The Return of the Soldier (1982)
'People die in wars, but love dies too...'
I’ve been itching to write about The Return of the Soldier (1982). It’s one of my favourite films, based on one of my favourite books. Although Rebecca West’s novella was published in 1918, the story is set in 1916. A psychological tale of The Great War, seen from the point of view of the Home Front. Three women, Kitty (Julie Christie), Jenny (Ann-Margret) and Margaret Allington (Glenda Jackson) are in love with a middle-aged army officer (Alan Bates). It’s set in a smart country house in the Home Counties, in Middlesex (then, still bucolic)— at what must have been a strange and difficult time. Captain (Chris) Baldry returns from the trenches with shell-shock, or some form of amnesia, and like a Rip Van Winkle, in his confused, damaged mind he’s shifted back in time fifteen years: he’s twenty years old again (no longer thirty six), in love with a landlord’s daughter (Margaret) from Monkey Island— that eyot near Bray, a haunt of both Rebecca West and her lover, H. G. Wells— with all memory of marriage to Kitty, his brittle Society wife, erased.
The film is a faithful literary adaptation, thanks to Alan Bridges direction, Hugh Whitemore’s screenplay and Shirley Russell’s costume design. The 1980s was a golden age of British period drama, producing a crop of films with an elegant aesthetic, attention to period detail, intelligent writing, subtle acting and, quite often, lyrical and beautifully composed soundtracks. No bells and whistles. No ‘twists’, or ironic commentary, or a need, as they say on the dreaded X Factor, to ‘make things current’.
And The Return of the Soldier, I suppose, might join a list of Country House films, which—from the top of my head— could include: The Go-Between (1970), also starring Alan Bates and Julie Christie; The Shooting Party (1985), A Handful of Dust (1988) and The Remains of the Day (1993). Firle Place (in Sussex) stands in for Baldry Court. The house stands on the crest of the Harrow Weald (“sleek hills blue with distance and distant woods”), to the North West of London. In 1916, Middlesex was still rural, or at least semi-rural, (according to Betjeman, “the most lovely of counties”), where John Buchan could write of “a country house on the borders of Middlesex and Buckinghamshire” (The Three Hostages, 1924); before the march of the Mock Tudor housing estates of the early ‘20s, ‘homes fit for heroes to live in’. In the book, Kitty rebuilds “old Baldry Court” and redecorates it in the latest, most fashionable and manicured taste, with “pretty chintz”, “lightness and clear colours”. This former transformation of Baldry from Gloomy Gothic to Wedding Cake Edwardian is, perhaps, slightly lost in the film, but hey, it’s a minor quibble— as The Return of the Soldier, and I hope you’ll come to agree with me, if and when you see it, is, like the book, a minor masterpiece.
The casting’s to die for. Julie Christie’s Kitty is glamorous, spoilt, petulant— and as hard as nails. Like “a girl on a magazine cover that one expected to find a large 7d somewhere attached to her person.” A superficial woman who cares for little, apart from her station in life and her ‘perfect’ marriage (as she sees it). As you can see, Alan Bridges and Shirley Russell took inspiration from the illustrations in the original book.
And Glenda Jackson is superb— I cannot stress that enough— as the ‘dowdy’, lower-middle class Margaret Allington, with a decent, pipe-and-slippers, gardening husband, played by Frank Finlay (“That Macaroni Cheese. Ever so tasty”) and the redbrick terrace, Ladysmith Row, “the red suburban stain which fouls the fields three miles nearer London than Harrowweald.”
As with the husband in Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter (1945) there’s a touching exchange. Glenda Jackson and Frank Finlay are a terrific pairing— might this be Glenda’s greatest performance? And Alan Bates’ shell-shocked Captain is spot on: reserved, thoughtful and immensely likeable. You can see what the women see in him. There are lovely supporting roles, too. From Ian Holm as the Scottish psychiatrist, Up from London, (shades of Dr. Rivers and Siegfried Sassoon)— an actor who can do no wrong by my book— and Jeremy Kemp (The Blue Max and The Belstone Fox) as the bluff, drunken cousin in an Old Harrovian tie. Talking of cousins, the only eyebrow raised, perhaps, is the slightly odd casting of Ann-Margret, the Swedish sexpot, as Jenny— Chris’s unmarried, thirty-something, devoted cousin, the book’s narrator. She’s a handsome woman (lovely posture, lovely profile!) and looks the part. Yet despite the wavering English accent, it works, somehow. I think.
Historically, The Return of the Soldier (as a film) is a product of its time. And we need to put this in context. There’s a scene (at the hospital) with a wounded soldier (Kevin Whately) berating Captain Baldry as a shirking coward: “Nothing much wrong with Sir, is there? Leading from the back again, as usual”, when, in reality, the junior officers— the Lieutenants and the Captains— led from the front, displaying extraordinary bravery and were admired, even loved by their men. The average life expectancy of a subaltern on the Western Front was just six weeks. In 1916, the men would have known that only too well. This populist ‘Blackadder’ view of the First World War is a creation of the 1960s, with the publication of Alan Clark’s brilliant— but deeply flawed— The Donkeys (1961), the inspiration for Joan Littlewood’s Oh What a Lovely War! (1969), written at the time of the Vietnam conflict— an interpretation now discredited by distinguished revisionist historians like John Terraine and Richard Holmes, but still lingering in the 1980s.
Anyway. Enough said. As you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a devotee of music in film— it can really make or break a picture. Gone with the Wind (1939) is a case in point. And that’s another thing I like about British film in the first half of the Eighties. Terrific soundtracks. I’m a massive fan of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, a distinguished classical composer and jazz pianist in his own right (Lady Caroline Lamb (1973), Murder on The Orient Express (1974), Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1994). His soundtrack for The Return of the Soldier is elegiac and lyrical, alternating between the avant-garde and the pastoral, a sort of pastiche of early 20th century English music (Arnold Bax, Gerald Finzi ). It’s especially effective set against the recreation of John Nash’s Over the Top— in Jenny’s surreal dream sequence at the beginning of the film. Haunting stuff. And, as with Carl Davis’ superb score for The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), it’s available to download on Spotify.
So there you go. The Return of the Soldier (1982). One of my favourite films. A distinguished literary adaptation and, in my opinion, one of the best films of the British cinematic revival of the first half of the 1980s. Which, as time passes, I am now beginning to understand just how good it was. A class act, all round.
The Return of the Soldier is available to watch on DVD, Blu-ray and Amazon Prime digital download, and— hooray! there’s a free recording on YouTube.
To view the other films we’ve covered so far, please go to the Luke Honey WEEKEND FLICKS. archive. ‘Paid for’ subscribers get two weekend film recommendations, access to the entire archive and the ability to comment. By the end of the year, there should be over 100 film recommendations.
I will be back on Friday. In the meantime, I hope you have a relaxing weekend…
