Shlessinger has never been known as an 'optimistic' director, so it was perhaps as inevitable as some of the events in the film that he should have chosen to adapt a novel by Thomas Hardy. Julie Christie plays Bathsheeba a beautiful and financially independent woman in late Victorian England who is desired by three very different men. Hardy's highly-developed sense of tragedy is ably conveyed by all the principals in this beautifully-photographed and well-directed film, as events move towards what seems to be an almost pre-determined resolution.
Review of Far from the Madding Crowd
