Marriages (on film and TV)
Having been married to my Rosie – or Roz as she is known – for 45 years I do give a lot of thought to long term matrimony.
The best portrayal of a long marriage is that of Horace Rumpole to Hilda. The Rumpole series are shown on Talking Pictures and, irony of ironies given that the writer John Mortimer was such a radical, the programme now carries a warning that some of the attitudes were “of their time” – in his 1970s heyday Rumpole would habitually refer to his wife as ‘She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed”, which would probably be unacceptable terminology now.
The most bitter portrayal is surely that in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf when Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor rail against one another.
There are many famous film wedding scenes, the most notable probably being that of the wedding at the start of The Godfather Part One.
The marriage of Connie does not work out and there is one interpretation that the possessiveness of brother Michael (played by Al Pacino) borders on the incestuous.
Another wedding scene where the future marriage is in the balance is at the end of The Graduate.
On the bus neither Dustin Hoffman nor Katherine Ross look at one another after she flees her wedding ceremony.
The Browning Version (1951) features a crusty classics school teacher approaching retirement who, believing he is unpopular with his fellow staff and pupils, is touched when one schoolboy gives him the translation of Agamemnon by Robert Browning.
A smooth headmaster (Wilfred Hyde White) tries to deprive him of his rightful pension whilst one of his wife’s lovers, a fellow teacher, confesses his guilt. Originally a play by Terence Rattigan, it’s rather sad.
Occasionally cinema goes through a period of social realism and introspection but most of the time it’s about the suspension of reality and therefore the cinema-goer does not wish to be reminded of how difficult it is to make a marriage work.
