Let's begin with a pertinent issue. Some reviewers say that you need to have read the book before seeing this film. Some say the opposite, and some haven't read the book, so they are unable to draw comparisons.
Well, I have read the book (a few years ago, so I must admit I don't remember all the details very well) and it was a long read, which, like the film, starts off intriguingly enough but tends as it progresses to become more and more unbelievable. I did however read right to the end, and the end is quite different from in the film. The book does lead to something of a conclusion where the protagonist is subjected to a kind of occult judgement, and ends with a scene in Regent's Park where a meeting is engineered in which Nicholas gets to meet and talk to his former lover. This return to London is missing from the film and it finishes merely with him smiling to himself as we again hear the quote from Eliot about returning to where we begin.
As several reviewers have pointed out, the cinematography in this film is often gorgeous and makes you feel as if you are there. But, having read the book, it's immediately difficult to accept Michael Caine as being Nicholas Urfe. Now, I'm a huge Caine fan, but he just doesn't feel right for this part. He's too blond and tall and has too much presence. I was trying to imagine who (from this era) could have played him and I came up with Alan Bates and Tom Courtenay - and rejected them both. Now I read a reviewer who suggested David Hemmings and yes, he would have been perfect, not too tall, and with the combination of intelligence and intrepidness and weakness and charm that seems to typify Nicholas Urfe.
Another casting mistake was the role of Julie. It seems obvious to me that Candice Bergen is here little more that a poor-man's Julie Christie. They are so similar in looks, and they make her speak with an English accent, so I very much suspect that they really wanted Christie, but couldn't get her.
Again, the lovely Anna Karina seems wrong for the role of the jilted girlfriend. Honestly, who would want to leave Anna Karina to run away to a Greek island to teach English at a boy's school? Unless you were a bit, shall we say, weird..? (This is not obvious in the film, although I seem to remember that Urfe expresses derision for his pupils in the novel and indeed I read that Fowles once said that he had caned boys in school and derived gratification from it!). No, Australian Alison, in the book, is not presented as such a beauty as Anne in the film.
Then we have Conchis. My impression of him in the book was of a far less prepossessing figure than Anthony Quinn, who we can't help but associate with his many larger-than-life character roles. He is a dynamic actor but not a very subtle one, as can be seen here by the rather amateurish way that he does the shifty looks that are, I suppose, intended to convey that he is being a trickster.
One of the big questions that arises when you read the book, and again when you watch the film, is: why would anyone go to so much trouble in order to stage the many scenarios with which Urfe is presented? These involve a large number of operatives and presumably huge expense. In the novel, these extend even to England; we learn, for example, that the newspaper report showing Ann's death has been faked. Furthermore, how do Conchis and his minions know about Urfe and his history?
It must be said, at this point, that the book delivers a great deal of information, in the form of Urfe's own thoughts and memories, which supply us with the background to his personality, including the morally questionable actions of his past.
This all leads to the question, is all of this just a sort of dream in the mind of Nicholas Urfe? Or is it a sort of hermetic mysticism, such as is openly presented in Hermann Hesse's novel, "The Journey to the East", where the narrator, after losing his faith and falling into a mundanity in which he denies the very existence of the wonders in which he had previously participated, finally finds his way back to the mystical world and is then led to a building where he is judged and found wanting.
Seeing the dream sequence/drug-induced halucination that Urfe experiences (which, by the way, happens for real in the book) there are, for me, clear parallels to the denouement of Hesse's novel. Urfe is also put on trial, but the scene is very different. Where in Hesse the judge is actually the simple, kind and gentle servant, Leo; for Urfe, who is first tied to a cross, and then tempted to whip the figure of Julie, the judges are a large and intimidating motley of grotesques and soldiers with the complicated figure of Conchis at the forefront.
All in all, despite its drawbacks, I would recommend seeing this film, even if only once. As for the book, well, that's up to you; maybe the film is enough.
Well, I have read the book (a few years ago, so I must admit I don't remember all the details very well) and it was a long read, which, like the film, starts off intriguingly enough but tends as it progresses to become more and more unbelievable. I did however read right to the end, and the end is quite different from in the film. The book does lead to something of a conclusion where the protagonist is subjected to a kind of occult judgement, and ends with a scene in Regent's Park where a meeting is engineered in which Nicholas gets to meet and talk to his former lover. This return to London is missing from the film and it finishes merely with him smiling to himself as we again hear the quote from Eliot about returning to where we begin.
As several reviewers have pointed out, the cinematography in this film is often gorgeous and makes you feel as if you are there. But, having read the book, it's immediately difficult to accept Michael Caine as being Nicholas Urfe. Now, I'm a huge Caine fan, but he just doesn't feel right for this part. He's too blond and tall and has too much presence. I was trying to imagine who (from this era) could have played him and I came up with Alan Bates and Tom Courtenay - and rejected them both. Now I read a reviewer who suggested David Hemmings and yes, he would have been perfect, not too tall, and with the combination of intelligence and intrepidness and weakness and charm that seems to typify Nicholas Urfe.
Another casting mistake was the role of Julie. It seems obvious to me that Candice Bergen is here little more that a poor-man's Julie Christie. They are so similar in looks, and they make her speak with an English accent, so I very much suspect that they really wanted Christie, but couldn't get her.
Again, the lovely Anna Karina seems wrong for the role of the jilted girlfriend. Honestly, who would want to leave Anna Karina to run away to a Greek island to teach English at a boy's school? Unless you were a bit, shall we say, weird..? (This is not obvious in the film, although I seem to remember that Urfe expresses derision for his pupils in the novel and indeed I read that Fowles once said that he had caned boys in school and derived gratification from it!). No, Australian Alison, in the book, is not presented as such a beauty as Anne in the film.
Then we have Conchis. My impression of him in the book was of a far less prepossessing figure than Anthony Quinn, who we can't help but associate with his many larger-than-life character roles. He is a dynamic actor but not a very subtle one, as can be seen here by the rather amateurish way that he does the shifty looks that are, I suppose, intended to convey that he is being a trickster.
One of the big questions that arises when you read the book, and again when you watch the film, is: why would anyone go to so much trouble in order to stage the many scenarios with which Urfe is presented? These involve a large number of operatives and presumably huge expense. In the novel, these extend even to England; we learn, for example, that the newspaper report showing Ann's death has been faked. Furthermore, how do Conchis and his minions know about Urfe and his history?
It must be said, at this point, that the book delivers a great deal of information, in the form of Urfe's own thoughts and memories, which supply us with the background to his personality, including the morally questionable actions of his past.
This all leads to the question, is all of this just a sort of dream in the mind of Nicholas Urfe? Or is it a sort of hermetic mysticism, such as is openly presented in Hermann Hesse's novel, "The Journey to the East", where the narrator, after losing his faith and falling into a mundanity in which he denies the very existence of the wonders in which he had previously participated, finally finds his way back to the mystical world and is then led to a building where he is judged and found wanting.
Seeing the dream sequence/drug-induced halucination that Urfe experiences (which, by the way, happens for real in the book) there are, for me, clear parallels to the denouement of Hesse's novel. Urfe is also put on trial, but the scene is very different. Where in Hesse the judge is actually the simple, kind and gentle servant, Leo; for Urfe, who is first tied to a cross, and then tempted to whip the figure of Julie, the judges are a large and intimidating motley of grotesques and soldiers with the complicated figure of Conchis at the forefront.
All in all, despite its drawbacks, I would recommend seeing this film, even if only once. As for the book, well, that's up to you; maybe the film is enough.