Review by Robert Richardson of Adaptation of "Parade's End"

A Review by Robert Richardson of the DVD of Parade’s End, written by Tom Stoppard (based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford), directed by Susanna White. BBC/HBO, 2012

I did not watch the adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End when it was broadcast in 2012. I wanted to read the sequence of four novels before encountering the five episodes written by Tom Stoppard for this BBC/HBO production. Having recently finished the books, I obtained the DVD and had the enjoyable experience of seeing it unfold on five consecutive evenings.

With his script for television, Stoppard stripped Ford’s Modernist complexities down to a basic narrative, and was very effective in bringing all his experience to rendering both characters and events. He was mostly faithful to the books and included just a few of his own inventions. Even so, with 800+ pages to play with I remain unconvinced they were all necessary.

Where Stoppard departed from Ford in a more radical and contentious way was with his treatment of the final novel, The Last Post. It was, in effect, to ignore it.  In this he is not alone. Graham Greene left it out when he edited an edition of Parade’s End for Bodley Head in 1962-63, arguing it was a “disaster.” Stoppard’s script imports a few aspects of The Last Post into the final episode, which otherwise is his dramatisation of the third novel, A Man Could Stand Up.  He dilutes the “rounding off” of Christopher Tietjens and Valentine Wannop living together with the completely different situation of merely meeting up again in London at the end of the First World War, albeit with a mutual acceptance of their relationship becoming more established. To me, this completed the grandeur of Parade’s End in too much of an offhand and rushed way.

The “problem” of the final novel is that the main character of the previous three, Christopher Tietjens, is largely absent. Surprisingly, his older brother, Mark, now paralysed and dumb from a stroke, is centre stage, in the form of his thoughts taking shape as stream of consciousness monologues. In the totality of the four novels, this is, I think, some of Ford’s best writing. The Last Post also shows Christopher and Valentine living in the Sussex countryside and expecting a child. I presume Stoppard considered and rejected techniques such as flash-forward sequences to this rural life. In the final episode, I just wish he had taken up the challenge and found a solution. . By adopting the Graham Greene line, Stoppard missed the opportunity of contrasting the desire for a sane and peaceful existence with the madness of the First World War.

What Stoppard does achieve is valuable: he successfully reveals Ford’s characters and the narrative they inhabit against the backdrop of such a significant moment in history as the First World War. This is combined with references to feminist politics through the suffragette Valentine Wannop, who is surely one of the nicest, most spirited and idealistic characters in twentieth-century literature.

The best drama happens when all components are strong and nothing lets the side down. This is true with Parade’s End.  As well as Stoppard’s impressive script, the directing and acting are superb, with Benedict Cumberbatch giving a subtle and perceptive performance as the buttoned-up Christopher; Rebecca Hall as his wife Sylvia, a deft portrayal of scheming cruelty fused with frivolity and frustration; and Adelaide Clemens as Valentine, showing her both earnest and emotional. The costumes and production values in general are of the same high level.

Professor Imelda Whelehan, who is a leading authority on Adaptation Studies and an academic I know and admire, once emphasised to me the importance of realising it should not matter whether or not we read a book before seeing its adaptation. Despite this, as far as Parade’s End is concerned I am pleased to have experienced the books first, because Stoppard’s editing out of the final novel would have influenced in a negative way the enjoyment of Ford’s more luxurious exposition.


About the reviewer
Robert Richardson is a visual artist and writer. His work is included in ‘Artists’ Postcards: A Compendium’ (edited by Jeremy Cooper, published by Reaktion Books, London). He is also the co-editor, with William Pratt, of ‘Homage to Imagism’ (AMS Press, New York). www.bobzlenz.com

You can read Robert Richardson’s previous review of the four novels of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End here.

Review by Robert Richardson of "Parade's End" by Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford was a close friend of Ezra Pound, and part of a remarkable literary Modernism sustained in Britain, and specifically London, between the first meeting of the Café Tour d’Eiffel poets (later the Imagists) in 1909 and the publication of The Waste Land in 1922. 

Ford wrote a considerable amount of poetry, but was even more committed to prose, and the tetralogy — a sequence of four novels — of Parade’s End constitutes, undoubtedly, a great Modernist work of art. Published between 1924 and 1928, they augmented the Modernist project in Britain. The first novel Some Do Not…  is set immediately before the First World War; the middle two, No More Parades and A Man Could Stand Up, are centred on the Western Front; and the final one, The Last Post, takes place in the war’s aftermath.

Although written in the third person, there are, as befits Modernism, shifting points of view, and the most impressive writing is the way Ford conjures stream of consciousness monologues from different characters. Nevertheless, there is a central character: Christopher Tietjens. A member of the Yorkshire gentry, he is variously described as “The Last Tory,” an “Anglican Saint,” and someone who would have been more at home in the eighteenth century. He moves to his own beat and with  measures of idealism: his refusal to take family money results in a continuous argument with Mark, his even stuffier older brother. Fortunately, Christopher is balanced by Valentine Wannop, the love of his life, who is a suffragette and pacifist. The triangle made with Christopher’s wife, Sylvia, an adulterer and vindictive in her ways of maligning Christopher, is a constant in the four novels.

Ford had been an officer in the trenches, but those looking for blood and guts battle scenes will be disappointed. While death and physical pain are not ignored, Ford prioritises the psychological and spiritual suffering endured by those at the front. This continues for soldiers, like Christopher, who survive, and the final novel has Christopher and Valentine seeking the peace of a rural life in Sussex.

There are many literary Modernisms — Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Hemingway etc.— and surely Ford is up there with the best of them. He has become the subject of academic study and conferences, and, inevitably, the Ford Madox Ford Society is tweeting as @FordMadoxFordie. Adding to this growing interest, Parade’s End was, in 2012, serialised for television: scripted by Tom Stoppard and with Benedict Cumberbatch as Christopher.

Parade’s End shows a ruling class defined by a set of people from the same aristocratic and upper class background who all consequently know each other: a world largely dismantled by the upheavals of two world wars. Or was it? Despite significant social movements and changes — think, as examples, of women’s liberation, gay marriage, and the ascendancy of popular culture — we have a current prime minister who was at Eton and Oxford with the very person now vying to replace him. I do not think I am alone in finding that depressing. 

Parade’s End is a brilliant achievement, though somewhat daunting to approach, but I would encourage you to strap on the crampons and enjoy climbing these Modernist heights. 

About the reviewer
Robert Richardson is a visual artist and writer. His work is included in Artists’ Postcards: A Compendium (edited by Jeremy Cooper, published by Reaktion Books, London). He is also the co-editor, with William Pratt, of Homage to Imagism (AMS Press, New York). www.bobzlenz.com

You can read Robert Richardson's review of the BBC adaptation of Parade's End here.