Tag: Henry Rider Haggard

The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard

Source: D.S. Higgins (ed.), The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard 1914-1925 (London: Cassell, 1980), p. 219

Text: 20th April, 1921. I have spent the last two days in seeing (privately) the Italian made film of Beatrice. It has good points (especially those of the heroine’s eyes!), but for an author the experience as usual is somewhat heart-breaking. Why in the name of goodness, for instance, when a poverty-stricken Welsh clergyman is described in the book as living in a vicarage of the meanest sort, almost a cottage indeed, should he be represented as inhabiting a costly palace from the upkeep of which an archbishop would blench? Or why should the hero, Geoffrey, a man getting on for forty with a powerful legal stamp of face, be impersonated by an oily-haired young person of about 22? Only a film producer can answer these questions. Meanwhile the critic comes along and descants learnedly on the unsuitability of novels for film purposes. The novels are right enough; it is their ignorant careless adaptors who are to blame.

Comments: Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was a British novelist, who had a strong interest in cinema following the film adaptations of his popular novels such as She and The Lost World. The Italian film Il colchico e la rosa (1921) was adapted from Haggard’s novel Beatrice (its English language release titles were Little Sister and The Stronger Passion). It was directed by the Irishman Herbert Brenon for Caesar Film and the Herbert Brenon Film Corporation and starred Marie Doro and Sandro Salvini.

The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard

Source: D.S. Higgins (ed.), The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard 1914-1925 (London: Cassell, 1980), p. 261

Text: 27th July, 1923
This morning I went to Pathé’s to see the cinematograph film which their representative made of me here a week or two ago. It was very good, especially of my poor old spaniel, Jeekie, but as the bright sunlight seemed to turn my hair snow-white, it made me look even older than I am. These cinemas, however, go so fast that it is difficult to take in details. In future generations they will form interesting records of persons of our age, that is if they are kept as Pathé people told me they were. It seems that these photographic interviews go all over the world and are very popular with the masses.

Comments: Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was a British novelist, who had a strong interest in cinema following the film adaptations of his popular novels such as She and The Lost World. Pathé was as good as its word – the film ‘interview’ with Haggard at his Ditchingham home survives and can be found on its website.

Links: ‘Camera Interview’ with Henry Rider Haggard on British Pathe site

The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard

Source: D.S. Higgins (ed.), The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard 1914-1925 (London: Cassell, 1980), p. 84

Text: 27th September 1916
Today I went to see the Somme War film with Louie, Angie and Mrs Jebb who dined with me afterwards at an Italian restaurant in Panton Street where we got a very good and well-cooked meal at a most reasonable price. The film is not a cheerful sight, but it does give a wonderful idea of the fighting and the front, especially of the shelling and its effects. Also it shows the marvellous courage and cheerfulness of our soldiers in every emergency, and causes one to wonder if one would find as much in a like case. At their age I have no doubt the answer would be yes, but now at sixty I am not so sure. It is a young man’s job! As usual all the pictures move too fast, even the wounded seem to fly along. The most impressive of them to my mind is that of a regiment scrambling out of a trench to charge and of the one man who slides back shot dead. There is something appalling about the instantaneous change from fierce activity to supine death. Indeed the whole horrible business is appalling. War has always been dreadful, but never, I suppose, more dreadful than today.

Comment: Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was a British novelist, who had a strong interest in cinema following the film adaptations of his popular novels such as She and The Lost World. The Battle of the Somme (1916) was a British feature-length documentary, filmed by Geoffrey Malins and J.B. McDowell for the War Office Cinematograph Committee. It gave cinema audiences some idea of what the fighting was like on the Western front and had a huge impact. The over-the-top sequence described by Haggard is now known to have been faked by Malins.