Word: boldwood
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Alan Bates, as the simple farmer, Gabriel Oak, and Peter Finch, as the wealthy farmer, William Boldwood, come off better because their characters are not intended to be complex. They serve principally as foils--constants throughout the film off whom the relationship between Miss Christie and Stamp can bounce. Bates, in particular, has landed a strong, sympathetic part, and his ultimate triumph is quite satisfying...
...grassy, sheep-grazing county of "Wessex" - England's Dorsetshire -lives Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie), a typical calamity-prone Hardy heroine. Willful, flirtatious, she is pursued by men with names as solid as a Chippendale sideboard. They are Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), an impoverished sheepman; Boldwood (Peter Finch), a strange, eroded landowner of whom people whisper, warns Bathsheba's servant girl, that "he has no passionate parts"; and Troy (Terence Stamp), a seducer-soldier who has his way with any lass who meets his come-hither eyes...
Spurning Oak, turning Boldwood into a racked, frustrated admirer, Bathsheba chooses Troy for her lover, and later for her husband. The marriage proves disastrous, and Troy disappears after the death in childbirth of a servant girl he had "ruined." When rumors of Troy's death reach Boldwood, he begs Bathsheba to reconsider his offer of marriage...
Months later, at their engagement party, the wild-eyed Troy enters to repossess his wife. Boldwood guns down his rival and is taken to prison, leaving the way for Bathsheba and Oak, who has stood patiently in the wings until the melodrama played itself...
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