The Mill on the Floss (1936) watch online HD

I can not go into a dissertation about the movie vs the novel. I can not write a comparative study of the The Mill on the Floss with other novels by George Eliot or her contemporaries. I do appreciate the other commenter's' reviews. However, I would like to correct a few factual errors. As a child, Tom Tulliver bullies his friend "Bob" (not Phillip) into giving him the shilling. Phillip, son of the elder Tulliver's nemesis, observes this act and chides Tom for his behavior in front of Tom's sister, Maggie. (PS - the wealthy family is not the Tullivers. Phillip and his father are wealthy and Tullivers are the working class.) As an adult, Bob and Tom become friends and business partners as Tom is not a bad person, but he certainly is a pigheaded one. However, Tom can not forgive Phillip and his father for the wrongs the old man brought onto the Tullivers and therein lies the basic conflict in the plot. All in all, I didn't think the movie was all that bad and the pace of the plot as well as the acting held my interest from beginning to end. If you are a James Mason fan, you will probably like it better than some of his other movies from that period.

This was Mason's first "serious" movie, and he was very good in it. And yes indeed it would have been glorious to see him have a turn at Heathcliff at that point in his career. Later, he should have had a crack at Mr. Rochester. Too bad...our loss.

This 1937 adaption of George Elliot's The Mill On The Floss gave film audiences James Mason's first starring role as Tom Tulliver, son of Sam Livesey who has a running feud over the water rights over a mill that Livesey owns on the river Floss. This feud over the water rights where it is determined that Felix Aylmer owns permeates the lives of the families involved.

Mason is an earnest and devoted son to Livesey and something of a lout. He ratchets up the feud several notches until that's just about all he lives for. But that's not how Mason's sister Geraldine Fitzgerald feels nor is it how Aylmer's son Frank Lawton feels. They carry on a Romeo and Juliet like romance despite the feelings of their respective families. And since you know where Elliot got her inspiration from, you also can probably deduce things end rather badly.

This film version could probably use a restoration since it is a key film in the career of James Mason. The streamed version I saw on Amazon looks like it hasn't stood the test of time. The Napoleonic and post Napoleonic era in the United Kingdom is well captured on the film, but the pace is slow and sluggish. The film should also be restored because of the climatic sequence of the flood which destroys some lives and the mill that was the cause of the great feud. It was probably a well staged disaster that I would have liked a better view of, it was pretty dark on my computer.

The Mill On The Floss is sluggish and considerably condensed from the Elliott novel, but still earnestly done by its cast.

'The Mill on the Floss' was one of the lesser novels by Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the male pseudonym George Eliot. I tried to read this dull and very turgid novel years ago, but was unable to finish it. I'll review this film version solely on its own merits, as I don't know how faithfully it follows the original novel.

The film's opening credits are printed in an Old English typeface that suggests the mediaeval period, and so it's a very poor choice for a film with a 19th-century setting. (On the other hand, about halfway into the film, we see a close-up shot of a handbill advertising an estate auction. This handbill is set in authentic Victorian type fonts, and looks *very* convincing.) Most of this film is extremely convincing in its depiction of the architecture and clothing of early 19th-century England. The precise location of this film's story is never disclosed, but - judging by the actors' accents - I'd place it as somewhere in the Cotswolds, perhaps Warwickshire.

The plot, what there is of it, involves a mill that changes hands a couple of times (over a couple of decades) between two rival families, one wealthy and one working-class. I disagree with another IMDb reviewer who claims that James Mason has only a small role in this film. Mason has the largest and most central role in this drama, as the scion of the wealthier family. As the spoilt and petulant Tom Tulliver, Mason is darkly brooding and impetuous. His performance here belongs in a better film: it made me want to see 'Wuthering Heights' recast with Mason as Heathcliff.

As this is a multi-generational saga (something which George Eliot did much better in 'Middlemarch'), several of the main roles in this film are split among two actors apiece: child actors in the prologue, adults in the main narrative. The prologue of this film features a very well-written scene, establishing Tom Tulliver as wilful and bully-ragging from an early age, and young Philip Wakeham as decent and thoughtful. Through hard labour, Philip has earned a halfpenny: Tom tries to bully it away from him, but is unwilling to take the coin by brute force: he wants Philip to *give* it to him. All the child actors in this movie, male and female, are talented and attractive. Unfortunately, all of the children speak their dialogue in posh plummy-voiced accents that are utterly unlike the accents of the actors and actresses who play those same roles as adults. This discrepancy calls attention to the staginess of the material. Regrettably, none of the later scenes are as good as this prologue.

The climax features a crowd of labourers in a rainstorm, much better paced and photographed than the earlier scenes. But modern viewers (in Britain, at least) can no longer take this sort of material seriously. By now, practically every British comedian has done a "trouble at t' mill, squire" comedy routine, parodying precisely this subject matter, so I had difficulty watching this movie with a straight face.

The character actress Martita Hunt is good in a small role, but the opening credits (in that Old English typeface) misspell her forename as 'Marita'. I'll rate this dull movie 3 points out of 10: one point apiece for James Mason's performance, the early scene with the children, and the authentic Victorian typesetting in that auctioneer's handbill.

Lord David Cecil wrote an interesting book in the 1930s EARLY VICTORIAN NOVELISTS, where he looked at the works of Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, and Emily Bronte. He selected these writers as the popular favorites of the first half of the Victorian period, and he explained their strengths and weaknesses (as he saw them) to the reading public. Some of his comments are quite relevant to this day, but like all criticism it gives an idea of the spirit of the times of the critic's life as well.

Cecil thought highly of George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross), who wrote about seven or eight books (including sketches and poetry). But for most modern readers, they are usually acquainted with her shortest book, SILAS MARNER, which is still read in some high school curriculum. The other books, FELIX HOLT THE RADICAL, DANIEL DERONDA, MIDDLEMARCH, THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, ADAM BEDE, ROMOLA, SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, are still in print (Penguin, for example, has most of them in print), but are mostly unread. The one of most interest today is her last novel, DERONDA, where she discusses the Jews in English society, and an incipient, pre-Hertzl type of Zionism. ROMOLA is her sole attempt at a historic novel (about Savanarola's experiment of a religiously pure republic in Florence in the 1490s). Her meatiest novel is MIDDLEMARCH, which is concerned with English society in the provinces in 1832, the year of the great Reform Bill of Lord Grey. I had to read MIDDLEMARCH in college for a literature course. It certainly is a thoughtful book (Virginia Woolf called it the most grown-up book in the English language). But it suffers (like all of Eliot's novels) from one defect - she cannot write livable, exciting prose. While Dickens is overly exuberant at times, and Thackeray can become pompous and prolix, and Trollope can become (as Lord Cecil says) very ordinary in his discussion, and Charlotte Bronte can fail to explain certain relationships well, and Mrs. Gaskell seems best dealing with female characters, all of them (and Emily Bronte in her single novel) hold the reader's interest. Reading most of Eliot's novels is like trying to chisel sentences out of blocks of marble with a toothpick!

To date I have read about fifty pages of MILL OF THE FLOSS. I notice that one of the other reviewers never finished the novel too. But I have read a synopsis of what it is about. The Tullivers (Maggie and her brother Tom) are the central figures - they own the mill in the title. Although close at the start of the story, Maggie falls in love with the son of a neighbor whose father is involved in legal difficulties with Mr. Tulliver Sr. Tom takes a dim view of this relationship, and the tragedy of the story is regarding the split between the siblings, culminating in their demise at the conclusion (Maggie runs back to the mill to rescue Tom during a heavy flood, and they die together). It must have been a success with Victorian readers, but it is very gloomy and depressing to modern audiences.

The movie changed the ending a little - Maggie (Geraldine Fitzgerald) does die at the end with her lover, and Tom (James Mason) notes their deaths at the conclusion in his record book. The story is totally rewritten, except for a double death in the flood at the conclusion. It doesn't really help matters. Although Fitzgerald and Mason do pretty well with their parts, they can't really pull the film up by their work alone. The end result is a fairly minor film, that fortunately did not hurt the lead's careers. The only other thing to note is that the boyfriend was played by Frank Lawton, who two years earlier played David Copperfield as a grown up opposite W.C.Fields, Lionel Barrymore, and Maureen O'Sullivan. But then, Lawton never really had a major film career - he just happened to always be around in pictures, some good, some mediocre.

Haven't seen the movie, but having just finished the book I had to post in defense of Eliot and "Floss". The novel is not Eliot's best, but it should go without saying that bad Eliot is way better than most 'literary' fiction you find today. The structure of the book is not very good, and the last half of the novel becomes about the love triangle between Maggie, Phillip, and Stephen -- Tom gets lost in the shuffle a bit, until the very end. I can see James Mason in any of the male leads -- but probably he would have rocked as Phillip, the hunch-backed, somewhat effeminate soul mate for Maggie. Tom is a bit of stick of the mud in the book and frankly not that interesting a character. The book is all about Maggie though -- her internal conflict, between her duty to Tom and family, and her instinctive desire for personal happiness and fulfillment, make the book. I can't wait to see how this film handles her!

There have been several film adaptations of The Mill on the Floss, but the 1936 version is the only one I've ever seen. It reminded me very much of Hungry Hill, so if you liked that movie, you'll probably like this story as well.

Two families have a long-standing feud, and while the younger generation is aware of the enemy camp, they can't help but be drawn to it. Geraldine Fitzgerald falls in love with forbidden fruit Frank Lawton, and her brother James Mason has a fit. He's the "good kid" and hates his enemies as he's been taught. As James tries to stop the romance, he also faces his own prejudices and works hard managing his father's mill.

If you're not very well-versed in dry period pieces, you might fall asleep or get lost during this one. It tends to rush plot points, and it doesn't try very hard to "dummy things down" for the audience. But, if you like proper British stories, and you get wrapped up in feuds, try renting one of the versions of The Mill on the Floss and see what you think.

Mason plays the supporting role of Tom Tulliver in this adaptation of George Eliot's 'The Mill on the Floss'. Quite frankly, I didn't enjoy any of Eliot's novels so I wouldn't enjoy watching this film. Mason has a minor part, so it's not even worth watching anyway.

I am somewhat surprised that 2 out of the 6 reviews of this film were by people who hadn't even seen the film.I would count them as extremely lucky as this is a really dull affair,which at times doesn't even make sense.At the beginning the source of the feud is discussed and the law action started.Mason et al are all young children.We then go forward a few years ,it seems like 20 when Mson et all are adults and it appears that the law case over the mill has just been resolved.Well the wheels of justice may grind exceedingly slow but not that slow.One can only think that the producers were trying to replicate the success of David Copperfield,well it has to be said that they failed miserably.It is an effort to try and keep working out what is going on.At least Mason and Fitzgerald would go on to better things.