Product Description

Marleen Gorris, the Oscar winning director of 'Antonia s Line', brings to life Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking 1925 novel, which itself inspired Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 'The Hours'. Vanessa Redgrave (Howard's End) plays Clarissa Dalloway, an MP's wife, whose life is thrown into crisis when a lover she rejected 30 years ago makes an unexpected appearance at a party she is hosting at her elegant London home, prompting bittersweet memories of her youth. Beautifully filmed in period London and featuring an outstanding cast including Natascha McElhone (Solaris) and Rupert Graves (A Room with a View), MRS DALLOWAY perfectly captures Virginia Woolf's concerns about choice, truth and destiny

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33454 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-24
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Special Features
Anamorphic Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Dolby Digital 2.0
Filmmaker And Cast Biographies
Making Of Featurette
Theatrical Trailer
Production Notes

Synopsis
Critically-acclaimed adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. It's a lovely summer day and Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for an elaborate party. During the day of her party, she remembers another summer in the past, when she was a beautiful, vivacious and much-courted young woman. Her preparations are interrupted however, by the unexpected arrival of a former suitor from that long-ago summer - a once-dashing man she thought she would marry but ultimately rejected. As the day of the party unfolds, Mrs. Dalloway's life also becomes strangely intertwined with a young man she never meets, but whose tragic fate strikes a chord of truth, deep in her soul, that she cannot deny.

Customer Reviews

Filming the unfilmable
If ever there was a writer I thought unfilmable Virginia Woolf is that writer. If ever there was a book that I thought unfilmable Mrs Dalloway is that book. So to see this splendid "reading" of that masterpiece is a joy. The casting is perfect, Vanessa Redgrave brings the right dignity to Clarissa's character as no other actor could. The book is basically the inner dialogue of a woman preparing for a party and her own mortality. The film loses nothing of this intimacy and gives each viewer the opportunity of seeing into this character without being too intrusive. This is a rare film which influenced the more recent "The Hours" for obvious reasons

Mrs. Dalloway plans a party and remembers young Clarissa
Virginia Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway" examines one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, in which the title character prepares for a party and looks back on the point in her life when she choose Richard Dalloway over Peter Walsh. Meanwhile, the mentally ill war veteran Septimus Warren Smith spends his last day on earth. The action of the novel exists primarily in the consciousness of the characters, for the story itself is essentially plotless and written in the stream-of-consciousness style of James Joyce. Although written in the omniscient third-person voice, Woolf manages to enter the consciousness of her various characters, who are not as unconnected as they might seem to be, and reveal their feelings.

Translating this novel to the screen requires that it be done by those who have a strong understanding and affection for the authors and her characters. Vanessa Redgrave is clearly one of those people and she commissioned Eileen Atkins to write the script so that she could play the title character. Atkins is a Woolf scholar who not only played the author in a one-woman stage piece but also wrote "Vita and Virginia," in which she and Redgrave played Woolf and her lover Vita Sackville-West. Atkins chooses to allow us only into the inner thoughts of Mrs. Dalloway, using voice-over narration to reveal the thoughts that she would never speak out loud. Those who have read the novel might not enjoy the film more than those who have not, since there are always limitations with bringing any literary masterpiece to the screen, but they will certainly understand it more, especially the first part of the film.

A strength of this 1997 film is how easily we accept that Natascha McElhone as the young Clarissa grows up to be Vanessa Redgrave's Mrs. Dalloway. It is young Clarissa who chooses young Richard (Robert Portal) over not only young Peter (Alan Cox), but also over young Sally Selton (Lena Headey), whose kiss bespeaks something that is not going to even be thought about. Now Richard Dalloway (John Standing) is a cabinet official, Peter Walsh (Michael Kitchen) has come home from India, and Sally is now Lady Rosseter (Sarah Badel). Of course Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts go back to her fateful decision, made over the objections of her friends, when she accepted her life of comfortable sameness. But her concern over the evening's party is just as big of a concern. For those who are trying to figure out the point of the story the seemingly unrelated plotline involving Septimus Smith (Rupert Graves) and his Italian wife (Amelia Bullmore) helps the pieces come together, especially once Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts provide the big picture.

Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris, who won as Oscar for "Antonia's Line," brings this film in at 97 minutes and while I think "Mrs. Dalloway" the film captures the essence of the novel, I cannot find it approaches the depth. What makes the novel profound is not the end point that it reaches when we reach the close of a day in the life of Clarissa Dallowy, but the journey through her jumbled thoughts. For Christmas I gave my eldest daughter the movie "The Hours" along with the Michael Cunningham novel and Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," and I would think others would benefit from immersing themselves in the works of, and about, Virginia Woolf.

A gorgeous Virginia Woolfe adaptation.
Beautifully crafted, shot and directed, this is a superb little picture, starring an excellent Vanessa Redgrave and Natascha McElhone. Its a witty, delicate and emotional day in the life of a 1920's society lady, reminiscing about the days when she were younger. Thoughtful, intelligient drama. Highly recommended (especially for someone who feels they want to watch something easy, enjoyable and quiet to watch).