Word: morel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...film opens halfway through the story: Paul Morel is in his early twenties. Within the first ten minutes one grasps all of the important relationships of the drama: the abandonment of Walter Morel by his wife and sons, who detest him because of his weakness and cruelty; Paul's desperate attachment to his mother, and his frustrated love for Miriam. The film then concentrates on the final failure of Miriam to break through Mrs. Morel's hold on her son, Paul's unsuccessful affair with Clara Dawes and his final liberation through his mother's death...
Cardiff's economy in leaving out the first twenty years of the Morel family saga (as well as many of the lesser characters) is well justified, for the structure of the novel emerges all the more clearly. With considerable skill, he balances Mrs. Morel's almost morbid domination of Paul's sensitive and passionate nature with the physical inhibitions produced in Miriam by her mother's puritanical beliefs. The novel is rather humorless; Cardiff creates several badly needed moments of comic relief--such as an address from a stout suffragette. Most important, he never loses sight of Mrs. Morel...
Lawrence regarded the coal miner Morel with a somewhat priggish distaste, and the attitude marred his novel. Howard's Morel has a clumsy kindness and a drunkard's fitful dignity. He is no mere brute, although he has been brutalized by the pits in which he has grubbed since he was twelve. There is still no understanding between father and son, but Howard makes it clear, as Lawrence did not fully do, that this is part of the younger Morel's great loss...
...been filled with flying coal carts. Much of the dialogue is Lawrence's, and it is a reminder of what a remarkable dialogue writer he was. Says a rasp-tongued widow: "I like a man about the house, if he's only something to snap at." Morel evokes enormous sympathy when he says quietly to his wife: "Always taking the curl out of me, aren...
...cost to the patience of viewers, but this production, in only 103 minutes, includes everything important in Lawrence's 500-page novel. The most serious objection to the film is that it is inconclusive. But so is the novel: Lawrence chose to shut off his narrative after Mrs. Morel dies, but before Paul learns whether he has really been set free. If the ending lacks force, it is because it owes more to life than...