DAVID RAYNER

This has always been one of my favourite British films and recently, I was able to obtain the original 1950 novel by A J Cronin on which it was based. I bought the book because I wanted to find out how much the film differed from it.

For those who are not familiar with the VistaVision and Technicolor film, here is a short synopsis:

THE SPANISH GARDENER is a kind of very unusual, but superbly made and acted, eternal triangle story. A middle aged diplomat at the British Consul in Madrid, Harrington Brande (Michael Hordern) is posted to a sleepy Spanish coastal town on the Costa Brava. His wife has left him and all he has is his eleven years old son Nicholas (Jon Whiteley), on whom he dotes and of whom he is so possessive, that he will not allow Nicholas to go to school or to make any friends, even of boys his own age. He just wants the boy all to himself. When Brande hires Jose (Dirk Bogarde) as a gardener for the villa, Jose and the lonely Nicholas become firm friends from their first meeting, much to the consternation of the insanely jealous Brande, who goes to much trouble to destroy the relationship between his son and the gardener, even to the extent of framing the gardener for theft and having him arrested and sent to jail!

Dirk Bogarde and Jon Whiteley are happily reunited here, four years after making Hunted together. During the course of that production, Jon grew to love Bogarde dearly and the little boy was inconsolable when they had to part at the end of shooting the film. The happiness on their faces as they are reunited in The Spanish Gardener is plain to see. The film was made on location in Spain and at Pinewood Studios in England and directed by Philip Leacock.

It now appears that the film kept mostly close to the book, except that in the book, Nicholas and his father were Americans and in the film, Nicholas was Scottish and his father English. The ending in the book is very different to the film, too. In the book, Jose doesn't jump from the train on his way to court and escape into the mountains, he jumps and is killed and Nicholas, rightly blaming his father for everything, is never the same with his father again and loses all love for him. It's a very sad ending, whereas the film ending is more upbeat.

One very well written scene in Chapter 15 of the book that wasn't in the film is where Nicholas, at his insanely jealous father's request, is examined in his bedroom by his father's doctor friend, who questions him, in as friendly but probing way as possible, about his relationship with Jose, whom Nicholas admits that he loves. He tries to get Nicholas to admit to letting Jose have sexual intimacy with him when he and the gardener went fishing in the mountains and when he spent the night with Jose in his bed at his house...something that Nicholas will not admit to.

Perhaps this scene was either cut from the finished film or was never filmed in the first place. The censors were so very strict in those days. I was amazed to find a scene as suggestive as this in a novel written 54 years ago.

Does anyone know why the film ending was so different to that of the novel? I think the ending in the novel would have been far more realistic as the ending for the film.

DB7

In the book isn't it the father attracted to Jose in the subtext?

DAVID RAYNER

You may be right about that, but I'm not going to spend another week reading the novel to check it out. As far as I recall though, the father is alright with the gardener until he finds that his son and the gardener have become friends. Then he seems to go off his rocker with jealously.

DB7

The ending may have been down to Rank, who often took J. Arthur's Methodist principles into account when promoting a film. Also Phil Leacock (who has The Kidnappers showing on Thursday) was a bit of a specialist in dealing with child actors and may have wanted a more positive ending with the father learning the error of his ways.

Bogarde's private life has led to a bit of over-analysis of the relationship between father, son and gardener.

DAVID RAYNER

Well, DB7, that sounds a plausible enough reason to me for the changed ending. Other than the changed ending and a couple of minor changes regarding the nationality of father and son, this must be one of a very few films where the screenwriters didn't change the narrative of the novel completely. Perhaps in this case, they decided that they couldn't really improve on the novel, which was so well written and seemed to be perfect screen material.

Steve Crook

One other where they didn't mess with the book very much is The Small Back Room (1949), an nice bit of "British Noir" (if such a genre exists) from Powell & Pressburger.

It includes some lovely, concise bits of dialogue, such as that between Kathleen Byron (Susan) and David Farrar (Sammy)

Susan: Where were you going Sammy?
Sammy: I don't know.
Susan: A woman?
Sammy: Maybe.
Susan: How about me?

I thought that was a typical example of Emeric Pressburger's writing. But when I read the book I found it was in the original novel (by Nigel Balchin).

They changed very little in the story as well, just a few of the settings like putting the final scene on Chesil Bank.

Steve Crook

PaPAS