Bamboo: Essays and Criticism

Brideshead Revisited (2)

In the final episode of Brideshead Revisited Charles Ryder and Julia sit on the steps in the enormous house and agree to part. They’re both weeping and generally inarticulate, but one of the “broken sentences” Charles manages to mutter between stifled sobs is “So long to say so little.” It could serve quite nicely for the last word on this paradoxically compelling serial. Rather like the book itself, I suspect that it was the first half that got us watching the second. The departure of Sebastian, leaving centre stage to Charles Ryder, consigned most of the final episodes to a level of infuriating dullness. It’s a foreseeable defect, but one which scriptwriter John Mortimer seemed reluctant to avoid.

There’s been much talk of Mortimer’s faithfulness to the text, but in changing medium — from novel to TV series — such commendable rectitude can often be technically inept if not wrong-headed. This was particularly evident in episode six, where Julia is finally led on stage. Almost the entire episode was a sepia flashback of the courtship of Rex Mot-tram. In the book this largely takes the form of straightforward reported speech, but there are also some pages of direct conversation — post facto reminiscence by Julia and Charles. This is a clumsy device in the novel, but on the screen it comes across as sheer thoughtlessness. The voiceover renditions of this dialogue, and the clear intimacy that the interlocutors share, effectively deprive the forthcoming Charles/Julia romance of any vestige of suspense. We know from the very outset of Julia’s appearance, while we’re still in the process of learning about her and Rex, that she and Charles will end up together. One minute Charles is an art student in Paris, then suddenly we’re presented with a view of him on an ocean liner arm in arm with Julia. To someone who doesn’t know the book such methods of moving the story on must appear bafflingly amateurish.

Mortimer, of course, is simply reproducing Waugh’s own struggles with the plot, and to that extent is blameless. But, while Mortimer’s adaptation is by and large unobtrusive, he can’t entirely escape responsibility as he does occasionally contribute material of his own.

The most notable expansion has been of the General Strike episode. The strike, and the party Charles and Boy Mulcaster go to while it’s on, occupy some five and a half pages in the novel. In the serial these peripheral events took up an entire episode. The party scenes in particular had to be supplied almost entirely by Mortimer. This isn’t a bad thing; in fact these scenes were amusing and entertaining. The point is that if you can take these sort of liberties with the text on one occasion, then there are no grounds for not taking them on others, and the excuse of “scrupulous adherence” is no longer viable.

This takes us on to another area where Mortimer’s script has to bear some of the blame: dialogue. Because, in the novel, Waugh has selected first person narration, he finds himself having to get other characters to tell Charles various facts in order to fill in gaps in his — the narrator’s — knowledge. Waugh does this by allowing these other characters very lengthy uninterrupted monologues. A good example is provided by Cordelia telling Charles, over several pages, of Sebastian’s fate. Now, this only just works on the page. On the screen it seems almost a wilful breach of the conventions of realism. Film is an omniscient style of narration, the technical requirements of restricted point-of-view don’t apply, we’re not — in other words — inhabiting Charles Ryder’s consciousness. Where the whole thing broke down was in maintaining these monologues on the screen. Just because Charles doesn’t interject in the book didn’t mean that, in the realistic world of the TV serial, he had to keep a similar silence. He never said a word. Never said “Mmmm” or “I see” or “You’ve got a point there.” The camera frequently cut to him but all you got was a soulful look.

This had a further consequence as well as the irritation it gave rise to. Jeremy Irons as Charles had a difficult task. Charles Ryder is a typically dull Waugh narrator figure, like Tony Last in A Handful of Dust and Guy Crouchback in The Sword of Honour trilogy. But, somehow, Irons has contrived to make him more pompous and unlikeable than he is in the book. This is partly to do with his persistent non-participation in conversations but it’s also to do with Irons’s interpretation of Charles’s character, his repertoire of weak smiles and pursed lips. By the end of the serial I found Charles intensely off-putting, a sidling, supercilious creep, his cigarette daintily poised between thumb and forefinger. This may have been deliberate; it certainly makes Julia’s rejection of him at the end eminently comprehensible. But it also had more ironic side effects. In comparison to Irons’s Charles, Waugh’s villains — Julia (his wife), Rex Mottram and even Hooper — appear warm and sympathetic. Julia may be silly and materialistic but it’s very hard to sanction Charles’s treatment of her, let alone his callous disregard for his children. Even in the book this comes across as something of a puzzle, but in the serial it looks almost like a deliberate attempt to alienate the audience from Charles.

Curiously, though, the vast amount of criticism the serial has generated is a tribute to the overall success of the venture. It has provoked persistent debate and controversy at all levels and on all manner of topics, which is no mean achievement after all, and should be a source of genuine satisfaction to those who participated in the project.

It’s most lasting effect is a comprehensive and timely reassessment of the novel itself and the position it occupies in the Waugh canon. It’s surely clear now that Brideshead Revisited represents an aberration, a lapse. More kindly, perhaps, it can be seen as an unsuccessful prototype, a false start on themes tackled more skilfully in Waugh’s greatest achievement The Sword of Honour. The next challenge?

1981