Review of Lady Caroline Lamb

On a day in 1812, following the publication of his poem 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' a certain George Gordon Byron awoke to find himself famous. This celebrity proved to be a poisoned chalice. A disastrous marriage together with accusations of incest and sodomy caused him to quit these shores four years later, never to return. His brief but destructive affair with the already married Caroline Lamb is the centre piece of this film written and directed by Robert Bolt. The critical drubbing the film received deterred him from directing again which is a pity as he exhibits a sense of the visual and an eye for detail which is hardly surprising as he could not fail to have learned from the masters Lean and Zinnemann. Apparently Lean was offered the chance to direct but showed little interest. Bolt is well-served here by the cinematography of Oswald Morris, production design by Carmen Dillon and an excellent score by Richard Rodney Bennett. Unsatisfactory screen portrayals of Byron underline the near impossibility of capturing the complex, contradictory and mercurial nature of one of our greatest poets but given the limited opportunities here American actor Richard Chamberlain does extremely well although one has to question Bolt's decision to dispense with Byron's club foot. I may be in the minority but I feel that the generally negative response to the performance of Bolt's wife Sarah Miles in the title role is unwarranted as she has captured well the character's obsessiveness and emotional instability. This instability was not exactly helped by an addiction to Laudanum which Bolt again has chosen to ignore. Byron wrote that "Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare" but one senses that her feelings for him ran far deeper than mere infatuation with fame. Not for the first time it is the actors of the 'Old School' that provide real substance, including Laurence Olivier as Wellington, Ralph Richardson as George 1V, John Mills as Canning and especially Margaret Leighton who is gifted the best lines as Lady Melbourne. One of our classiest actresses whose performance is one of infinite subtlety and grace. This is a co-production with Italy which explains the presence of Silvia Monti as Byron's future wife Annabella Milbanke. She looks ravishing but is totally miscast and needless to say is 'dubbed'. There are inaccuracies, omissions and 'compromises' in this to be sure but that is the nature of biopics, take them or leave them.