Friday, October 29, 2010

Friday Film Fest: Lady Chatterley on Trial. . .


This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Lady Chatterley trial in which Penguin Books was aquitted of obsencity charges for publishing the unexpurgated text of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.  There are a number of film adapations of the book, but I quite like The Chatterley Affair, a 2006 BBC production on the actual trial itself, which is available on DVD. The story follows two jurors who start an affair of their own during the trial, but while their story is fictional, the scenes set in the courtroom use the actual case transcripts. It's a fascinating look at the power of literature, the debates over sexuality and morality in the early 1960s and it has quite a few things to say about male perceptions of female readers and what they should and should not be reading. And yes, there's strong language and sexual content.

The Guardian has a piece on the censorship of this novel here.

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