The Woman in White was a Victorian pot-boiler with a startling plot twist half way through, that could be cited as the first true detective novel (although this designation is usually reserved for The Moonstone). It has generated a number of stage, movie and TV adaptations.
A comparison of this version with the one made in 1997 highlights the crucial difference between movies based on books and book adaptations - which are usually in the form of a TV mini-series.
A movie is seen at a single two hour sitting and has to grab the audience at the very beginning, take them on an engrossing journey, deliver a climax and then wrap things up in five minutes. This sort of structure is bred in the bone of a good screenwriter but is rarely found in novels.
A TV mini-series is viewed an hour at a time (much as books are read), so it doesn't have to hurry from plot point to plot point and can sustain a much more diffuse dramatic structure. It can get the most out of each scene and then just string those scenes together so that the whole thing takes as long as it takes.
The Woman in White is a long book that was originally published in monthly parts. The 1997 version shows that it is possible to condense the essential story elements into a concise two hour drama but only if there are major changes. This is because the book presents a movie screenwriter with some huge problems.
The story is compiled from the first hand testimonies of a number of different people. The hero disappears for half the novel and plays no part in the rescue of the heroine. The central plot twist is only recounted retrospectively. There are two villains, one of whom dies a hundred pages before the end of the book while the other is defeated only by the sudden intervention of a character that hasn't appeared since the opening chapter. Moreover, the story is continually changing tack. It starts as a romance and a mystery, abruptly turns into a thriller and then morphs into a detective story. In short, it breaks every rule of good screen writing.
However, like other Nineteenth Century doorstop novels, it is not the sort of story you want to rush through just to find out what happens in the end.
This production cannot replicate the multiple viewpoints of the book, so it reorganizes the material into strict chronological order. Its five part structure preserves the episodic nature of the book and presents the meandering story much more faithfully then any of the other versions still available today. Ideally, it would have gone even farther. For example, the half way point in the book is only reached mid way through the penultimate episode, so the second half of the story is a bit of a scramble. It might have been better to have planned it as 12 half-hour episodes.
My only real regret is that it is not as well made as it might have been. I found I was constantly pausing to reflect on how scenes might have been re-written and the material might have been better organized to tell the story more effectively. I was also very conscious of the limitations of shooting on videotape rather than film. While the story is strong enough to survive almost any inadequacies in the production, I found this adaptation a bit short on drama, atmosphere and tension.
The performances are variable. Daniel Geroll is a good actor and has subsequently had a very successful career, both on stage and screen, but his Walter Hartright seemed a bit drippy to me. Jenny Seagrove and (especially) Diana Quick are both fine in their relatively undemanding roles, but Alan Badel is only passable in the crucial role of Count Fosco. Of course, he is not physically right for the part, but that isn't important, because Fosco's corpulence is not essential to the character. A more serious reservation is that Badel does not fully capture either the intelligence or the poisonous politeness of the man and lacks both charisma and a sense of menace (I must check out the movie version to see what Sidney Greenstreet did with the part). Other actors are competent rather than striking and only Ian Richardson really stands out. His Mr Fairlie was so memorable that it is no surprise that he was invited to play the part again in the 1997 version.
If you want a coherent, exciting two-hour drama then that 1997 production is probably the one I would recommend. But be warned: it departs radically from the book in many places.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a 'warts and all' dramatization of the story, very much as Willkie Collins wrote it, you cannot do better than this version. I don't think it is as good as other IMDb reviewers have suggested, but I still found it enjoyable and I wouldn't want my reservations to discourage anyone who loves the book from giving it a view.
However, the definitive Woman in White is still waiting to be made.
A comparison of this version with the one made in 1997 highlights the crucial difference between movies based on books and book adaptations - which are usually in the form of a TV mini-series.
A movie is seen at a single two hour sitting and has to grab the audience at the very beginning, take them on an engrossing journey, deliver a climax and then wrap things up in five minutes. This sort of structure is bred in the bone of a good screenwriter but is rarely found in novels.
A TV mini-series is viewed an hour at a time (much as books are read), so it doesn't have to hurry from plot point to plot point and can sustain a much more diffuse dramatic structure. It can get the most out of each scene and then just string those scenes together so that the whole thing takes as long as it takes.
The Woman in White is a long book that was originally published in monthly parts. The 1997 version shows that it is possible to condense the essential story elements into a concise two hour drama but only if there are major changes. This is because the book presents a movie screenwriter with some huge problems.
The story is compiled from the first hand testimonies of a number of different people. The hero disappears for half the novel and plays no part in the rescue of the heroine. The central plot twist is only recounted retrospectively. There are two villains, one of whom dies a hundred pages before the end of the book while the other is defeated only by the sudden intervention of a character that hasn't appeared since the opening chapter. Moreover, the story is continually changing tack. It starts as a romance and a mystery, abruptly turns into a thriller and then morphs into a detective story. In short, it breaks every rule of good screen writing.
However, like other Nineteenth Century doorstop novels, it is not the sort of story you want to rush through just to find out what happens in the end.
This production cannot replicate the multiple viewpoints of the book, so it reorganizes the material into strict chronological order. Its five part structure preserves the episodic nature of the book and presents the meandering story much more faithfully then any of the other versions still available today. Ideally, it would have gone even farther. For example, the half way point in the book is only reached mid way through the penultimate episode, so the second half of the story is a bit of a scramble. It might have been better to have planned it as 12 half-hour episodes.
My only real regret is that it is not as well made as it might have been. I found I was constantly pausing to reflect on how scenes might have been re-written and the material might have been better organized to tell the story more effectively. I was also very conscious of the limitations of shooting on videotape rather than film. While the story is strong enough to survive almost any inadequacies in the production, I found this adaptation a bit short on drama, atmosphere and tension.
The performances are variable. Daniel Geroll is a good actor and has subsequently had a very successful career, both on stage and screen, but his Walter Hartright seemed a bit drippy to me. Jenny Seagrove and (especially) Diana Quick are both fine in their relatively undemanding roles, but Alan Badel is only passable in the crucial role of Count Fosco. Of course, he is not physically right for the part, but that isn't important, because Fosco's corpulence is not essential to the character. A more serious reservation is that Badel does not fully capture either the intelligence or the poisonous politeness of the man and lacks both charisma and a sense of menace (I must check out the movie version to see what Sidney Greenstreet did with the part). Other actors are competent rather than striking and only Ian Richardson really stands out. His Mr Fairlie was so memorable that it is no surprise that he was invited to play the part again in the 1997 version.
If you want a coherent, exciting two-hour drama then that 1997 production is probably the one I would recommend. But be warned: it departs radically from the book in many places.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a 'warts and all' dramatization of the story, very much as Willkie Collins wrote it, you cannot do better than this version. I don't think it is as good as other IMDb reviewers have suggested, but I still found it enjoyable and I wouldn't want my reservations to discourage anyone who loves the book from giving it a view.
However, the definitive Woman in White is still waiting to be made.