Clarissa definitely wears a corset. You get to see a fair amount of it.
I thought the costumes were, in general, good; and the settings (country
houses and so on) were lavish and elegant. As for 100% accuracy, there
is no such thing in any repro; but I didn't see anything that damaged
the film experience for me. I don't believe that the be-all and
end-all of every film is the costumes.
"Clarissa" is very, very well done. There's lots of great visual work.
Like, in the very beginning Clarissa comes downstairs to hear her
grandfather's will read. She's a few minutes late, so when she enters
you see her whole family ranged in a row, as it were against her, all
dressed in black and staring at her reprovingly. It sets the tone of
their relationship for the whole film.
And, Lovelace has a friend called Jack whose role is largely to hear
Lovelace expound his "rake's philosophy." If Lovelace had made his
points while they were sitting in a drawing-room, or for that matter all
at one time, it would have gotten tedious. But instead you hear
snatches of it, always when they're doing something masculine and
violent--shooting birds out of the sky or having an aggressive fencing
practice.
The dialog is excellent, with great nuances. For example, Clarissa
early on drops her glove in a garden and Lovelace hands it back to her,
saying "Yours, I believe?" Later, her brother slaps Lovelace in the
face with his glove, then throws it at him, and Lovelace hands it back
the same way and responds in the same tone, "Yours, I believe?"
It's a fantastic film. I don't understand why BBC waited over ten years
to put it on DVD.
Fran
Lavolta Press Books on Historic Costuming
http://www.lavoltapress.com
I saw this when first out and was disappointed in the costumes. No
chemises!!! Corsets on bare skin. Even Hogarth's prostitutes wore
chemises. No-one professing to be a lady, or even of the class of
Clarissa, would have gone without a corset. I don't remember Sean Bean
at all, and I am a huge fan. So you can tell what sort of an
impression it made on me.
Suzi
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