Oscar Profile #232: Rumer Godden

Born (Margaret) Rumer Godden in Sussex, England on December 10, 1907, the future novelist grew up with her three sisters in a section of colonial India that is now part of Bangladesh where her father was a shipping company executive. Sent to England for schooling, she and her sisters were brought back to India at the outset of the First World War. She returned to England to continue her interrupted schooling in 1920, eventually training as a dance teacher. She went back to India in 1925 and opened a dance school for English and Indian children and young women in Calcutta. Godden ran the school for 20 years with the help of her sister Nancy. A writer from the age of 5, she wrote a fanciful autobiography at 8, but did not become a published writer until the age of 29. Her third novel, Black Narcissus, published in 1939, was an immediate international success that has never been out of print since. She would publish more than 60 books over the course of her long life.

Godden ran afoul of both the English and the Indians when she admitted young half-caste or Eurasian women in her dance school as both cultures considered this tantamount to running a brothel. She married sportsman Laurence Foster in 1934 when she became pregnant, although she later claimed she never really loved him. She lost the baby four days after he was born and later had two daughters with Foster who left the family to join the army at the outbreak of World War II. After he’d gone she discovered that he had drained their joint bank account and left her with a large debt due to bad stock investments. He returned briefly while on leave and after he’d gone went on a long trek where she became desperately ill. She had a miscarriage without even realizing she had been pregnant. When she discovered he was having an affair with another officer’s wife, she asked him for a divorce which he agreed to only if she absolved him of any monetary responsibility toward her and her daughters.

In 1945 she discovered that she and her daughters were slowly being poisoned with crushed glass put into their food by her household staff. They escaped at dawn with little but the clothes on their backs with the help of a loyal pony guide and his son. She arrived in England without her possessions, but with the manuscript for The River which was published in 1946.

Black Narcissus became the first of her novels to be made into a film in 1947. It was followed by Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time, which was made into the film Enchantment in 1948. The River was made into a film in 1951. An Episode of Sparrows was first done as a TV play in 1956 and then as a film in 1958 under the title Innocent Sinners. The Greengage Summer was filmed and released under its original title in the United Kingdom in 1961, but the U.S. release title became Loss of Innocence. The Battle of the Villa Fiorita was the last of Godden’s novels to be adapted for the big screen in 1965. TV films of several of her novels were filmed as late as 1996, the most famous being the 1975 version of In This House of Brede.

Godden married civil servant James Dixon in 1949. Raised Church of England, she became interested in the Catholic Church in the early 1950s but did not convert until 1968. Many of her later writings reflect her change in religion and feature numerous priests and nuns in the telling of her stories.

Godden moved to Rye in Sussex in 1968 where she remained until after her second husband’s death in 1973. She moved to Scotland in 1978 when she was 70 to be near her daughter Jane. In 1994 she and Jane paid a visit to India where a fascinating BBC documentary of her life was filmed for broadcast in 1996. She died on November 8, 1998 at the age of 90 after a series of strokes. Her ashes are buried with her second husband.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BLACK NARCISSUS (1947), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

The first of Godden’s novels to be adapted for the screen, this film about the disorientation of a group of Anglican nuns in the Himalayas is best known for its gorgeous color cinematography. Godden was said not to be a fan of the screenplay written by the directors, but she was in the minority. The film won Oscars for both Jack Cardiff’s cinematography and Alfred Junge’s art direction. Deborah Kerr won the New York Film Critics award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the young Mother Superior in conjunction with her performance in the same year’s I See a Dark Stranger AKA The Adventuress. Co-star Kathleen Byron was a runner-up for her portrayal of a sexually frustrated young nun who goes mad. David Farrar, Flora Robson, Jean Simmons and Sabu co-starred.

ENCHANTMENT (1948), directed by Irving Reis

John Patrick provided the adaptation of Godden’s Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time. One of the best remembered romantic dramas of the 1940s, it’s two romantic tales for the price of one.

David Niven is a recently retired Army General who reminisces about his long-ago romance with his father’s ward (Teresa Wright) thwarted by his domineering sister (Jayne Meadows). During World War II, Niven’s brother’s granddaughter (Evelyn Keyes) is an ambulance driver who falls in love with a pilot (Farley Granger) who turns out to be Wright’s nephew. Niven encourages them not to throw away the happiness that slipped through his fingers. Leo G. Carroll plays Niven’s loyal butler who has seen it all.

The film is especially distinguished by Gregg Toland’s cinematography (his last) and Hugo Friedhofer’s score.

THE RIVER (1951), directed by Jean Renoir

Godden co-wrote the screenplay from her favorite novel with the director. The film was an artistic rebirth for Renoir who was unceremoniously fired from RKO after the flop of his last film which he insisted was due to the studio’s interference with the filming.

Highly regarded in its day, the film received two BAFTA nominations and came in second in the New York Film Critics’ awards polling behind A Streetcar Named Desire.

The film focuses on the lives of a well-to-do British family in India, not unlike Godden’s own, and the upheaval the arrival of an American war veteran with a wooden leg brings to three young women, the Godden substitute, and her two friends, one a Eurasian. There is also a subplot involving her young brother and his fascination with snakes which ends disastrously.

Because of Renoir’s inability to attract major Hollywood stars to the project, the cast is a mix of familiar character actors (Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields) in supporting roles and unknowns in the leads, most of whom never acted again.

LOSS OF INNOCENCE (1961), directed by Lewis Gilbert

Godden provided her own screenplay for this exquisitely filmed coming-of-age drama set in the French countryside. Filmed under the title of The Greengage Summer from the novel of the same name, it was released under that title in the United Kingdom, but released under its new title in the U.S.

Susannah York is lovely in one of her earliest roles as a young woman looking after her younger siblings during a long summer away from home. Kenneth More is the aging jewel thief who catches her fancy and Danielle Darriex is his jealous lover. Once again, the cinematography, this time by Freddie Young, is a key element of the film’s allure.

IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE (1975), directed by George Schaefer

Diana Rigg was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of the well-to-do London businesswoman who gives up everything after the deaths of her husband and daughter to enter a convent in this film version of one of Godden’s later novels.

Rigg is terrific as the new style nun who runs interference with the old-fashioned ways of Pamela Brown. Judi Bowker is the young postulant who comes under Rigg’s influence in this deeply moving study of inner turmoil and outer complacency.

Godden purists complained that the TV movie left out a lot of Godden’s novel, but those who were unfamiliar with the original work were thoroughly entranced.