Tonight, Arte is broadcasting Lady Chatterley, a very beautiful version of the story written by DH Lawrence with Marina Hands, but did you know that there were officially erotic versions of this sulphurous novel?
Lady Chatterley won 5 Césars, including Best Actress for Marina Hands, totaled 400,000 admissions in France and was split into two parts for television broadcast after its theatrical release.
The story is simple: Constance Chatterley lives with her wealthy husband who is paralyzed from the legs and sexually impotent. This reclusive life and this sexual frustration are unbearable to him, and Constance transgresses the rules of bourgeois morality by starting an affair with the gamekeeper of the estate.
The version broadcast tonight on Arte is adapted from Lady Chatterley and the Woodsman, signed by author DH Lawrence. This is the second of three versions of his very raw novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Unlike other versions, it includes almost no sexual scenes, hence a classification for all audiences at the time of the film’s release in 2006.
But feature films have adapted the first version of the novel, which contains explicit scenes of sexual relations described in a rather crude way, and those have not had the same classification as the film with Marina Hands and Jean-Louis Coulloc’ h!
In 1981, the most famous of them was released: L’Amant de Lady Chatterley directed by Just Jaeckin, revealed seven years earlier by the release (and success) of Emmanuelle. It is also again with Sylvia Kristel, star of his first film, that he turns this adaptation of the novel by DH Lawrence produced by the firm Cannon.
London Cannon Films Sylvia Kristel and Nicholas Clay
On its release, the film divided, not so much on Jaeckin’s aesthetic choices as on his decision to leave aside the political aspect of the novel and his exploration of the forbidden love between two representatives of opposing social classes to offer only a simple erotic romance.
Before her, two versions were also released under the erotic banner: The Voluptuous Lady Chatterley by Katsuhiko Fujii (modern transposition of the novel) and Young Lady Chatterley (rated X), worn by Harlee McBride and Peter Ratray, both released in 1977.
As for television, two adaptations hold the attention, the sensual and respectful one of the book with Joely Richardson and Sean Bean (1993), then a very chaste version for the BBC (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) with Holliday Grainger and a Richard Madden wearing the beard (2015).