This film won several Oscar nominations in 1960 including Best Picture (Jerry Wald), Best Director (Jack Cardiff), Best Actor (Trevor Howard) and Best Supporting Actress (Mary Ure). It had a very good cast and one of those unforgettable movie theme songs. I'm not sure that it is possible to capture a large classic novel in a 90-min movie, but if it is, this one came close. Based on D.H. Lawrence's semi-autobiographical novel, this film captures some of the common themes displayed in his other works: the search for ideal love and sensuality and its limitations in the industrialized and modern life of early 20th Century England. Although written MUCH earlier than the 'kitchen sink realism' of the late 50s and early 60s, it still captures some of its flavor and uses the same geographical setting, the English Midlands. The protagonist of the story is Paul Morel (Dean Stockwell) who has an almost idyllic love for his mother, Gertrude (Wendy Hiller). He also hates his father, Walter (Trevor Howard), who—-though usually good natured--treats his mother beastly. Paul asks his mother how she can put up with his father's drinking. She answers by saying that he was once young and handsome and good.The relationship between Paul and his mother clearly points towards emotional insect. Gertrude wants to rescue her three sons' lives from the mine. With her eldest son now living in London and her youngest son being killed in a mine explosion, she turns her attention to Paul. And, even though both Paul and his mother know that their love for each other is only that between a mother and a son, Gertrude is clearly jealous of Paul's intimate closeness towards his long-time girlfriend, Miriam (Heather Sears, Room at the Top). Miriam's mother thwarts their relationship because she doesn't think Paul is good enough for her and seems to have forced a religious fanaticism on Miriam. Paul and Miriam's physical relationship seems destined to failure. After making love, Paul tells Miriam that she was sacrificing herself to him, and he wanted her to WANT more of him.When Paul makes love to Miriam, he is thinking of his mother. When Paul turns down an art scholarship in London and takes a job in a nearby corset factory, he does it to protect his mother and she doesn't protest that much. In the factory, he is attracted to one of his fellow worker, Clara Dawes (Mary Ure, Look Back in Anger). The married (but separated) Clara is a suffragette who seems very different from Miriam. After Clara and Paul go off for a weekend together, Paul is confronted, and beat up by, Clara's husband, Baxter (Conrad Phillips). After this, Clara breaks up with Paul, realizing that she will always own Baxter (or that he would always need her) and Paul only wanted the physical relationship. This is a GREAT MOVIE, FULL OF FEELING AND EMOTION, and with all of the principal cast members at their best.

In this fine adaptation of the Lawrence novel, the son of a coal-mining family aspires to become an artist. The only American in a British cast, not only does Stockwell flawlessly adopt an English accent, but he also turns in an excellent performance. This is certainly one of the high points of a career that has spanned a remarkable eight decades from the 1940s to the 2010s. Howard and Hiller play his parents and the latter is particularly good. Supplying the love interest are Ure and Sears, two actresses who both died too soon. After a long, distinguished career as a cinematographer, Cardiff scored his first directorial success with this drama.

Sons and Lovers (1960)D. H. Lawrence is at an all time low in popularity--both his books and the movies based on them. Why? Good question. It's more than just passing tastes. I think it has to do with the precious boundary breaking that once made Lawrence a daring darling of the literary set. Sexual taboos have since been so radically eclipsed, from Henry Miller to John Updike, not to mention hundreds of less mainstream authors, Lawrence is almost stuffy and pretentious.Or so it would seem. "Sons and Lovers" is a love story set in a tough mining town in England early in the 20th Century. It's filled with the longing of a man to rise out of these pits and be "something" in the world--namely, a successful painter. The girl who loves him is overly devoted, and after a tryst (that was the radical part) there is a falling apart of things. How true this can be! I mean, this is great stuff--a sensitive story about the feelings most of us have had, where desire is mistaken for something deeper, where the world is calling and love, or shades of love, are not enough to keep you home.The filming is straight out of the gritty, short period of British films known rough as the British New Wave or the Angry Young Men (or both). These films, a grown out of French New Wave and early Italian neo-realism, were a reaction against the slick and vacuous big studio filmmaking (Hollywood especially) from this period. There are more typical films from this group than "Sons and Lovers" but it's certainly part of that mood, looking at working class life, filming with great economy and directness, and using actors in a realistic, vaguely documentary way. For insight into this kind of film, try "Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner" or "Look Back in Anger." Even the first Beatles film, oddly enough, is influenced by this movement ("A Hard Day's Night"), in the raw, fast, black and white style.But if that's the context, you still have to ask if this film is any good. And the answer is quite. It's a big movie, a deep movie, emotional and deeply serious. It is sad, too, overall, or perhaps melancholy is a better word, and this gloom is slightly wearing after a bit. Some people will find that talking about love is a peculiarly British and indirect way of being in love--the literary overwhelms the truth.Director Jack Cardiff is a cinematographer above all. This might explain the visual emphasis, the sublime, restrained photography. Lead young actor Dean Stockwell is a perfect visual cast, and he really is good, somehow, in a way that is convincing, though he isn't always commanding. A small part of me didn't care what happened to anyone in the movie. It was all plain to see, and I knew what I was supposed to feel, but I didn't always get the force of those feelings. The movie, like the book, is patient and deliberate, and quite nuanced and beautiful.

This exquisite adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's novel is famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff's most accomplished film as a director; in fact, he was nominated and indeed won several major Best Direction awards (including the Golden Globe). Sadly, none of his other directorial efforts were anywhere near as rewarding although I'd still like to watch at least 2 of them - the epic THE LONG SHIPS (1963) and the horror film THE MUTATIONS (1974; a SE DVD of which has been released under the title THE FREAKMAKER).Amazingly, this was a Hollywood production (made by 20th Century Fox) and, as such, leading man Dean Stockwell (who was probably never better) was imposed on Cardiff by producer Jerry Wald - though he seems to have been pleased with his performance. The acting of the Oscar-nominated Trevor Howard (as Stockwell's boorish and drunkard coal-miner father) and Mary Ure (as the married but separated young suffragette with whom Stockwell has an affair), as well as Wendy Hiller (as his strong but possessive mother), is irreproachable. The supporting cast includes Ernest Thesiger (in one of his last films) and Donald Pleasence, with both unfortunately having limited screen-time.Freddie Francis' luminous black-and-white cinematography earned the film its only Oscar; interestingly, Francis also followed in Cardiff's footsteps and became a film director himself (with similarly erratic results, ironically enough). Mario Nascimbene's lovely music score and the film's vivid recreation of an era (in authentic locations, no less) add immeasurably to its lasting impression.The coal-mine setting recalls earlier films like Carol Reed's THE STARS LOOK DOWN (1939) and John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941), with which it can be favorably compared. Still, for all its quaint Englishness and the inherent sentimentality of its narrative, the film is a remarkably adult and frank depiction of sexual and artistic awakening vis-à-vis repressed Edwardian society and, together with Ken Russell's equally celebrated adaptation of WOMEN IN LOVE (1969), remains undoubtedly the finest screen rendition of D. H. Lawrence's work.It's a shame, therefore, that this is as yet unavailable on R1 DVD but the R2 edition I own is a more than adequate substitute, with a very nice-looking print of the main feature, surprisingly strong audio and, apart from the basic supplements of the original theatrical trailer and a stills gallery, features a wonderful interview with Cardiff about the making of SONS AND LOVERS (interspersed with relevant clips from the film itself) which clocks in at around half-an-hour.