Mrs Dalloway **** (1997, Vanessa Redgrave, John Standing, Margaret Tyzack, Phyllis Calvert, Michael Kitchen, Natascha McElhone, Rupert Graves) – Classic Movie Review 1263

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Well, not Vanessa Redgrave, who in 1997 at long last finds a part worthy of her again as Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged English socialite reflecting on her safe, comfortable life with a successful politician, while preparing for a grand party in 1923. The upstanding John Standing matches Redgrave as her character’s husband, the reliable Richard Dalloway.

No one who admires Woolf’s 1925 semi-autobiographical novel could be disappointed with Redgrave’s commanding and touching performance, nor with actress Eileen Atkins’s clear and crisp screenplay, nor with Marleen Gorris’s sensitive and intelligent direction.

The film hones in on the characters and performances, giving a host of undervalued actors the chance to shine – from Margaret Tyzack to Phyllis Calvert, Michael Kitchen and Natascha McElhone. Tyzack has one of her most memorable film roles as the kind, benign pillar of the empire Lady Bruton. Only Rupert Graves’s flashback-ridden turn as a shell-shocked Great War veteran grates.

One of Woolf’s best-known novels, it details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-World War One England. Created from two short stories, Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street and the unfinished The Prime Minister, the book looks into Clarissa’s preparations for the grand party she is hosting that evening.

We’ve seen a lot of British movie period literary adaptations, but in this case small is beautiful. And at the very least it should keep the Woolf from the door of the underused British stalwarts.

The late Alexander Walker called it ‘an impeccable piece of cinema’ in the London Evening Standard. I thoroughly agree with him. From the director of the Academy Award-winning Antonia’s Line.

Margaret Tyzack, born on 9 September 1931 died on 25 June 2011, aged 79.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1263

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