More on Brideshead

Jonathan Last rightly pointed out that I was overly optimistic about the new movie of Brideshead Revisited . In a long, meaty essay in the Independent , John Walsh examines the rumors over the film, what it was that Waugh himself was trying to communicate, and why the book is so highly esteemed. It’s also interesting to see what happened the first time they tried to film Brideshead :

With its gorgeous settings and vivid atmospherics, Brideshead Revisited always seemed destined for big-screen treatment - but has always run into trouble. In 1946, Evelyn Waugh was invited to Hollywood to discuss a “film treatment” and sell the rights for $140,000. At MGM’s offices he met the proposed adaptor, one Keith Winter, who, Waugh noted with distaste, “sees Brideshead purely as a love story”. He dubbed his Hollywood guests “Californian savages” and, in February 1947, sent them a memorandum explaining, with yelping condescension, the point of his book: “The theme is theological. It is in no sense abstruse and is based on principles that have for nearly 2,000 years been understood by millions of simple people, and are still so understood. But it is, I think, the first time that an attempt will have been made to introduce them to the screen, and they are antithetical to much of the current philosophy of Hollywood.” The “principles” were “the operation of Grace” on human souls, the Church’s power to reel in wayward adherents; and the “plans” held by God for each individual by which he or she may find redemption.