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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Mini-Series > Literature > British TV > Hard Times (1975/Granada/Acorn Media/Charles Dickens)

Hard Times (1975/Granada/Acorn Media)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: C-     Episodes: B-

 

 

Charles Dickens’ is one of the most celebrated and adapted authors of all time, but one of his works is one of the least adapted of all and that is because it just might be too honest and critical.  The 1975 British TV version of Hard Times is the longest of three known to exist.  There is an older silent version way back in 1915 (if a print still exists, we don’t know) and a more recent BBC telefilm.  Acorn Media has issued the entire Granada mini-series on 2 DVDs.

 

The story involves Thomas Gradgrind (Patrick Allen) who insists that teaching pure facts and “reason” all the time to the young, especially the poor young, will fix many of the ills of class troubles in 19th Century industrial England.  The problems with this approach will eventually effect him personally because facts never deal with the truth and the machinery he builds out of facts becomes destructively militaristic on an ideological level that contracts his intentions and reveals the societies hypocrisy.  One of them is and continues to be the exploitation of children.

 

This also dangerously parallels the actual mill run by Josiah Bounderby (Timothy West), a cold-hearted industrialist who wants nothing but pure profit and could care less who suffers or dies.  It is strictly business and not of his concern.  With that, you can see why corporations and Neo-Conservatives do not want to deal with such an important work. This is a very good adaptation, though there is some sloppiness in sound editing that makes it look bad.  However, with a cast that also includes Edward Fox as Captain James Harthouse, this is the most ambitious version to date.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is soft and color poor throughout, shot in the common combination at the time of 16mm film for outdoors and PAL professional analog videotape on the inside.  We know some of the Granada catalog is not in good shape, but this is one fop the poorest performers we have seen and unless the 16mm can be unearthed for HD upgrades, this might be the best form it survives in.  Granada’s longtime in-house cinematographers Andy Stephen and Ray Goode share lensing chores.  The original mono sound has been slightly upgraded to Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, but the boosting is of a second generation source with more background hiss than we usually get in Acorn DVD releases.  The only extras are text on Dickens and of cast filmographies.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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