Cold
Comfort Farm
By Stella Gibbons
Reviewed by
Kenny Brechner
People who like books often speculate as to the rights and wrongs of turning books into movies. Whenever a good book is the inspiration for a bad film we say that good books make poor films. When a poor book is turned into good film we say that good books make bad films but bad books make good films. When bad books are made into bad films we say that bad books make for bad films.
Our subject, however, is altogether different, for we are to consider Cold Comfort Farm, a good book that was made into a good movie, as anyone might have expected. We may say of Cold Comfort Farm that if you haven’t seen the film, go see it, and if you haven’t read the book, read it at once.
Written by Stella Gibbons in 1932 Cold Comfort Farm is a tour de force in that most difficult of genres, farce. Gibbons sets out to lampoon the overwrought rustic novel ala Thomas Hardy and his lesser imitators. To take a genre drenched in somber landscape descriptions and populated by characters drowning in macabre, moldering romanticism, and then drench and drown matters even further was a task which Gibbons not only succeeded but reveled in.
Keeping in mind that people "are not always sure whether a sentence is Literature or whether it is just sheer flapdoodle," Gibbons decided to adopt "the method perfected by the late Herr Baedeker, and firmly marked what I consider the finer passages with one, two or three stars." This device is a brilliant stroke as evidenced in passages such as "‘Do sit down. Do you take milk? (No sugar...of course...or do you? I do, but most of my friends don’t).’ ***The man’s big body, etched menacingly against the bleak light that stabbed in from the low windows, did not move. His thoughts swirled like a beck in spate behind the sodden grey furrows of his face. A woman...Blast! Blast!"
For all the fun Gibbons has with overwrought rustic prose, she has more fun with her people, whose entrenchment in immemorial squalor they revel in and despair of in equal measure. Into this monument to willful stagnation the author thrusts a most interesting heroine, Flora Poste, to tidy everything up.
Flora’s immensely likable character brings an undercurrent of freshness, humor and humanity to the book which transforms it from a one dimensional parody to a marvelous farce. As in the brilliant screen adaptation Cold Comfort Farm maintains a buoyancy and charm from start to finish which is rare to find elsewhere, even in isolated flashes. Indeed, even Gibbons herself never achieved anything like it again.
Some pleasures, like that of
owning a 500-foot sailboat, are not easily had. With this in mind, we should not
neglect those pleasures so readily available as to lie waiting for us stoically
within the pages of Cold Comfort Farm.
