The exportation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon. (2024)

Abstract

This article traces the various attempts made since the 1940s torepresent the fiction of James Leslie Mitchell, better known by hispen-name of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, in non-text forms. The author'smajor works, principally the trilogy of novels A Scots Quair, andpre-eminently the first novel Sunset Song, are seen as dynamicnarratives that lend themselves to adaptation for radio, stage,television and film; indeed, Mitchell himself is shown to have beeninterested in the creative potential of the art form of the cinema.Specific details are given of the radio, stage and television versionsof the Gibbon works produced over the years, and of the published aimsof the script writers. Finally, the most recent adaptation, TerenceDavies's feature film version of Sunset Song, is judged adisappointing film as well as an unfaithful adaptation of a classictext.

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Over the last decade, highly acclaimed British auteur film directorTerence Davies has regularly declared his love for Sunset Song, LewisGrassic Gibbon's groundbreaking modernist novel from 1932. (1) Theprospect of Davies bringing his fifteen-year-long ambition to realiseGibbon's novel cinematically has been particularly eagerly awaitedin Scotland, where Pharic Maclaren's BBC televisionserialisation--which sparked Davies's interest in Gibbon'sbook on its transmission in 1971--is popularly remembered with greatwarmth as a production that set down a firm marker indicating thecapacity of Gibbon's novel to effect the exportation to the visualmedium. (2)

Following seemingly interminable delays with funding andpre-production and having secured the combined backing of HurricaneFilms, Iris Productions, BFI Film Fund, BBC Scotland, Luxembourg FilmFund and Creative Scotland, the project seems to have been energisedover the last two years, with the final ground-rush culminating in thefilm making its global debut at the Toronto Film Festival on 13September last year before securing its first UK appearance at the BFILondon Film Festival on 15 October. From there, the film steadily workedits way north of the border for Scottish premieres at EdinburghFilmhouse on 11 November (supported by the director and select castmembers) and at Glasgow Film Theatre on 12 November. A sense ofhomecoming was engendered by the film's sold-out northern premiereat Aberdeen's Belmont Filmhouse on 13 November, where TerenceDavies was joined by actors Agyness Deyn (Chris), Kevin Guthrie (Ewan)and Ian Pirie (Chae) in introducing the fruits of their labours in dulyreverential terms. Finally, there was a lingering feeling of proprietywhen the Grassic Gibbon Centre at Arbuthnott hosted a showing of thefilm at a packed out Arbuthnott Parish Hall on 30 November, StAndrew's Day, in homage to their most famous son.

Now that the hype surrounding the release of Davies's featurehas settled following its official release in British cinemas on 4December 2015 and with the film's swift transference to DVD, thisseems a useful point to take stock of what has actually been produced bythe convergence of two hugely respected talents in their own particularcreative fields.

Gibbon's global importance, centred inevitably on his epictrilogy A Scots Quair, has steadily been assured ever since H. GustavKlaus's percipient identification of the volume in 1978 as'the outstanding Socialist prose work of the inter-warperiod'. (3) This testimonial has subsequently been reaffirmed byrepublication of long out of print works by Mitchell, principally byCanongate in their Scottish Classics imprint and by Polygon in their'Lewis Grassic Gibbon Series', by the adoption of Sunset Songas a specified text by the Open University in 2005, and by the ruralnovel's induction to the Penguin Classics stable in 2007, whichserved to introduce the book to a conventional English readership thathad been slow to acknowledge Gibbon's literary status withincontemporary canonical groupings of the novel. (The generalist tendencyin Scottish literary studies since the late 1960s to play up thenationalist properties of the trilogy disappointingly was instrumentalin intensifying the political and linguistic resistance to its charmsfurth of the border.) The recent publication of a slim but robustcollection of critical essays by scholars culled from home and abroadtitled The International Companion to Lewis Grassic Gibbon, drawing outthe subtleties of the author's multi-faceted achievement as,amongst other things, radical modernist, cultural nationalist, left-winghumanitarian, champion of female rights and proto-Romantic visionary,offers real hope that the name of Lewis Grassic Gibbon is becoming ashighly respected outwith his native land as it is back in Scotland,where Sunset Song has grabbed publicity constantly by topping polls tofind Scotland's favourite writers. (4)

Renowned as a writer of quite phenomenal productivity and equallystunning versatility, James Leslie Mitchell/Lewis Grassic Gibbon himselfwas fascinated by the artistic potential of the cinema in the 1930s.Chris Guthrie's visit to the Duncairn Picturedrome with Ma Cleghornin Grey Granite perhaps projects a negative image of the film medium ashome to mawkish escapist melodrama, which Chris sardonically debunks as'looking at shadows'; (5) yet as a full-time writer, LeslieMitchell was well aware of the riches to be gained by tapping in to thelucrative possibilities offered by film, with Hollywood already headingboldly into its golden age following on from the riproaring success in1927 of The Jazz Singer and the innovation of sound. More seriously, asa writer with a pronounced interest in modernist experimentation, one ofGibbon's last essays, for the Edinburgh-based journal CinemaQuarterly, hailed the artistic potential of the cinema, as yetconsidered unfulfilled, in its capacity to provide 'the free andundefiled illusion', (6) possessing an additional dimension in thecultivation of the suspension of disbelief. Following the runawaysuccess of Sunset Song in Britain, just before the book'spublication on the other side of the Atlantic, American film producerAlexander Korda was showing an interest in the first Grassic Gibbonnovel as a possible subject for the full Hollywood treatment. (7) Theauthor remained typically grounded about the prospect of his brainchildbeing turned into a cinematic blockbuster when he wrote wryly to HelenB. Cruickshank on 3 November 1932:

 Sunset Song's coming out in America this month, and there's even an American film-company nibbling at it. I'd like an American film with Long Rob ejacul*ting a nasal 'Sez you!' to Chae. (8)

The pursuit of possible film tie-ups extended beyond theauthor's own lifetime: shortly after Leslie Mitchell's death,his widow Ray Mitchell unsuccessfully pursued the cinematic angle forher husband's fiction, with concrete plans to sell the novelsSpartacus and The Lost Trumpet unfortunately coming to naught. (9) Thefinancial losses suffered in missing out on the former project was madepainfully manifest by the runaway success in 1960 of StanleyKubrick's Hollywood epic featuring Kirk Douglas, based on HowardFast's 1951 novel (with a typically trenchant script by blacklistedleft-wing writer Dalton Trumbo).

Sunset Song is a novel that readily lends itself to representationin drama and in media. The first novel of the epic trilogy possesses ahost of qualities that positively beg for translation to dramatic media,boasting key traditional elements of narrative fiction: unforgettablecharacterisation, including in Chris Guthrie one of the most vividlydistinctive central characters in all fiction; compelling bittersweetstoryline, tracing the personal development of the main protagonist fromdaughter through romance to wife/mother/ widow played out against theturbulent years surrounding the First World War; profound and lyricalreflective passages on a host of timeless themes; regular injections ofmelodrama, farce, ghostly visions and friction to pep up the pace; pithydialogue; deeply lyrical setting; and gripping tonal balance, with thebeautifully controlled mood steadily darkening towards the book'sclimax.

The capacity of Gibbon's masterpiece to effect the crossoverto different genres has long been recognised in practice, with varyingdegrees of success. John Wilson's pioneering radio adaptation ofSunset Song, produced by James Crampsey and featuring Lennox Milne asChris Guthrie, was broadcast by the Scottish Home Service in three partsfrom 2 December 1948, followed by Wilson's version of Cloud Howe inMay 195 3. (10) Gibbon's love affair with radio continued thefollowing decade with dramatisations of the stories 'Smeddum','Sim' 'Clay' and 'Greenden' broadcast onthe BBC Home Service between October 1966 and February 1967. BillCraig's sensitive scripts for the fondly remembered BBC televisiondramatisations of the trilogy from the 1970s and 1980s retained thevigour of the original novels whilst easing the transition to screen;(11) the script writer's achievement has commonly been thought tohave lived up to his exalted aims, recorded in The Radio Times in 1983,in which he defined his primary intention 'to try to dramatise thenovels as Mitchell would have dramatised them had he been around towrite the screenplays'. (12) In recent times the trilogy has made awelcome reappearance on radio. Gerda Stevenson, veteran participant fromthe BBC television dramatisations of 'Clay' (as Rachel Galt)and Grey Granite (as Ellen Johns), vividly recast the novel in 2009 as aradio play that fulfilled her stated aim to achieve fidelity to theoriginal novel: 'I tried to be true to Grassic Gibbon, to retainall that was crucial in terms of telling the story and engaging theaudience'. (13)

Gibbon's fiction also has a long-standing affinity with thestage. Gibbon's biographer Ian S Munro directed a condensed versionof Sunset Song at the New Arts Centre in Aberdeen from 24 to 30 May1964, (14) but it was Tony Graham's production of TAGTheatre's muscular rendition of Alastair Cording's adaptationof the components of the trilogy in the 1990s that made the strongestcase for Grassic Gibbon's ability to make the transition to thestage. (15) Cording, whose stage adaptation has formed the bedrock oftheatrical presentations of the trilogy from 1991, has also recorded hisoverriding intention to remain faithful to the original novel. Whileregretting cuts made from the novel forced upon him by simple demands ofspace, and while acknowledging the imaginative license invoked intranslating fiction to non-naturalistic drama (using music and dance aswell as dialogue and action), Cording was quick to recognise thetheatrical appeal of the original, writing especially perceptively inthe introduction to the first published version of his script of theusefulness of Gibbon's prose style: 'Gibbon himself invented"the Speak"--the ready-made chorus of rural gossippersonified, and a gift to any playwright.' (16) Ten years later,in the book version of his script, he expanded valuably as man of thetheatre on the full dramatic possibilities of Gibbon's style:

 The great achievement is the use of Scottish rhythm-patterns in the narrative, combined with the brilliantly conceived narrative voice, the Speak of Kinraddie, a personification of local gossip and rumour, satire, comedy and commentary. It is simultaneously perceptive, plain-spoken, intimate, ignorant and untrustworthy. The Speak's identity shifts constantly and effortlessly: sometimes it is Chris herself. It brilliantly exploits the Scottish use of the second-person singular/plural--'you'--sometimes in a very direct address to the reader, implying a shared set of values and understanding; sometimes it is the inner voice of a character speaking to themselves. The English equivalent--'one'--has the opposite effect, distancing and depersonalising. (17)

Terence Davies perhaps appears an unlikely amanuensis for GrassicGibbon, although the prospect of a non-Scot tackling the task ofadapting Sunset Song may be welcomed as an antidote to the native urgeto smother Gibbon's achievement in an insularly jingoistic embrace.In any case, Leslie Mitchell/Lewis Grassic Gibbon himself was certainlynot a parochial Scot, but a proud arbiter of a much broader-rangingvision of global harmony completely transcending nationhood and definedby him in his seminal essay on 'Glasgow' in Scottish Scene as'cosmopolitanism'. (18) Arguably the only home grown directorwith a proven track record in film and the cultural and ideological nousto direct Sunset Song was the late Bill Douglas, whose unfulfilled aimto film his adaptation of James Hogg's Private Memoirs andConfessions of a Justified Sinner remains one of the great tragedies ofour slight cinematic history; but Douglas's filmic milieu waspalpably urban, even had he been granted a fuller life. Politically,Mike Leigh and Ken Loach might have emerged as outside candidates, withtheir solid left-wing credentials and Loach's proven track recordwith adaptation of the novel, particularly the vibrant treatment from1969 of Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave. And outwith the UK,Edgar Reitz, director of Heimat, certainly could have been trusted topursue a sympathetically balanced approach in entering a smallclose-knit rural communality--although his favoured setting has alwaysbeen restricted to the communities of the Rhine.

In objective terms, Davies's directorial credentials areimpressive. His semi-autobiographical trilogy of shorts--something of acompanion piece to Bill Douglas's seminal autobiographicaltrilogy--beginning with Children from 1976 and running through Madonnaand Child from 1980 to Death and Transfiguration in 1983 established hisreputation as champion of the unorthodox and chronicler of socialrepression in post-war Britain. His first feature film Distant Voices,Still Lives won him international recognition, with PetePostlethwaite's virtuoso performance as the abusive father--aportent of the tyrannical John Guthrie--stealing the show asDavies's lingering anatomy of the ambivalences of ordinary familylife in Liverpool in the 1940s and 1950s won the InternationalCritics' Award at Cannes in 1988. The Long Day Closes from 1992forms something of a sequel, in its impressionistic bittersweet study ofadolescence in a working-class Catholic family in Liverpool. However, itwas his adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth in2000, dominated by a revelatory performance by Gillian Anderson, thatfirst signalled his move away from autobiographical self-examination(subsequently continued with the more directly personal portrait ofLiverpool offered by 2008's Of Time and the City) towards thefertile field of literary adaptation, with Rachel Weisz's leadingrole as Hester Collyer in the rather muddled 2011 film of TerenceRattigan's stage play The Deep Blue Sea demonstrating thedirector's growing penchant for strong female protagonists.

What, then, can the Scottish reading public realistically expectwhen faced with the prospect of a full-length feature film of SunsetSong, as an artful production presumably avoiding the commercialtemptation to fillet a classic to produce a crass Braveheart orOutlander Scotsploitation epic, a Mearnslander tartan bodice-ripperslathered with blood and lust and death and romance dispensing with themore nuanced features of the text? This being so, then to what extenthas Terence Davies delivered on his much more exalted directorial brief?

Initial reaction to Davies's film following its Toronto debutwas mixed. The most perceptive review, by Henry Barnes in the Guardianon 13 September, balanced light criticism of directorial'indulgence' against Davies's trademark predilection forscrutinising family dysfunction, particularly that presided over bytyrannical patriarchs. The central performance of Agyness Deyn isgenerously, if guardedly, applauded. The most worrying reference forthose familiar with Gibbon's novel, however, is to Davies'savowed desire to escape the harshnesses of contemporary life by escapinginto a romantic past, compounded by his determination to eschew the'socialist or egalitarian message at its heart'. (19) Readersfamiliar with Sunset Song will be aware of the tremendous radicalpolitical drive of the narrative, in setting up the pressing moralmandate for social change subsequently pursued in the more overtlypoliticised sequels in the trilogy Cloud Howe and Grey Granite.Gibbon's whole structure, both in the climax of the first novel andin the remainder of the trilogy, cautions against the temptation towallow in an idealisation of the past and posits instead the possibilityof drawing inspiration from the goodness that has gone--personified bythe crofting community whose passing is so eloquently lamented in SunsetSong--and harnessing it to the effort to combat the evils of thepresent. The local, the parochial, the safe, the traditional--all, it issuggested, are now under grave threat from world-wide social andpolitical movements of highly dubious moral character. In theterminology of Russian critic Svetlana Boym, the nostalgia peddled inSunset Song is not the passive 'restorative nostalgia'involving the censoring of the past into a 'perfect snapshot'of home and homeland purged of its blemishes, but the dynamic'reflective nostalgia' yoking the portrait to an activeideological purpose. (20)

Several key concerns surfaced pre-production concerningDavies's adaptation of Gibbon's novel. Firstly, Davies wasfaced with the primary challenge facing all stage and media directors,of turning Gibbon's bespoke literary style into a verbal one--ofimposing an exteriorised voice upon language that is skilfully measuredby the author as lightly Scotticised English, and that each readerindividually subjectifies as he or she reads the text; stage, radio,television and film adaptations are all subject to invidious questionsof vernacular authenticity and, by extension, of inherited problems ofaccessibility and target audience. Perhaps, as Gibbon's ironicapercu to Helen Cruickshank suggests, the option of exporting the novelto a completely separate country might circumvent such awkwardnesses oflinguistic and cultural faithfulness at a stroke; the notion of SunsetSong as a revisionist John Ford-style western, with native Americans asthe ethnic people battling the forces of progress, is not quite asoutlandish as it first appears. More specifically, Davies faced theunenviable task of superseding Pharic Maclaren's fondly rememberedBBC television dramatisation from 1971, which drew his attention to thebook. In particular, he faced the challenge of displacing VivienHeilbron's highly lauded performance as Chris Guthrie, which formany viewers provided the authoritative physical image of Gibbon'sheroine. (Gibbon's stipulation to an illustrator for newspaperserialisation of Cloud Home that, 'Chris should be lovely, but notprettified--high cheek-bones & so on' (21) was fully realisedin Heilbron's persona.) Major worries before the film focused onDavies's iconoclastic casting for his heroine; several criticsthought Invernesian Karen Gillan ('flame-haired' Amy Pond,side-kick of Matt Smith's Doctor Who in 2010) was tailormade toplay Chris Guthrie, in terms of looks, accent and acting presence, andtherefore supermodel Agyness Deyn's choice was shockinglyradical--especially considering Deyn's Lancashire roots and herlimited acting experience (mainly centring on her part in NicolasWinding Refn's gritty in-your-face 2012 thriller Pusher). PeterMullan as John Guthrie, however, seemed a much safer piece of casting interms of his experience and his Scottish provenance. Additional disquietwas expressed about the chosen locations for the novel, which sustainedfleeting location filming in Arbuthnott, real-life model for Kinraddie,but which widened to take in Aberdeenshire, further north, divested ofthe unique red clay farmland of the Mearns, and even harvesting scenesseasonally imported from New Zealand.

In the final estimation, several positives emerged. Deyn ispassable as the gauche ingenue Chris Guthrie as young girl, but herinexperience shows in the second half of the film, where she appears toofumblingly indecisive, and indeed too flat verbally, for thesmeddum-firm heroine whose forthright character has been honed andtempered by harsh elemental experience. Deyn's Chris Guthrie fallsbadly short of the female icons of film, of Nastassja Kinski'sTess, of Julie Christie's Bashsheba, of Maggie Smith's JeanBrodie, in more recent times of Ruth Wilson's Jane Eyre. However,Jack Greenlees is a nicely understated foil as Chris's big brotherWill, a vital role model in the book who counterbalances theirfather's dreadful shortcomings, particularly with regard to hisloving romantic relationship. Playing to form, Peter Mullan ismuscularly hirsute as John Guthrie Bad, the unforgiving OldTestament-style arbiter of inflexible and corrupt behavioural codes; hisrepresentation of Guthrie squirming convulsively on the ground in thefirst throes of a stroke pays full visual testimony to Gibbon'sgraphic description of his seizure, 'as though a great frog weresquattering there in the stour'. (22) Sterling support is providedby Ian Pirie as Chae, one of the paragons in the storyline and the chiefmoral anchor in the film, although Douglas Rankine's comparablepotential as Long Rob is trimmed by the truncation of his role in thefilm. Credible cameos add valuably to the authentic sepia-tinted humantableau, with the doctor, Aunt Janet and Uncle Tam, Mistress Melon andJohn Muir all bringing belief to their parts despite collectively addingto the overweening negativity struck in Davies's characterisation(Auntie Janet and Uncle Tam are definitively dour in demeanour and inspirit).

Although Davies is straying into unknown territory in the outdoorsshooting, Michael McDonough's photography captures something of thesplendour of Gibbon's nature descriptions in the farming scenes andin the unspoilt vistas exemplifying what the author dubbed 'thesweetness of the Scottish land and skies'. (23) Luminously sunnyscenes of Chris and of the locals dandering through the golden harvestshow up by contrast the prevailing gloom of the film, while inviting thedamaging criticism that in reality such wanton negligence would elicitviolent repercussions from the farmers whose crops are thus beingvandalised; Peter Mullan's John Guthrie would mercilessly trackdown all perpetrators of such a misdeed. The beautiful interiormise-en-scene fashioned throughout the film boasts Davies'sdirectorial hallmark, the gloomy Vermeer-like claustrophobia that is theestablished norm and that adds vitally to the impression of Calvinistrepression in the scenes portraying the formalities attending the deathsof Chris's mother and father again adding vitally to thefilm's dominant mood.

Overall there are a few other memorable individual scenes in thecourse of the film. Peter Mullan is entirely convincing in the aftermathof Guthrie's stroke, humiliatingly trapped in bed by paralysis asthe doctor goes wryly about his business. Some deft touches intimateDavies's mature craftsmanship: the witty juxtapositioning of thescenes representing the doctor's blood-smeared attendance atchildbirth and his ravenous devouring of a boiled egg in the immediateaftermath; the literal depiction of Chris wrapping up her books andstoring them away in a chest while the voiceover relates Gibbon'ssymbolic comment, that with Jean Guthrie's death, 'the Chrisof the books and the dreams died with it, or you folded them up in theirpaper of tissue and laid them away by the dark, quiet corpse that wasyour childhood'. (24) And the languorous study of Chris'sself-examination of her burgeoning post-pubescent nakedness is sweetlydone. There is one superb overhead shot tracing the locals'gravitation towards church service on the outbreak of war, backed by ahyperbolically ramped up choral score. And the key shot of the filmcomes at the climax following Ewan's execution, gliding over themurky devastation of no-man's-land half-obscuring all sorts ofchurned up debris--human and non-human.

On the negative side, the film has enduring flaws that damage itsimpact both as an artefact in its own right and as an adaptation of aclassic novel. In the casting, Deyn's Chris lacks the poise and theassurance of a mature heroine who in Gibbon's vibrant portraitureranks alongside the great female protagonists of the novel, fromScott's Jeanie Deans and Spark's Jean Brodie to JaneAusten's Elizabeth Bennet, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre andHardy's Bathsheba Everdene. While Deyn's voice coaches helpedto foster a creditable stab at a generic Scottish accent, in moments ofstridency, such as Chris's final standoff with Ewan, her controlvanishes alarmingly. Similarly, Peter Mullan's John Guthrieunfortunately lacks the depth and complexity of Gibbon's patriarch,presented in the novel as a victim of social and political repression asa crofting farmer of the old school condemned to unrelentinglyunproductive toil. The failure to indicate redeeming positives in hischaracterisation--his stern familial devotion and his fierce sense ofsocial justice--have the knock-on effect of detracting from Chris'sroundedness: her epiphany at her father's funeral in Seed-Timewhere she comes to apprehend his victim status ('only God hadbeaten him in the end' (25)) is one of the most telling insights inthe novel signposting her developing maturity. Most disappointing ofall, though, is the casting of Ewan Tavendale, whose physicalinferiority to the statuesque Chris somehow reflects hischaracter's unworthiness as her chosen soul-mate. Kevin Guthrieprojects an endlessly puckish figure whose boyish weakness is mademanifest in his cowardliness in the war; in the novel, Ewan is totallygrounded, salt of the earth, the archetypal farmer who, like JohnGuthrie, is tragically exposed to the corrupting effect of vastlysuperior forces--principally the military war machine which dictates histragedy.

Davies's own screenplay boasts several shortcomings that marthe final effect. As other writers who have made a script out ofGibbon's original have observed, the novel readily lends itself toadaptation, providing not only vibrant action and setting andcharacterisation, but some of the most lively and witty dialogue as wellas some of the most deeply poetic and lyrical passages in all fiction.Davies's executive decision to rewrite and paraphrase the vast bulkof the original text is hubristically misguided, with the most profoundof Chris's internal monologues being poorly glossed or crudelyconflated with other related and unrelated meditations. (Deyn'swistfully faltering delivery of the more extended reflections alsoundermines the notion of Chris's outstanding intellect, flagged upat the film's outset.) Most confusing of all, however, isDavies's disorientating approach to the narrative mode, spurningGibbon's generic 'you'--as the ideal vehicle forvoiceover in opening out the heroine's narrative to include thereader/viewer and opting instead to put it into third person, narratedby Chris herself, barring a couple of isolated lapses into second persontowards the close of the film. As a result, the viewer is baffled as towhy Chris should keep talking about herself as if she is somebody else.

The overall continuity of the film is very clunky, coming across asa disjointed series of set-pieces arbitrarily thrown together. Even themusical score is bitty, questioning the wisdom of Davies's decisionto dispense with a generic score, such as the beautiful traditionalaccompaniment created by Paul Anderson of Aberdeen University'sElphinstone Institute for Kenny Ireland's dramatisation of thenovel at His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen in 2008. (26)Davies's film in fact employs a strange mish-mash of musicalstyles. There is some sub-Enya-style heavenly warbling as well asunremarkable lush romantic strings, particularly obtrusive asaccompaniment to the scene following the birth of the twins and notablyout of place in the scene where Chris is caught by her father trampingthe washing in her undergarments. There are instantly forgettableinstrumental flourishes (with an unctuously sugary harp appearing thenight before Chris's wedding), while a brief snatch of ceilidhwildness at Chris's wedding dance and a plangent fiddle scoreplayed over the poignancy of Will's departure from Kinraddie hintat what might have been. Most egregious of all, however, is theobtrusive choice of Ronnie Browne's hackneyed muzaky version of'The Flowers of the Forest', complete with strings, harp andguitar, marring one of the two most innovative scenes in the film, asthe overhead camera slides over muddied no-mans-land wasteland at theend, following Ewan's death. Surely the lament that forms theanthemic refrain of the book deserves a more dignified rendition--byclassic traditionalists such as Shona Donaldson, Karine Pol wart orSheena Wellington--or perhaps simply a reprise of Deyn's poignantunaccompanied refrain from her wedding, which would have had theadditional bonus of forging a direct aural link with Ewan's deathas a war casualty.

Judged as an adaptation, Davies's film is even lessimpressive. The demands of shrinking down a substantial novel for a filmof reasonable proportions, granted, are exceptional, as recently AndrewDavies, charged by the BBC with the herculean task of reducingTolstoy's War and Peace to six hour-long episodes, will testify. InTerence Davies's case, though, the plot is a skeletal reflection ofthe book, omitting just too many key scenes and destroying the balancethat is intrinsic to Gibbon's grand vision. The celebration ofcommunity spirit and of essential human values that stands at the heartof Gibbon's novel is all but lost as the folk of Kinraddie, withthe solitary exception of Chae Strachan, are reduced to a shadowy massglimpsed fleetingly at the harvest home, at Chris's wedding andstrangely unmoving in church. Cameos plucked from the herd pretty muchto a man and woman are dour and severe, contributing to what essentiallyconstitutes a miserabilist picture of rural life more reminiscent ofGeorge Douglas Brown's The House with the Green Shutters than ofGrassic Gibbon's realism, with his psychological probing and hisbracing moral ambivalences. Rather than drawing strength from her bondwith such an elemental way of life, from the existential apprehension ofnatural harmony, Chris in the film is represented snatching tiny shardsof pleasure from a world that is comprehensively and unremittingly grimand forbidding.

When James Naughtie hailed the film's appearance in a warmpersonal tribute to Gibbon's novel in the Guardian, (27) he pickedout for special praise the closing scene of the book, the sermonpreached by the incoming minister Robert Colquohoun, Chris's newpartner, a scene which almost singlehandedly hoists the novel fromconventional status as Scottish rural realism to a classic work offiction encapsulating pan-European themes about post-war politics andsociety and culture and philosophy. Unwittingly, Naughtie puts hisfinger right on the major shortcoming in Davies's adaptation--hisfailure to match the lofty ambition of the original book. Rumourspersist of Kevin McKidd's rendition of the minister's elegyending up on the cutting-room floor--an unforgivable excision thatbetrays the broader editorial intention to strip Gibbon'smasterpiece of its radical import. All previous script-writers havesignalled the importance of Colquohoun's threnody for the crofters,and of his political channelling of the moral imperative built up in thefirst book of the trilogy--indeed the rhetorical and thematic urgency ofGibbon's beautifully crafted rhetoric forced Alasdair Cording toseek elsewhere in the narrative for cuts required to fit his adaptationto the stage. (28) Unfortunately, viewers coming to Davies's filmwill be getting at best Grassic Gibbon Lite, at worst a directorialvanity project in the form of a novel reduced to a tale of doomedromance, with an emasculated theme stripped of all left-wing vibrancyand reduced to anti-war polemic--only one of the many refrains inGibbon's grand symphony. Ewan Tavendale is sacrificed toDavies's perversion of Gibbon's intention: far from being atragic victim of a war machine that represents the ultimate modernmanifestation of the evil of capitalism and of what Gibbon theDiffusionist perceived as the barbarism of civilisation, Ewan is simplya fearty who cracks up as a result of his innate character weakness. Thevery last scene of the film is confusing at best, as Chris appears to beseeking personal solace in a lone pilgrimage to the standing stones(themselves minimised as a trope in the film), while a disembodied piperseems to have popped out for a quick pibroch (as you do), to play'The Flowers of the Forest'. Davies's butchery here isunforgivable; in addition, he has missed an opportunity to open thestory out to the poignancy of Gibbon's tragically abbreviatedbiography through a Schindler's List-style tribute to the authorwith a final dissolve into Leslie Mitchell's gravestone atArbuthnott, featuring the inspirational refrain from the closing sermon(again sadly jettisoned): 'the kindness of friends, the warmth oftoil, the peace of rest'.

On balance, the reviews elicited by Davies's film have beenlargely positive, the highest accolade being dished out by MarkIvermode, a confirmed Terence Davies aficionado, who not only madeSunset Song his film of the week in the Observer on 6 December, butincluded it in his top ten films of the year the following week. (29)It's tempting to excuse kind reviewers on possible grounds ofunfamiliarity with the original novel. Certainly the film disappointswoefully as adaptation, comparing most unflatteringly with otherclassics of the kind, from Lewis Milestone's landmark 1930 versionof Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front through DavidLean's atmospheric Great Expectations of 1946 up to JohnHillcoat's brilliant 2009 visualisation of Cormac McCarthy'spost-apocalyptic fantasy The Road. Most recently, while criticallyThomas Vinterberg's remake of Far From the Madding Crowd comparedunfavourably with John Schlesinger's 1967 version, it provides anobject lesson in the art of fluent and coherent rendering of a classicnovel, from David Nicholls's script and rock-solid casting to thepanoramic setting framing and embracing the human drama, whollybelievable acting and, possibly most telling in the final comparison,post-production editing and musical embellishment which enhances thework's sense of continuity and uniformity. Davies's film failsto preserve the fabric and spirit of Gibbon's original work;indeed, unlike David Greig's bold dramatisation of AlasdairGray's magnum opus Lanark at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival whichdeployed imaginative theatrical techniques to reinvent the originalwork's experimental nature in the field of the novel, Davies bringslittle of filmic originality in the creative re-imagining ofGibbon's book. (30)

In Davies's defence, his well documented problems with fundingperhaps prevent his film from standing comparison with big-budgetproductions like The Road and Far From the Madding Crowd-, the art-houselabel automatically denotes shoestring budgeting. The final impressionleft by the film of Sunset Song, though, is of an opportunity missed.The tone of the media response intimates that, together with his biopicof Emily Dickinson, it will probably be enough to seal TerenceDavies's Lifetime Achievement Award for services to Britishcinema--which would be churlish to begrudge him. The film will also keepa great Scottish author's name in the forefront of the popularimagination for the foreseeable future, sending readers back to thenovel, and perhaps opening up a new readership in Scotland, England andbeyond. Ultimately, however, both as an original feature film and as anadaptation of a classic, Davies's Sunset Song is more notable forwhat it doesn't do than for what it actually does.

The film of Sunset Song was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 4 April2016.

Notes

(1) See Teddy Jamieson, 'You can't read that last pagewithout being in tears', in The Herald Magazine, 28 November 2105,pp. 50-35.

(2) Pharic Maclaren's dramatisation of Bill Craig'sscript of Sunset Song was originally transmitted on six consecutiveweeks from 26 March 1971 on BBC2; it was repeated from 11 September thatyear (in Scotland only) and from 25 March 1972, again on BBC2. Thefirst, Scottish, repeat, was prefaced by Places of the Sunset: The Handof Lewis Grassic Gibbon, a documentary written and produced by JamesWilson, including contributions from Mrs Ray Mitchell, Ian S Munro andChristopher Murray Grieve ('Hugh MacDiarmid'), transmitted onBBC Scotland on 10 September 1971. Clay, Smeddum and Greenden, anothermemorable dramatisation, this time of Gibbon's three Scots Magazinestories, again directed by Pharic Maclaren, appeared on BBC1 as a'Play for Today' on 24 February 1976, earning a repeat in thesame slot on 18 August 1977. Cloud Howe, the second volume of thetrilogy A Scots Quair, directed by Tom Cotter, was broadcast over fourepisodes on BBC2 from 14 July 1982. The third volume of the trilogy,Grey Granite, was shown in three episodes on BBC2 from 3 August 1983.

(3) H Gustav Klaus, 'Socialist Fiction in the 1930s: Somepreliminary observations', in The 1930s: A Challenge to Orthodoxy,edited by John Lucas (Harvester: Hassocks, 1978), p. 32.

(4) Lyall, Scott, editor, The International Companion to LewisGrassic Gibbon (Glasgow: Scottish Literature International, 2015).Gibbon's current popularity has been affirmed over the last tenyears. In 2005, Scotland's MSPs voted Sunset Song their outstandingfavourite from Scotland's rich literary heritage; that same yearSunset Song topped the summer poll of the hundred best Scottish books ofall time compiled by The List magazine; and in August of that year atthe Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sunset Song was revealed asthe winner of the accolade of Scotland's favourite book in areaders' vote conducted by The Herald newspaper.

(5) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Grey Granite (Edinburgh: Canongate Books,1990, p. 88).

(6) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, 'A Novelist Looks at theCinema', in Cinema Quarterly, 3 (1935), pp. 81-5. The essay isreprinted in the comprehensive miscellany Smeddum: A Lewis GrassicGibbon Anthology, edited by Valentine Bold (Edinburgh: Canongate Books,2001), pp. 730-43.

(7) According to Mitchell's widow Ray, in a letter to C MGrieve, dated 3/4/35, Korda was considering films of Sunset Song andSpartacus. See Dear Grieve: letters to Hugh MacDiarmid (C M Grieve)selected and edited by John Manson (Kilkerran: Kennedy & Boyd,2011), p. 132.

(8) Letter, Gibbon to Helen B Cruickshank, dated 3 November 1932,property of the Estate of Laurence Graham.

(9) In a letter to the present writer dated 25 January 1978, RayMitchell recalled: 'I tried hard years ago to get a film of"Spartacus" but Howard Fast's Spartacus put paid to that.I nearly achieved a film (old) of "The Lost Trumpet" but warkilled that.'

(10) John Wilson's original scripts are lodged in The NationalLibrary of Scotland, NLS MSS26083-5.

(11) Bill Craig's scripts for Sunset Song are available forconsultation in NLS MS26087-92. Fascinating manuscript and typescriptdrafts are deposited in NLS MS26110-12, while further papers relating tothe production deposited by the BBC are to be found in NLS MS26113-4.

(12) The Radio Times, 30 July-5 August 1983, p. 7.

(13) Gerda Stevenson's dramatisation of Sunset Song directedby Kirsty Williams and starring Amy Morrison as Chris Guthrie wasbroadcast as BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial in two hour-longepisodes, on 15 March 2009 (repeated on 21 March) and on 22 March 2009(repeated on 28 March). Stevenson provides a fascinating insight to theprinciple and practice of radio dramatisation in 'Spreading theSpeak', in The Speak of the Place, 6 (Spring 2009), pp. 2-4. Thesecond volume of the trilogy, Cloud Howe, adapted by Donna Franceschild,was aired on BBC Radio 4 on 21 January and 1 February 2015.

(14) Munro's typescript for the theatrical production isavailable in NLS MS26086.

(15) TAG Theatre Company first presented Sunset Song adapted byAlastair Cording, directed by Tony Graham and starring Pauline Knowlesas Chris Guthrie at the Crawfurd Theatre, Jordanhill, Glasgow on 22August 1991, before embarking on an extensive nationwide tour. The wholetrilogy, again adapted by Alastair Cording and with Pauline Knowles asChris, co-directed by Tony Graham and Andy Howitt, was rolled out at theEdinburgh International Festival at the Assembly Hall from 17 August to4 September 1993, before touring Scotland. Prime Productions'revival of Sunset Song directed by Benjamin Twist, featuring CoraBissett in the leading role, toured Scotland in 2002, beginning at theTheatre Royal in Glasgow between 27 and 31 August. Kenny Ireland'simaginative staging of Sunset Song as the first in-house production byHis Majesty Theatre in Aberdeen from ; to 13 September 2008, thereaftertouring the major Scottish cities, featuring Hannah Donaldson as Chrisincluded a memorable original score commissioned from Northeast fiddlerand traditional music expert Paul Anderson. The latest production bySell a Door Theatre Company and Beacon Arts Centre, directed by JulieEllen and starring Rebecca Elise, toured Scotland in autumn of 2014.

(16) Cording's adaptation first appeared as a PlayscriptSpecial edition of Theatre Scotland in 1993. The quotation is taken fromthe brief introduction, 'Sunset Song', by Cording on page 3.

(17) Alastair Cording, 'Adapting Sunset Song for theStage', in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song dramatised byAlastair Cording (London: Nick Hern Books, 2004), p. xix.

(18) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, 'Glasgow', in Hugh MacDiarmidand Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Scottish Scene, or The Intelligent Man'sGuide to Albyn (London: Jarrolds, 1934), p. 146. (Reprinted in Smeddum,p. 108)

(19) Quoted in Phil Miller, 'The Making of Sunset Song',in The Herald, 29 November 2015.

(20) See Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: BasicBooks, 2001).

(21) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, postcard to Charles Bannerman(photocopy), dated 12 January 1934, National Library of Scotland, NLSMS26109.

(22) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (London: Jarrolds, 1932), p.125; (London: Penguin Books, 2007), p. hi. All further references are tothe Penguin edition.

(23) Sunset Song, p. 42.

(24) Sunset Song, pp. 72-3.

(25) Sunset Song, p. 123.

(26) The original Motion Picture Soundtrack for TerenceDavies's film of Sunset Song, composed and performed by GastWaltzing, was released on CD in 2015 by WP Productions and EditionsMilan Music. Paul Anderson's original score for His Majesty'sTheatre's presentation of Sunset Song appeared in CD form fromAberdeen Performing Arts in 2008.

(27) James Naughtie, 'Loons and queans and orramen', inthe Guardian (G2), 25 November 2015, pp. 18-19.

(28) Cording's restoration of projected cuts fromColquohoun's sermon was one of the most pleasing outcomes of thepresent writer's advisory input in his capacity as scriptconsultant to TAG Theatre between July 1991 to March 1993.

(29) Mark Kermode, 'A hymn to the land and the lives uponit', in The New Review, The Observer, 6 December 2015, pp. 24-5;'Top 10', in The New Review, the Observer, 13 December 2015,p. 17.

(30) In 'The Television Adaptation of Grey Granite', inBooks in Scotland No. 13 (Autumn 1983), pp. 8-10, the present writeroffered some tentative suggestions regarding techniques that mightusefully be deployed to bring Gibbon's novels to dynamic andsympathetic life as film.

The Grassic Gibbon Centre