Priest of Love (1981) on Netflix
D.H. Lawrence's books are called obscene, and his wife Frieda is resented in Cornwall for her German birth. Mabel Dodge Luhan's invitation sends the couple to New Mexico.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.0/10612 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
When the Great War begins, D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda are living in rural Cornwall, where her German origins draw hostility from the people around them and the authorities call his writing obscene. In November 1915 the censor Herbert G. Muskett seizes copies of The Rainbow and has them burned before the Royal Exchange in London. Mabel Dodge Luhan, a wealthy American art patroness, invites the couple to New Mexico, and they set out with their friend Dorothy Brett. There Mabel gives them an old ranch and takes the manuscript of Sons and Lovers in return, while Brett paints and types his novels. Frieda tells Mabel how she left a husband and children in England to be with Lawrence, the man she calls Lorenzo.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Priest of Love (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ian McKellen's film career was minimal when Christopher Miles cast him as D. H. Lawrence after seeing him in a play, and Miles had already rejected a German film investor's demand for other actors in the two lead roles.
- The 1981 original version of Priest of Love is the only one that no longer exists: after Christopher Miles re-cut the film in 1985 for the centenary of D. H. Lawrence's birth, all copies of the first version were legally withdrawn.
- Christopher Miles first tried to make a film about D. H. Lawrence in 1972 but dropped the idea when the writer's agent, Laurence Pollinger, asked a price for quoting Lawrence's novels, poems and letters that was "more 'Lawrence of Arabia' than 'Lawrence of Nottingham'."
- With the project going badly, Stanley Seeger, one of the composers approached for its musical theme, asked Christopher Miles to see his solicitor; Seeger had just come into an oil inheritance and financed the production, after which Miles could cast the film as he wished.
- Shooting at the Villa Mirenda near Florence, where D. H. Lawrence actually wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover, an old retainer cried out "Lorenzo!" on seeing Ian McKellen, who felt as if he had been applauded; he and Janet Suzman said the real locations gave a frisson a film set lacked.
