Customer Reviews

Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteries - Gaudy Night (The Lord Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane Collection)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This BBC presentation is based on the third novel in the Wimsey/Vane series. Harriet, motivated by her memories of Oxford as an escape from worldly concerns (such as her involvement in two murders and persistent proposals from Lord Peter), attends a student reunion or gaudy night. In the course of this she allows herself to be drawn into the mystery of a poison pen writer who has crossed too far into the realms of bad taste and threats. Gradually she realizes that the matter is getting out of hand, and turns again to Wimsey for help and guidance.

There is no question but that the saboteur intends harm to Shrewsbury College itself, as well as the dons and students who are part of it. Ugly notes escalate to burnt effigies, and finally to attacks on properties and persons. Everyone, from Senior Common Room to the least student is under suspicion.

Harriet must labor under the triple complications of the crimes themselves, a mixed reception from the dons of Shrewsbury, and the ever-increasing complexity of her relationship with Lord Peter. This latter is the reason for Sayers decision to gradually shift the focus of these three novels from Lord Peter (in 'Strong Poison') to Harriet Vane. In the book, lesser characters appear more often than Wimsey does as the narrative focuses in on a woman who is struggling to find herself and who fears being overwhelmed by what Peter has to offer.

'Gaudy Night' has the best acting of the three BBC presentations, and the most interesting setting, the only women's college at Oxford. It is easy to fall into the plot and enjoy the intellectual byplay among the characters. Unfortunately, this production shares the same fault as its companion efforts, only this time it is much worse. Whereas before the director (Christopher Hodson) limited his deviations from the novels to providing romantic segues from video to video, this time he had made significant deviations from the novel in order to overemphasize the relationship between Harriet and Wimsey.

I hate to get up on a soapbox, but Dorothy Sayers had very good reasons for writing these books as she did. Harriet Vane is an intelligent, determined woman, who is facing one of the dilemmas of her times, how to be an independent woman and in love at the same time. In her society, precious few roles were available that permitted both behaviors. Thus, the primary subtext of 'Gaudy Night is the nature of these roles. But Hodson underplays this, and even goes so far as to create scenes in order to expand Wimsey's role, and thus weaken Harriet Vane's. Having read the book several times, I found this both distracting and irritating.

Had I not read 'Gaudy Night' I would have found the screenplay very satisfying. With nearly seventy years between the book's writing and the present day, the number of Sayers readers has dwindled with time. Hopefully, the availability of the BBC productions will reverse that trend and more people will discover the works of one of the English languages most remarkable mystery writes.

I never thought I'd see this series again, but miracle of miracles, The Powers That Be have released it and on DVD, no less! I first saw these episodes on PBS in the late eighties when I was entering junior high school. I've been watching those Friday night mystery programs on PBS for as long as I can remember, and no one can top these three adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayer's three most popular Wimsey novels: Strong Poison, Have His Carcass, and Gaudy Night. Absolutely brilliant performances by Edward Petherbridge as my quintessential Lord Peter and Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane. I hope that now this much-loved series will receive the long-awaited praise and recognition it richly deserves.

Gaudy Night has long been my favorite Lord Peter Wimsey--or perhaps I should say, Harriet Vane detective story. There's no doubt Sayers recreated Oxford lovingly and with extreme vividness. Harriet Vane fully comes into her own in this story. The TV adaptation, however, is truncated, simplified almost beyond recognition. The various characters are cardboard stereotypes. The deepening relationship between Wimsey and Harriet is reduced to cliches. Why in the world were 4 episodes lavished on a much lesser story, "Have His Carcase" and only three on "Gaudy Night". This version simply doesn't do the original story justice at all.

"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: they sparkle still the right Promethean fire; they are the books, the arts, the academes, that show, contain, and nourish all the world."
-Love's Labour Lost

This is the third Dorothy L. Sayers novel in which mystery writer Harriet Vane has been pursued by Lord Peter Wimsey, but this one has the added attraction of being set at Shrewsbury, an all-women's college at Oxford. Oxford is much more than just a backdrop, however, as it is one of the few places (c. 1930) where women live and are encouraged to live independent lives. Independence, namely her own, is one of the things that Harriet Vane want to preserve. When Harriet, an Oxford graduate, returns to her alma mater to attend a yearly celebration known as "gaudy night", she is re-visiting a stratified and stuffy world full of ancient traditions and customs that she knows very well. Although the university seems like a sanctuary from the concerns of an unquiet world, Harriet is soon informed that things are not as idyllic as they might seem to an outsider, and that something is amiss at Shrewsbury. Previous to her arrival, a series of poison-pen letters have been delivered to various faculty and an unfamiliar sense of menace and threat now intrudes upon the hallowed lives of the university's female fellows. The administration decides not to compromise the reputation of the college by alerting outside authorites, instead they have decided to try and discover the source of the letters themselves, with the help of Harriet of course. Although she's a mystery writer, some of the faculty have decided that being a woman, an Oxford graduate, and an imaginative writer are qualifications that make her their ideal investigator. But not all of the fellows agree, and some are openly hostile to Harriet. The thrill of this mystery is in gaining admittance to the cloistered world of women's higher learning and scholarship, and access to some very effectively and cleverly drawn dons. Every conversation had among their number is full of well articulated views carefully advanced with the support of a wealth of historical knowledge and steeped in rich literary allusion for good measure. Granted, the independent and freethinking female students (they casually smoke cigarettes and openly discuss their affairs) find the female dons to be "nutters". And even the freethinking Lord Peter Wimsey has his suspicions about this closed community of women scholars and he suspects that the anonymous author of the poison-pen letters may be one of their own. Peter expresses these suspicions to Harriet:
"Academically cloistered together, celibate, some sexually ambivalent, [the institution is] bound to throw out the odd hysteric."
But Harriet is not so quick to judge this community that his its own rigorously followed codes of behavior. While conducting her investigation, Harriet finds out many things about the college, as well as many things about her own temperament. She is adivsed by one colleague that her detachment is "disconcerting", and told that if she should ever meet a man that appreciates and respects her dispassionate nature that she should consider herself lucky. Of course, we all know that she has found that man in Lord Peter Wimsey. Much is made of women's instinct and nature and this gaurded community slowly comes to treat Harriet as one of their own and in solving this case she also comes a good deal closer to solving the mysteries that motivate women, as well as the mysteries that lie at the center of her own being. Peter Wimsey, with his razor sharp instincts, may be the one who ultimately solves the mystery(s), but he could not have done so had he not been inspired to do so by Harriet who is the source of the "Promethean fire" that warms his heart and sparks his mind.

Extremely literate and extremely enjoyable mystery!

This series concludes in a most excellent way, with a challenging whodunit set amidst the antiquities of Oxford.

The way these characters were portrayed introduced me to the world of Dorothy Sayers' post-WWI England, and my only regret is that Talboys was not introduced as a subsequent episode.

Whenever I read (and reread) Dorothy Sayers, it will always be the portrayal of Peter Wimsey by Edward Peterbridge that I envision. Of all the actors who have taken on this role, *this* version is the finest I've seen.

As an avid Dorothy Sayers fanatic, and a lover of all things Lord Peter, this final film (in a series of three) left me fervently wishing "Busman's Honeymoon" (what would have been the fourth film) had been made. I own all the Lord Peter novels and collections of short stories, and have read and re-read them all more times than I can say, so to claim rather intimate knowledge on the subject is a justifiable conceit. Petherbridge is the Perfect Peter, and Walters an excellent Harriet. Any supposed lack of "chemistry" between them was, to my mind, only the result of good acting, and an excellent representation of the reserved and difficult realtionship between the would-be lovers that Sayers concocted in the novels. The sets were accurate and believable, the wardrobes well thought out and designed, and the rest of the cast also seemed to fit nicely into my mental picture of the characters they played. If ONLY the other Wimsey books had been made with Petherbridge cast as Lord Peter! But at least we have these three films to enjoy.

While enjoyable, it was "a mystery to me" why footage was cut from the version I saw on Mystery. I definitely remember the scenes about the chess set when I saw this story on TV.

Why, oh why, was it cut? It captured a major awareness, on Harriet's part, concerning her feelings for Lord Peter.

I feel cheated, as when we purchase such a product, we expect to see the ENTIRE work. If that does not matter to you, then this incomplete work stands alone as better than nothing.

This is but one of the many Peter Wimsey mysteries I have watched, listened to, and/or read. Everyone of them have had characters so well developed and believable. This mystery is well deserving of the highest rating for its plot, the scenery, and the acting. The period was the 1930's, and strong, independent women were an exception rather than the norm. This story highlights one type of delicate situation professional women could find themselves in during this transitional period. The majority of the cast are female, and all are very well cast. There were even a number of catty encounters between various characters, remniscent of "The Women", by Clare Booth Luce, which were very likely to have actually happened in the situations these characters found themselves in. Having seen Edward Petheridge and Harriet Walter portray these characters in a play on stage, their portrayals lose nothing in the transition to TV. I stongly recommend this show as well as all the other Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries on DVD/VHS. These shows are excellent entertainment and have class most current TV shows and movies of this genre seriously lack.

"Gaudy Night" is by far the richest and best of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane books. Unfortunately, this television adaptation is the weakest of the Wimsey/Vane series with Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walters. Unlike "Strong Poison" and "Have His Carcase," which were very faithful to the books, this adaptation of "Gaudy Night" hacks the book to pieces and makes some significant changes in the plot line, not for the better. One wonders why the producers devoted four episodes to "Have His Carcase" but only three to the much superior "Gaudy Night." Surely with a fourth episode they could have included Lord Peter's nephew, Lord St. George, and some key scenes like the chess set episode and Wimsey and Harriet punting on the Charwell. Also, whereas in the novel the city of Oxford is almost another character, in this version it is almost completely absent.

Still, there is much to enjoy here. The casting of the Dons of Shrewsbury College is excellent; these character actresses really capture the eccentricities of the Senior Common Room members. Lavinia Bertram is a standout as Annie Wilson, very powerful in her big scene at the end. And of course, Walters and Petherbridge are outstanding as usual. What there is of Sayers' magnificent book is well done. One just wishes we had been given more.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) wrote few novels, but their quality was sufficient to rank her among the best mystery novelists of her era, and she remains a standard bearer to this day. In the novel STRONG POISON, her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, fell in love with mystery novelist Harriet Vane, and Sayers allowed the relationship to play out over the course of three more works: HAVE HIS CARCASE, GAUDY NIGHT, and BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON. In the 1987, the BBC filmed the first three works in the series (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer owns the rights to BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON, which was filmed in 1940) as a mixture of 1930s mystery and romance. The result was often amusing, but also extremely problematic.

Presented in three episodes, GAUDY NIGHT offers the story of a mysterious vandal and poison pen letter writer at Shrewsbury, an Oxford college for women of which Harriet (Harriet Walter) is a graduate. When Harriet attends the annual gaudy (dinner) for former students, she is quickly roped into investigating the mystery. Finding the whole thing a bit over her head, she somewhat reluctantly summons her would-be lover Lord Peter Wimsey (Edward Petherbridge) to unravel the mystery. But while GAUDY NIGHT is among Sayer's best work, the film suffers from exactly the same problems that beset the previous series adaptations. Casting is an issue, with both Petherbridge and Walter more acceptable than ideal, but more particularly the adaptation completely misses the wry humor that is so much a part of Sayers' work. The upshot is an overdose of British stiff upper lip. To add a final insult, the entire series doesn't look so much like a 1980s effort as it does an early 1970s effort--which is to say that the film technique has dated very, very badly.

Of the three titles included in the series, GAUDY NIGHT is probably the least effectively done, and this is likely due to the great difficulty of adapting the work. As a novel, it contains an extremely large cast of characters, remarkable atmosphere, and plays out largely in a series of dialogues. Even so, fans of Sayers, her novels, and her characters will at least be mildly amused by the effort. Recommended to them, but most others should probably give it a miss.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer