BOOTLEG FILES 923: “Hedda” (1975 film version of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” starring Glenda Jackson and Patrick Stewart).
LAST SEEN: On the Russian OK.ru site.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On VHS video.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There seems to be a rights clearance issue.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Damn, I hope so.
When the Academy Award nominations for 1975 were announced, Glenda Jackson was among the Best Actress nominees for her performance in “Hedda,” an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company under the direction of Trevor Nunn. The likelihood of Jackson winning the Oscar was nil, only because she already won two Best Actress Oscars within the previous five years – for “Women in Love” (1970) and “A Touch of Class” (1973) – and the Academy was not going to give her a third award in such a short period of time. Jackson was aware of that situation, which may explain why she was the only woman in that category who did not attend the Oscar ceremony.
In retrospect, it is a shame that Jackson did not win the Oscar because, quite frankly, she gave the best performance of that year. Yes, she was better than the category’s winner – Louise Fletcher for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” – and the other nominees. The performance that Jackson offered in “Hedda” was among the best of her illustrious career, and the fact this film is out of commercial release today is nothing short of outrageous.
Jackson’s version of Hedda Gabler is truly fascinating. She is both of a victim of her times – late 19th century Scandinavia where women were treated like chattel rather than as equal partners in an intelligent society – and a sociopathic predator who is remorseless in her cruelty to all who stumble across her path. It is a complex role that is both painfully sympathetic and horribly unsympathetic at the same time, and Jackson tears into it with brilliant gusto.
In the proverbial nutshell, here is a summary of what “Hedda” is about. Hedda is the daughter of a deceased general who agreed to marry the sincere but dull academic Jorgen Tesman (played by Peter Eyre) who is beneath her social standing. She has no choice, as her precarious financial state and her age make her less than marketable as a candidate for marriage. The couple return from their honeymoon – a “grand tour” of the European continent where her husband spent more time in library research than with his bride. They return to his home, where she is annoyed by his clinging maiden aunt and dull housekeeper and is depressed to learn that his debt-heavy finances prevent her from pursuing the upper-class lifestyle she was accustomed to enjoying.
However, Hedda quickly finds distractions to keep her amused. There are visits from Judge Brack (Timothy West), who is clearly provoked by Hedda’s charms and views her as a tiger to be tamed. Then there is her simple friend Thea (Jennie Linden), who is stuck in a loveless marriage to an old man and is bothered by the return of the alcoholic writer Ejlert Lovborg (a young Patrick Stewart with hair), who was also Hedda’s lover years earlier.
How the fates of these characters intertwine is the root of the drama – and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with Ibsen’s work, I will stop the plot summary here and invite you to see the film for yourself.
What I can say is that “Hedda” is a sublime adaptation of a deeply theatrical work. Outside of the opening sequence with Hedda and her new husband arriving home on a ferry boat, the film is faithful to the Ibsen text by staying rooted in a single claustrophobic room. But it is to the great credit of director Trevor Nunn that “Hedda” does not devolve into a static filmed play. While Nunn engages in long, unbroken takes, he provides subtle camera movements that enhance the level of drama unfolding while securing extraordinary performances that perfectly capture the varied levels of sincerity, ferocity, ignorance, and self-delusion that the characters display as their fates slowly yet tragically unfold.
But “Hedda” is ultimately Jackson’s crowning glory. She fuels her character with an acerbic wit and malicious congeniality that makes her both hypnotic and repulsive. And few actresses have ever possessed a more controlled body language than Jackson. In the brief scene when Hedda’s husband sadly informs her that his debts prevent her from taking on the level of social hostess she desired, her face withdraws into a state of numbness while her head sadly droops slightly, as if she is paying respects to a dead dream. It is a subtle but lethally effective moment where the actress conveys more with a mute emotion than others could stir up with a surplus of words and movement.
“Hedda” was on VHS video at one time, but the film has been out of commercial release for so long that today it is mostly recalled by Oscar trivia completists. I assume there is some sort of rights clearance problem involving the Royal Shakepare Company and whichever entity controls the assets of the long-defunct Brut Productions that backed the film.
Oddly, the film is absent from American online video sites, but the Russian OK.ru site has an excellent (though unauthorized) upload that helps to save “Hedda” from obscurity.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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