The good soldier
(DVD)

Originally produced for British television broadcast as part of "Masterpiece Theater" in 1981.

Special features: Cast filmographies, Ford Madox Ford biography [text features].

Photography, Tony Pierce-Roberts ; film editor, Edward Mansell ; musical direction and original music, John McCabe ; designer, Michael Grimes ; costume designer, Robin Fraser Paye.

Robin Ellis (John Dowell), Susan Fleetwood (Leonora Ashburnham), Vickery Turner (Florence Dowell), Elizabeth Garvie (Nancy Rufford), Jeremy Brett (Edward Ashburnham), Pauline Moran (Maisie Maidan), Goeffrey Chater (Bagshawe), John Ratzenberger (Jimmy).

In the decade preceding World War I, two wealthy, handsome couples--English Captain Edward Ashburnham and his wife Leonora, and American John Dowell and his wife Florence--meet at a German spa and forge an immediate bond. Through nine seasons at various spas, the splendid foursome lives elegant, perfect lives. But nothing is as it seems. As John says at one point, "My wife and I knew the Captain and his wife Mrs. Ashburnham as well as was possible to know anybody. And yet we knew nothing about them at all." The film explores the power games, class snobbery, sexual lies, and lack of intimacy that boil beneath the placid, pristine exteriors the upper classes show the world. The story is presented in flashback, a literary technique Madox Ford helped popularize.

DVD; Dolby Digital sound; full screen presentation, aspect ratio 4x3.