Maggie finds in Philip Wakem, the son of her father's greatest enemy, a temperament like her own, and the two are mutually attracted. But Tom, loyal to his father, discovers their secret friendship; Maggie yields to her brother's authority and ceases to see Philip.

She leaves the mill for a visit to St. Ogg's to her cousin Lucy Deane, who is to marry the cultivated and handsome Stephen Guest. Stephen, though loyal in intention to Lucy, falls in love with Maggie the moment he sets eyes on her; Maggie, though similarly loyal to Philip, is drawn to Stephen. A boating expedition on the tidal river leads Maggie being innocently but irreemably compromised. She leaves Stephen and returns to her family, but Tom won't forgive her and turns her out of the house.

A great storm causes the river to break its banks, and during the course of it Maggie courageously rescues Tom from the mill. In so doing, brother and sister, reconciled at last, are drowned.

Original broadcast date:
1997-10-12

Cast Characters:

Emily Watson....................... Maggie Tulliver
Ifan Meredith......................... Tom Tulliver
James Frain.......................... Philip Wakem
Bernard Hill........................... Edward Tulliver
Nicholas Gecks..................... Lawyer Wakem
Cheryl Campbell.................... Bessy Tulliver
Lucy Whybrow...................... Lucy Deane
James Weber-Brown.............. Stephen Guest
Joanna David..........................Sophy Deane
Shenagh Govan......................Aunt Gritty
Will Knightley.........................Mr. Glegg
Paul Ridley............................Mr. Deane
Jessica Turner.......................Jane Glegg
Peter Gunn............................Rev. Stelling

Credits

Executive Producer: David Thompson
Producer: Brian Eastman

Director: Graham Theakston


Intro
MILL ON THE FLOSS

Intro by Russell Baker

First you should know that the Floss is the name of a fictional river.

The river plays a key role in what we're about to see. It powers the mill that has been owned by the Tulliver family for generations.

The Tulliver family is the center of the story, and at its very center is Maggie Tulliver -- sensitive, imaginative and terribly smart. "The Mill on the Floss" is the story of Maggie and the four men she loves... each in a different way.

Its author was Mary Ann Evans. We know her by her pen name, George Eliot.

She was a country girl whose father managed rural estates for the well-to-do. Country life was not for Mary Ann, however. She was brilliant and unorthodox.

She moved to London. She scandalized her family. She wrote some of the best novels in the English language.

Now the river Floss: It's already making trouble for the Tullivers as the story begins. Rivers provoke dangerous quarrels over water rights, and that's what Mr. Tulliver is involved in when we first meet him.

Young Maggie is waiting in terror for the arrival of her brother Tom who's been away at school... She's promised to take care of his pet rabbit while he was gone, and the rabbit is dead. Tom won't like that. Tom likes things done right, and when they're not -- he can be absolutely unforgiving.

"The Mill on the Floss." Extro
MILL ON THE FLOSS

Extro by Russell Baker

Mary Ann Evans -- George Eliot, as we know her -- had an older brother named Isaac. Like Tom and Maggie, they were close playmates in childhood, but different as day and night. Isaac was stern, unimaginative and impatient with his sister's impulsive nature.

The two were raised in a Fundamentalist Christian household. Isaac conformed to the family culture. His sister did not. She broke away, went to London and settled in the Bohemian literary world.

In her early thirties, she began living openly with a married man, the editor and critic, George Lewes. Isaac was appalled. Lewes's marriage had been a scandal even in freethinking London. For some time, his wife had been having an affair more or less openly with one of his colleagues. Lewes and his wife had had three children, and because they had three children, divorce was impossible

You can imagine how the upright Isaac took the news of his sister's becoming Mrs. Lewes without benefit of the clergy. She told him about it in a letter, and he answered so coldly that she never expected to hear from him again.

Unlike Maggie Tulliver, George Eliot found lifelong happiness with the man she'd taken from another woman.She and Lewes lived as a devoted, married couple until his death twenty-five years later.

That did not impress Isaac. For twenty-five years he refused to see her or to write. Even when Lewes died, Isaac remained silent.

At the age of sixty, George Eliot married a man twenty years younger than she was. She had her lawyer pass the news to Isaac's lawyer.

Isaac replied at last. "My dear sister," his note began. It gave him much pleasure, he said, to break the long silence between them by congratulating her on her marriage. She died six months later. Isaac came to her funeral.

For Masterpiece Theatre, I'm Russell Baker. Goodnight.

from Nicksflickpicks:

The Mill on the Floss

Director: Graham Theakston. Cast: Emily Watson, Ifan Meredith, James Frain, James Weber-Brown, Bernard Hill, Cheryl Campbell, Lucy Whybrow, Nicholas Gecks. Screenplay: Hugh Stoddart (based on the novel by George Eliot).

Graham Theakston's The Mill on the Floss, made for television's Masterpiece Theatre but now available on commercial video, would probably have vanished instantly for the cultural radar were it not for Emily Watson's starring performance. The actress had just been nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for Breaking the Waves when this adaptation of George Eliot's 1860 novel aired stateside on PBS. To no one's surprise, her moody, jagged embodiment of Maggie Tulliver-similar to but hardly a retread of her work in Waves or Hilary and Jackie-is the most impressive ingredient in The Mill on the Floss, which too often sacrifices holistic unity or a coherent narrative to its impulse to grant the able cast their fair share of Big Moments.

The plot of The Mill on the Floss centers around Maggie, who, as is typical of Watson's other screen characters, is a vibrant, emotional presence in a conservative and harshly judgmental community. She is brighter than her brother Tom (Ifan Meredith), both in terms of her book learning and her impatience with the rigid "codes of honor" by which Tom defends his family and his work; yet, as is familiar from so many other 19th-century novels, Maggie is denied a formal education or a general recognition of her unique gifts because rural English society does not take women or nonconformists seriously. Either quality would be enough to make Maggie suspicious among her neighbors, and the combination of her forceful passions and her proud femininity make her all but a pariah. The only person who admires Maggie and shows her affection is Philip Wakem (James Frain), the son of the man who bought the Tulliver's mill away from the family and thus represents to the seethingly jealous and inferior-feeling Tom everything in the world that is aligned against him. Philip, a quiet intellectual with a crippled arm, could not be taken by any rational person as a threatening figure. Tom, however, is not rational, and when Philip's secret friendship with Maggie is exposed-and in a way that makes clear Philip's romantic attraction to Maggie-Tom bans the two of them from ever meeting again.

The plot of The Mill on the Floss expands in several different directions from these early conflicts, and Eliot's famously verbose but exceptionally organized prose accommodates both the internal thoughts of her characters and the tense exchanges between them, as well as a wider, analytical survey of the provincial lifestyle, gender roles, and financial exigencies in which these men and women are cast. Film always has a harder time than written language of penetrating psychological complexities, and only directors who are more daring or more crafty than Theakston have been able to transport such challenging figures as the Tulliver family to the screen. To their credit, Theakston and script-writer Hugh Stoddart preserve some of the more challenging layers of Eliot's story, including the almost perversely heated emotions, both hot and cold, which Maggie and Tom feel for one another from childhood and ever after.

Still, Eliot's story is more than the story of a Misfit Woman who thinks and loves too much; many of us have seen that story played a million times in corsets and hair-ringlets, and too often, this is the mold into which The Mill on the Floss is cast. Emily Watson, God bless her, blazes right through the role of Maggie, so that even when the movie seems stolid and conventional, she lets you know what fiery, expansive feelings are hidden beneath the surface of this film, this story. Bernard Hill, later the captain on the Titanic has some fine moments as Maggie's father, as does James Frain in avoiding a too-sentimental portrait of Philip Wakem. Perhaps the earnestness of Frain's playing against Watson was what earned him the opportunity to work with her again in a similar neglected-lover role in Hilary and Jackie.

Though it is less well known, The Mill on the Floss is a novel just as prodigious and occasionally ungainly in its themes as Middlemarch, which PBS had earlier mounted as a multi-part miniseries. For all the intensity of Watson's work and the intermittent force of the teleplay, The Mill on the Floss ultimately feels belittled by the 90-minute Masterpiece Theatre formula into which it has been cast. Like Maggie herself, the story needs a bigger, broader canvas on which to operate than the one it is ultimately given, making the final project an almost inevitable disappointment: worth it if you're a Watson fan or die-hard Eliot scholar, but it can't compete with the richness of her prose and won't attract many viewers who aren't established fans of the novel. Grade: C

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments from and about James Frain's role as Philip Wakem:


from the Washington Post:

When he got the role of Philip Wakem, he picked up Eliot's novel "straight away," he says. "I had to get some tips. I was curious because when I read the screenplay, which went really well as a very intense kind of family drama, it was not what I was expecting." He thought a Victorian drama would be "very much more domestic" and was quite surprised at Eliot's book.

from Harpers and Queen:

First there was Rufus Sewell's dark and brooding Will Ladislaw; next, the famously dripping Colin Firth had all England swooning over Mr. Darcy; now, there is a new face to send lover of classic drama and of tall dark men into a fit of vapors - James Frain, playing the gentle Philip Wakem in George Elliot's 'The Mill on the Floss'. The idea of this succession makes him throw back his handsome head and laugh till his shiny little ringlets tremble. He is, he chuckles, 'very flattered.'

After such gritty taxing roles, {in Macbeth On the Estate and Nothing Personal}, it was a relief to play Philip Wakem, a character with real inner strength and vision, who flirts with suicide but resists it. 'Any idiot can hate someone and point a gun at them, but it takes courage to learn, instead, a different way of loving them.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a television listings review:

‘Masterpiece’ Offers a Gorgeous ‘Mill’ - 10/11/97

There is a brief, poignant moment in “Masterpiece Theatre’s” production of “The Mill on the Floss” in which Maggie Tulliver, the lead character, says, “We can’t choose happiness…We can only choose whether we listen to our conscience.” The phrase could serve as the motto for this gorgeous visual rendering of George Eliot’s classic, haunting novel, a superb choice for the premiere event in “Masterpiece Theatre’s” 27th season.

Maggie, performed with an extraordinary range of convincing emotion by Academy Award-nominated actress Emily Watson, is like the other characters in her small 19th century English town, at the mercy of conscience, in all its forms. Her story unfolds with all the inevitability of Greek tragedy. Maggie’s father (portrayed by Bernard Hill) loses his mill -on the Floss river, which had been in the family for 300 years - to the manipulations of a heartless lawyer, Mr. Wakem (Nicholas Gecks). But a Romeo-and Juliet theme parallels the mill’s loss as Maggie becomes romantically attached to Wakem’s disabled son, Philip (James Frain).

When Maggie’s brother, Tom (Ifan Meredith), angrily insists that the relationship be broken off, in deference to their father’s pride, a series of events unfolds that lead to an inescapably tragic climax. The tale is wrapped in the complex framatic threads and sudden story shifts characteristic of the 19th century novels. But the acting – especially by Watson and Frain – is so believable and the directorial pacing so carefully done that the picture is absolutely gripping, from beginning to end.

“The Mill on the Floss” was shot in a picturesque area of Norfolk, England, with attention to find detail that results in an utterly believeable period quality. Director Graham Theakston has positioned his drama in spare, sometimes stark settings, allowing the actors time and space to find the inner life in the their characters.

Composer John Scott’s music, supportive buy never intrusive, creates the perfect aural atmosphere for the is dark, compelling romance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IMDB link for Mill On The Floss

RETURN to Filmography page