Tracing Variegated Streaks of Feminism in The French Lieutenant’s Woman through Pinteresque Jigsaw

Abstract

Written for screen by one of the greatest English dramatists and Nobel Laureate, Harold Pinter and directed by Karel Reisz, the film The French Lieutenant’s Woman, appearing in 1981, is the cinematic adaptation of John Fowles’ novel by the same name that created ripples in the literary circles in 1969. Keeping in with the appreciation of the novel, the cinematic version of The French Lieutenant’s Woman too continued to capture the imagination of the classes and the masses alike bagging several prestigious awards. The proposed paper intends to study all these variegated shades and designs that further intensify the experimental spirit of the film.

Focusing on the movie within the movie that imbues the cinematic adaptation of the novel with a quintessential Pinteresque intensity, the paper explores in depth the subtle nuances offered for intellectual probing through the ingeniously contrived sub-plot. Running as a subtle counterfoil to the main plot of Sarah and Charles, the tempestuous love affair between Mike and Anna—the actors playing Charles and Sarah respectively—the subtext of the movie invites concerted critical endeavors in exploring the intellectual conundrum that confronts us on the silver screen. The paper engages itself in the task of reading through such intellectually stimulating improvisations which subtly reflect the post-modernistic tone and tenor. For this purpose, the paper focuses especially on studying the parallels and proselytes that characterize the protagonists as Sarah and Anna in the main and the sub-plot respectively. The paper also studies the mise-en-scene devices such as light, sound, colours, camera movements, focus, background music, and different types of shots employed in the movie, all of which poetically render the rich contours of the work.