MovieChat Forums > The Forsyte Saga (1969) Discussion > Helene!!

Helene!!

posted 14 years ago by Pipeman_Toronto
10 replies | jump to latest

I've just re-watched the first 4 episodes of the series. Hadn't watched it in a few years.

What really strikes me is how hard it is to watch any scene that includes Helene. Why in the hell did they direct Lana Morris to play to the back row like that? Was she primarily a theatre actress? Even if she was, someone should have told her she needed to dial it down a bit.

Her gestures, her crying to the point of hyperventilating, her basically overdoing EVERYTHING has made my finger wander to the fast forward button on more than one occasion.

Did she strike anyone else that way?

[–] gorye 14 years ago

Have you ever seen the whole series or read the novel?
I'm asking because otherwise you'd know that Helene was mentally ill. Yes, her brain wasn't so obviously damaged in the beginning of the film as in the moment she died (the accident just spared her from madness and pains maybe), but still, her "nervousness" pointed to it as the very likely course.
Possibly most of her relatives thought it was due to those hard and unsure years when she was "mistress" not wedded wife. But well, happiness is within, not outside every human being.
Helen was unable to be happy (there was a hint from Jolyon). Sometimes she might be content and relaxed, but we could see in the very next she got quite close to hysterics.

So, Lana Morris gave that strikingly true performance.
As nearly everyone in the series. I don't see Martin Jarvis as a tender boy for example. Or Somes's second wife - she's too vulgar and plain. And has little of "A French" as I was expecting after reading the novel.

[–] Venus-25 14 years ago

I suspect she was manic-depressive. I'm rewatching the series now and this is the best conclusion I can come to after the first disk.

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[–] cookiela2001 13 years ago

Yeah...Helene is a little overdone....but at least it adds some contrast.

(SPOILER)

I liked when she fell off the one-foot high bookcase, and it lead to absolute catastrophe.

[–] tiderolls 13 years ago

I truly laughed out loud on this statement; you're right, the fall should've been from a higher source....

[–] CakesAndAle 12 years ago

What really strikes me is how hard it is to watch any scene that includes Helene. Why in the hell did they direct Lana Morris to play to the back row like that? Was she primarily a theatre actress? Even if she was, someone should have told her she needed to dial it down a bit.

Her gestures, her crying to the point of hyperventilating, her basically overdoing EVERYTHING has made my finger wander to the fast forward button on more than one occasion.

Did she strike anyone else that way?

Yes! She needed some subtlety in her performance. I could have endured her horrid accent if only she had toned down the hysterics.

(But instead of the fast forward button, I used the volume button, lol.)

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] gorye 12 years ago

Oh no!
When I can accept Helene, I find Annette a miscast. She's not charming, cosy and sexy enough to attract Soams, so he may choose to marry such a girl - she even doesn't look young, and greedy, ambitious enough to settle for a boring old man like Soams.

Speaking of main characters, only Dallia Penn and Martin Jarvis seem to me quite unsuitable in this nearly perfect cast. Jarvis just isn't persuasive playing naive nice young boy - making faces he's playing a perfect dummy.

[–] greenegg 12 years ago

I also found Morris' performance spot on; she felt just as brittle and manic as I would expect a mentally ill woman in such an uncertain position to be. I didn't mind Penn or Jarvis. I like Jarvis in other things, so I overlooked the possible miscasting. Ironically, Beatriz Batarda, who played Annette in the hideous 2002 version, seemed better suited to playing Annette, though she might have needed some of Penn's edginess.

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[–] dathaler 7 years ago

Gosh...can none of you appreciate "camp" when you see it? Sure it's overdone, and the other posters raise a good point I hadn't considered--she was mentally ill and we were seeing her before she was formally diagnosed. Even so, I just chuckle at the hysterics because they're so...sooooo...."un-British."

Perhaps a screening of the original "Valley of the Dolls" would loosen people up. "Sparkle, Neely...Spaaaaarkle!!!!!!!!"

[–] SaliceMcD 7 years ago

Especially given the Dr's statement that in the end - the histrionic end - she was bleeding to death, I thought she had a brain tumor, given all the mentions of migraines. : /