SOURCE: Welsh, James M. “Hardy and the Pastoral, Schlesinger and Shepherds: Far from the Madding Crowd.” Literature Film Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1981): 79-84.

In the following review of John Schlesinger's 1967 film version of Far from the Madding Crowd, Welsh points out the limitations of a compressed form of the novel.

The director adapting a novel for a mass audience works from one of two possible assumptions: 1) that the viewer probably will not know the original work and therefore needs to be guided carefully through the narrative, or 2) that the viewer probably has read the original work and that key motifs and mutually understood distinctions and nuances of character can therefore be telegraphed to the audience without a great deal of preparation and cinematic development. Perhaps the adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd scripted by Frederic Raphael and directed by John Schlesinger in 1967 succeeds when evaluated by the...