I just bought the Criterion Collection DVD of Gillian Armstrong's 1979 film My Brilliant Career. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, and although I already own the 2005 Blue Underground DVD, I thought a Criterion edition with their supplementary material would be a good investment. The Criterion includes a couple of new interviews and Armstrong's student short film One Hundred a Day, which brought her to the attention of the producer Margaret Fink and soon led to the making of My Brilliant Career.
An interview with Fink on the Blue Underground DVD informed me that the first major financial backer of the project was very nervous about Sybylla the main character's refusal to marry a wealthy, eligible, and swoonworthy suitor. He changed his mind when he saw the final cut, but how interesting that a commercially-minded male industry type would agree with two radical gay male writers on that point, though their opinion was formed after they'd seen the film. Years later, Fink and Armstrong were still a bit nervous about it, protesting that it wasn't a feminist decision. I think it is, but then I don't think that counts against it. (As Rita Mae Brown wrote in a note in her second novel, To the non-feminist reader: What's wrong with you?)
Armstrong says that such an ending would be more acceptable today, but I'm not so sure of that. What would, I think, be acceptable would be for Sybylla to marry Harry, live comfortably in his mansion with a room of her own, numerous babies (tended by the help), as the camera pans over a row of her books visible and she writes in her workroom. For her to end up as she does in Armstrong's film, single, writing at night in her parents' rundown farmhouse in the outback, is less so. I think it's the difference between a woman's movie and a feminist movie. The former is okay, but there is a difference.
I am ambivalent about the Criterion Collection, which I think is somewhat overrated, partly as a result of all the "Criterion Closet" YouTube videos I've watched. In these, industry-connected people are turned loose with a bag in a big closet of Criterion videos. They gush over this cornucopia of great cinema, though the movies they choose tend to be pedestrian and predictable, and while I think it would be fun to have my pick of their products too, there are many great movies that aren't in the Collection and I want them too. While Criterion video transfers are excellent and the supplements are generally good, a Criterion edition means that older releases of the same movies often become unavailable, and Criterion editions cost more, often a lot more. (I know -- I can and often do buy used copies of the other versions.) Criterion editions are usually only in one language, unlike mainstream releases which may have several, and that can be valuable, as can subtitles in more than one language. But that's just me; I doubt many people notice or care about this.
Criterion editions also feature printed essays by prominent critics, though these tend to be of uneven quality. My Brilliant Career has one by Carrie Rickey, a critic I used to read in the Village Voice if memory serves. Rickey's essay is all right, but I quibble with one of her takes: "And while there is a fabulous kiss in My Brilliant Career, the first time Harry leans in to buss Sybylla, she hits him upside the head with a riding crop."
This is technically true, but I think it misreads the scene. Context: It takes place during a big party on Sybylla's maternal grandmother's estate. Sybylla has sneaked out of the upper-class ball in the big house to party with the workers in the barn. Class is an issue that I haven't seen addressed in discussions of My Brilliant Career. Sybylla's mother comes from bluebloods, her father is the salt of the earth. Thanks to childhood visits to her mother's mother, she knows her way around a formal dinner, but she also loves working people. (Miles Franklin, the author of the 1901 novel, eventually became a labor organizer in the United States.) Her suitor Harry Beecham drags her by the arm away from the barn and brusquely proposes marriage. She taunts him, which understandably makes him angry; he grabs her in a classic movie move and pulls her roughly to him. It's at that point that she hits him upside the head with a riding crop. I think Rickey plays down Harry's aggression in the scene. (I also don't agree that their eventual kiss is fabulous, but decide for yourself.)
But anyway, if you have never seen My Brilliant Career, you should. It holds up very well after forty years, and it looks great for a relatively low-budget movie, as lush as a Merchant-Ivory prestige production. Despite my reservations about Criterion, this edition shows off its visuals, and the English subtitles enabled me to understand some mumbled dialogue I'd missed before. For that matter, read the book.
