Western Daily Press – Saturday 10 September 1932 It’s interesting (and perhaps revealing) that she won awards for her writing in France, but not, so it would seem, in England.Īs Stella Gibbons probaby did not receive the wide recognition in the UK that her writing deserved, it’s an apt moment to reflect on the fact that she was a prize-winning author in other countries. The second story is a report on a French literary prize (for which she received £40) that she won in 1934 for ‘Cold Comfort Farm’.
The first story is a glowing review of her most famous book, written shortly after the novel was published in 1932. So to celebrate Gibbons’ birthday, we’ve posted two newspaper stories from the early 1930s about her wonderful novel. Stella Gibbons, author of the brilliant comic novel, ‘Cold Comfort Farm’, was born in London on 5 January 1902.
“There’s always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm!” / “There’s something nasty in the woodshed!”
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