The Chalk Garden (1964)

The Chalk Garden

1964

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Directed by Ronald Neames
Produced by Ross Hunter
Screenplay by John Michael Hayes
From the play by Enid Bagnold
Music by Malcolm Arnold

CAST
Deborah Kerr- Miss Madrigal
Hayley Mills- Laurel
John Mills- Maitland
Edith Evans- Mrs St. Maugham
Felix Aylmer- The Judge
Elizabeth Sellars – Olivia
Lally Bowers- Anna

The 60s Retrospective Series

Release dates: UK April 1964, USA May 1964

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We ordered the DVD right after seeing the play on stage two years ago. It’s been sitting quietly on a shelf of a dozen or more DVDs waiting to be watched until now. I hadn’t seen it before.

The Chalk Garden play text

The play was a major success, opening in New York in late 1955, then London in 1956. It was playing alongside Look Back In Anger and is thought of as the last of the major drawing room comedy thrillers before British theatre changed. Edith Bagnold came to fame with National Velvet in 1935, and this later play was directed by Sir John Gielgud, and both Edith Evans and Felix Aylmer were in the original stage production as well as this film, a decade later. So that original production had a knight (Sir John Gielgud) and two dames (Edith Evans, and Peggy Ashcroft who was the stage Miss Madrigal). John Mills wasn’t a knight when he did the film, but became Sir John Mills in 1976.

It was a favourite of amateur dramatic companies in the 50s and 60s. You can see why. Drawing room set with French windows, painted garden beyond. They already have that. The two senior members get the parts of Mrs St. Maugham and The Judge. The director and leading light of the company (fifty-three but dyes his hair) plays Maitland. His wife plays Miss Madrigal so they can rehearse at home. His mistress (well, that’s been whispered in the green room for years) plays the errant sexy Olivia and both women suspect him of lusting after the 18 year old youngest member who plays Laurel. He is being watched like a hawk. Add the nurse and female applicants. Four more female roles.

In British theatre’s trawl with renewed interest through Rattigan, Coward and the ilk, it was no surprise that The Chalk Garden was revived to acclaim in 2008, then had the major Chichester version in 2018.

FILM PLOT

Miss Madrigal (Deborah Kerr) has applied for the job of governess to the 16-year old Laurel (Hayley Mills). She is shown in to the Sussex manor house with another applicant, a nervous woman (Anna?), by Maitland the servant (John Mills).

Laurel enjoys a touch of governess intimidation, Lally Bowers as the nervous applicant

They sit in the conservatory and are assailed by Laurel who regales them with tales of her interest in pyromania and with the story of a previous governess, eaten by a shark. The nervous woman retreats and leaves. Madrigal is the sole applicant and Laurel can now be seen dancing round a bonfire in the garden.

Mrs St. Maugham (Edith Evans) interviews Madrigal (Deborah Kerr)

Madrigal is interviewed by Mrs St. Maugham (Edith Evans). She is Laurel’s grandmother and Laurel lives with her. Laurel has been known to scare off three governesses in a week.

Madrigal has no references at all. She is about to be walked out through the garden when she starts telling Mrs St. Maugham that the chalk soil is not being treated correctly which is why all her plants are dying. This is a heavy-handed metaphor which will return. Like the garden, the child, named after a bush, cannot flourish. She gets the job.

When you do the film version of a stage play you get as many scenes as you can pushed out into scenic locations.

She tries to relate to Laurel who tells a towering list of lies. She hates her mother who abandoned her to go off with another man. Madrigal takes her painting on the cliffs near the house and praises her imagination.

Laurel wants to discover who Madrigal is and why she’s there. Laurel has noticed that all her clothes in her single tiny suitcase are brand new with shop tags still on them. (One could add that it’s therefore astonishing that she got all her costume changes in the film into that tiny suitcase!)

Mrs St Maugham is estranged from her daughter, Olivia (Elizabeth Sellars), who is returning to reclaim Laurel. She is due to visit. Laurel doesn’t want to see her, Mrs St Maugham wants to see her off. Olivia arrives in a smart little white Sunbeam Alpine.

Enter Olivia (Elizabeth Sellars)

Olivia is glamorous, pregnant and has a cigarette (which was totally unremarkable in pregnancy in 1964). It occurs that the car is the only real sign that this play is set in 1964. Otherwise, if you’d told me it was 1934, 1944 or 1954 I would have believed it. Mrs St Maugham is catty to her.

Olivia and her mother do not get on

Laurel has run away to hide, refusing to see her mother. Maitland and Madrigal search for her. Madrigal identifies with Laurel’s lies and angst and is aware that her hatred of Olivia has been instilled by her grandmother.

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Breakfast: Mrs St Maugham (Edith Evans), Maitland (John Mills), Laurel (Hayley Mills), Miss Madrigal (Deborah Kerr).

Maitland has worked out that Laurel is investigating Madrigal. We are told (at least three times) that Madrigal keeps her bedroom door open at all times and paces a lot. Fear of a closed door, eh?

Madrigal goes downstairs to get a book and finds Maitland in the library. Laurel is spying. Madrigal checks out Laurel’s stories. Did her father shoot himself? No, he died of drink. Then she asks Maitland:

Madrigal: Did you really kill your wife?
Maitland: Yes. A motor-car accident. I was driving.
Madrigal: And the Hyde Park incident?
Maitland: No more than a smile and a wink from a passing man.
Madrigal: You don’t believe she was attacked?
Maitland: Mrs St Maugham would never allow a doctor to examine her, nor the police to question her.

The aim of the library was to create a flicker of romantic interest between Maitland and Madrigal, I assume. It’s not in the play.

Maitland takes Madrigal shopping for a padlock. While they’re out, Laurel sneaks in, purloins her painting box and finds the initials CDW in it … there’s no “M” in CDW.

The come back and padlock the room. But the painting box is with Laurel who must return in. She climbs a tree, gets in the window and replaces it. Then she falls and gets stuck on a branch.

Stuck in a tree. A shoehorned in bit of farce

Madrigal knows the painting box has been tampered with – she had concealed the initials with paint which Laurel had wiped off. Madrigal saws off the branches of the tree. It looks very much like a conservation area to me, and she has no planning permission, which is needed for trimming listed trees … sorry, that’s my problem in Poole.

They’re getting nearer the truth. They go to play tennis and play a truth and lies game on the open top bus back.

Mrs St Maugham (Edith Evans) and The Judge (Felix Aylmer)

Trouble is, “Puppy” has been invited to lunch. Puppy (Felix Aylmer) is a High Court judge and an old flame of Mrs St. Maugham. Mrs St. Maugham collects him in her car and he cannot get a word in … a rare comedy moment.

Lunch: the key scene in the film

There is lunch in which Madrigal is rattled and breaks a glass. No wonder, as Laurel wants to know all about the pomp and ceremony of the high court … and the black cap for the death sentence. (In the play, the judge says he models himself on the family butler, Pinkwell- who is not in the film version).

Madrigal starts arguing guilt and innocence with the judge. The judge asks if she has ever seen him in court. She has. He mentions a case involving a Connie Dolly Wallis (sorry, that’s the play name- it’s not exactly that in the film … more like Constance Dorothy Wakeham from memory). Anyway, it’s CDW. This was a young girl who answered him back. Madrigal leaves the room.

She reveals to Maitland that she was convicted of murdering her step-sister 15 years ago and was sentenced to death by this very judge, though the sentence was commuted due to her age, and she had been in prison since then until the day she arrived at the house. (In the play, it explains that she was in charge of the prison gardens, hence her expertise).

She goes to speak to the judge, assuming he had recognized her, but he had not. But he does now.

Miss Madrigal uses the revelation to convince Laurel and her Grandmother that she was once like Laurel, and that Laurel should leave her Grandmother’s toxic environment and go to live with her mother.

Laurel disappears yet again, but Madrigal finds her on the steps waiting for her mother. She gets in the car and they drive off.

Mrs St Maugham invites Madrigal to stay with her as a companion and gardener. She agrees.

FILM AND PLAY

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Lobby card: Laurel (Hayley Mills), Maitland (John Mills), The Judge (Felix Aylmer). Looks like colourized B&W, odd for a colour film, but then all the publicity photos seem to e B&W.

The 1964 film doesn’t follow the stage play faithfully in text, and it feels stagey, but anything with Edith Evans is stagey. However, the character had a spectacular wardrobe with stunning clothes.

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Laurel’s clothes were also perfect for a teenager in the late 50s, Karen says. She particularly admired the pink gingham top. Except that it was supposed to be 1964.

There were some major changes, all I think detrimental to the intrinsic impact of the story. The play is better than the film.

First of all, the play was considered a comedy thriller, though it has a serious theme on truth and family relationships. The film eradicated the comedy element. In the play, the household lives in fear of an unseen character upstairs … the butler, Pinkwell, confined to bed with a stroke, but who still rules the house and especially the garden. His wishes are communicated by The Nurse to the household. Both gone from the film. Pity.

Then the character of Maitland, the household servant who does everything, turns out to be a conscientious objector in the play which is his guilty secret, not that he’s reluctant to admit it. Gone. Perhaps John Mills had played too many war heroes to do that bit. Pity.

They have one other interviewee for the governess post instead of three. Odd. Usually film would be the other way in adding very short bit parts … they do add a cook in the background very briefly.

The naturally, the director has to look outside. So we have scenes of Maitland and Madrigal in the car, and shopping for a padlock. We have Mrs St. Maugham and the Judge in a car (with really poor back projection through the window which has turns in the road which Edith Evans steering wheel misses).

In the play, much more focus is on Maitland and Laurel’s fascination with “True murder stories:” and Maitland’s collection of books of them, including accounts of trials. They get more dialogue interplay.

The vital “truth game” scene between Miss Madrigal and Laurel takes place after a game of tennis, and on an open top bus. With much traffic noise.

The house is now above a beach, where Laurel can set her fire, conveniently with a view to the Seven Sisters white cliffs (how many films do those get into?).

One of Laurel’s lies, which includes her father shooting himself in front of her, is of being attacked by a man in Hyde Park. In the play that’s recounted as a fact by Mrs St. Maugham in the initial interview. In the film it becomes one of Laurel’s lies. The play text reminds of past times in the theatre:

By The Lord Chamberlain’s wish and in all places in his jurisdiction, the word “violated” on page 24, Act One must be played as “ravished” though it should remain “violated” on the printed page.

I can’t see how significantly different “violated” and “ravished” are, but in 1956, it was important to the censor.

The house has an ancient walled garden with a turret, but when we move indoors, the gleaming freshly-painted and uniform doors look very much “stockbroker belt new mock-Georgian.” Which some of it probably was, being convenient to the studios. Though I’m sure it’s mainly a set. Miss Madrigal’s bedroom at least is a set, because the camera gets so far above the top of the wardrobe where she keeps her painting box.

The painting box? It’s a key plot hinge, when Laurel discovers the initials CDW in the painting box. Instead of just lifting it, we have a complex sub plot about Maitland putting a padlock on the door and Laurel climbing up a tree to get into the room, then falling to be left suspended on a tree branch by her belt. A cotton dress belt that can hold her weight? Someone must have said, ‘We’ve lost all the comedy in the text!’ and the director said, ‘I have an idea!’

The Chalk Garden, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2018 see review
L to R: Madrigal (Amanda Root), Judge (Oliver Ford-Davies), Mrs St. Maugham (Penelope Keith), Laurel (Emma Curtis), Maitland (Matthew Cottle)

My conclusion? In every single role the Chichester cast of 2018 was better for a modern audience. Penelope Keith provided a delightful dottiness which Edith Evans missed. Amanda Root wiped the floor with Deborah Kerr- vastly more nuanced, agonised, holding her secret. Matthew Cottle as Maitland was also far more subtle and full of concerns than the urbane smart and smooth John Mills portrayal. Emma Curtis had the dreadful role of Laurel, but in spite of the demands of the text, did not go as far over the top as Hayley Mills felt obliged to. Oliver Ford-Davies’ judge had gravitas and humour compared to Felix Aylmer’s cartoon. Of course we are talking about theatre and film, but the film was more stagey than the stage play. The clipped RP accents in the film veer to advanced RP and grate a little nowadays.

We also have fifty three years evolution of acting styles to balance in. It’s a bit like those investigations into footballer performance which suggests the soccer stars of the 50s and 60s would not have the stamina, speed or strength to compete with the stars of today. (The cigarettes at half time didn’t help!)

SOUNDTRACK

Malcolm Arnold. Never released on record. It is overpowering, schmaltzy, continually trying to dictate our mood as viewers. Shut your eyes and it’s fabulous stuff, but it’s too intrusive at trying to set the mood. I began to find it increasingly annoying.

I may be alone:

Arnold’s score features two primary ideas, one for each of the story’s main characters. Madrigal is represented by a romantic-style theme for strings, French horn and harp that is based on a gently-rising pattern. Laurel is accompanied by a 6-note motif consisting of pairs of semitones. The two ideas appear during the opening credits and are thereafter intertwined in the relationship.
The Invisible Art of Film Music, Laurence E. McDonald

OK, but quite loudly.

The best part of Arnold’s underpinning in The Chalk Garden, and one of the longest stretches of music, occurs when Laurel sneaks into Miss Madrigal’s room, and from the top of a wardrobe removes the painter’s box that had caught her eye when the lady first arrived. She takes the box to a garden shed, opens it and, with some linseed oil, removes the paint smudges that partially conceal three letters: C.D.W. Laurel temporarily hides the box in the shed. All during her actions Arnold’s orchestra comes alive with unsettled woodwinds, percussion pricks, pizzicato strings and, of course, Laurel’s nervous, trilling motif—all with an undertow of dissonance and at a rather fast tempo, although Laurel moves furtively. The atmosphere of this music is maintained in a subsequent scene when Miss Madrigal returns to her room, finds the wardrobe doors ajar and knowingly looks up to see that the painter’s box is missing.
Greg Orypeck, Classic Film Freak, 2010

DVD

The Chalk Garden DVD

The DVD transfer is sharp enough but has a wide black box on all sides and no subtitle option. The black box is not on the sides on the computer, just on the TV.