Victorians! discussion

I finished Dickens’ “Dombey and Son” as part of a group read on the Goodreads site. I found the novel a classic. I blew ahead of the schedule of the group read as I could not put the novel down.

As I am wont to do, I enjoy seeing adaptations of the 19th century novels I read. I found this French adaptation from 2007 free for Amazon Prime members.

Of course, the dialogue is in French so I followed via the subtitles. The adaptation is broken up into two parts with a little over a 3 hour run time. As with many of these shorter adaptations of Dickens’ works the screenwriter had to take a hatchet to the novel. Many of the secondary characters are left out, for example, the Toodles. Also, some of the names have been transformed into French names, for example, Carker becomes Cartier. There is also a narrator who sometimes quotes directly from the novel.

The setting is changed from London to Paris and the scenes on the coast are in Trouville replacing Brighton. Whenever I see a scene from Trouville I think about the paintings of Eugene Boudin.

The biggest change is with Walter now Arthur with his uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle. In the novel, these scenes take place in a Sol’s maritime instrument store but in this adaptation they have been moved to a derelict theater. Walter has gone from the good natured young man from the novel into more a Heathcliff type character. Sol and Cuttle are more buffoons in this adaptation.

The adaptation does follow the overall story arc of Mr. Dombey and his daughter Florence. Christophe Malavoy as Mr. Dombey was quite good. He looked so distinguished, in control of his emotions, and oh so arrogant and filled with pride. Caroline Bourg as Edith was as stunning as in the novel.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this adaptation with the main criticism of how Walter and his group were handled. The production values and eye candy were excellent. On my scale of 1 to 5 bonnets, I give this 4 bonnets.

It’s always interesting to see what changes are made when translating a novel to the screen. Who gets left out. What gets added in.

It’s especially tricky when there’s a substantial amount of time between when a read a novel and when it is turned into film. Then I often find myself scratching my head and trying to remember if some surprising bit was actually in the book.