The French Lieutenant's Woman

An adaptation of John Fowles' novel about a man who chooses love over social convention. Director Karel Reisz weaves together Victorian England and contemporary London in a single film.

"The French Lieutenant's Woman" is undoubtedly the culmination of Reisz's artistic quest: fractured personalities, parallel montage, ambiguous conclusions - all unified into a perfectly conceived whole. This dual love story, unfolding across two different temporal planes that the viewer constantly compares, represents a masterpiece of intellectually constructed narrative. "The woman, Sarah, creates her own fiction, stylizes herself into a theatrical role to preserve her spiritual life," Reisz wrote.

Fowles' novel reconstructs Victorian society from a contemporary perspective. The gentleman, the story's hero, renounces his fiancée from a respectable family for an eccentric woman of no social standing and questionable reputation - a choice that costs him his place in his own social stratum.

Fowles sought to adapt his novel soon after its 1967 publication, making it a condition that Harold Pinter write the screenplay. Coordinating all aspects of their collaboration took more than a decade. Pinter ultimately chose two parallel lines: Fowles' Victorian England alternates with the behind-the-scenes world of filming in contemporary London, so the actors playing within the film carry the metaphor of the divide between illusion and reality.

Fowles was generous toward his screenwriter: "The more changes the adapter makes, the more of the original's spirit can be preserved."