Truly Dreadful Film

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

Throughout the movie "The Yellow Wall Paper" by John Clive (2008) which is an adaptation from Charlotte Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1899), there are number of interpolations. In the movie, the household has a gardener whose daughter rides a bicycle in her yellow dress, although this detail is not all mentioned in the original story. Also, in the movie, Charlotte's mother and other family members come down for a visit where they sit around a table to spend their tea-time together and eat pastries and sweets. Charlotte gets very nervous and she faints when her mother cuts the cake on the table. This whole instance is not mentioned in the original story, but the director added this scene in the adaptation. Another scene which is not mentioned in the story, but added in the adaptation is that in her room, Charlotte finds a yellow dress in the chest which she thought she was seeing for the first time, but actually belonged to her. Then, her husband tells her that he got her that dress in Rome. There are some more details which is not on the original story, but later added to the movie. For example, in the movie Charlotte's son is actually present she is able to see him and has a set time daily to play with him. In the movie, a doctor examines Charlotte and rips out the pages of her notebook. Also, Charlotte and Jennie seem to become friends and Jennie actually yells at Charlotte's husband John and tells him that he may not always know what is best for Charlotte. Lastly, in the movie a woman, who resembles Charlotte emerges from the yellow wallpaper in her room and kisses Charlotte. Some of these are added to the movie just to expand the length of the movie, and some of them are added to infuse the director's interpretation of the original work to the movie. Also, there can be modifications with the representations of the characters in the movie. For example, in the original story, Charlotte's (narrator's) husband John is genuinely concerned for his wife's well-being, but he unintentionally harms her by adhering to Victorian perceptions of the what a woman requires and the rest cure treatment. His wife is emotionally overwrought, therefore he sincerely believes that she must be confined to her bed and denied any mental stimulation. Charlotte's husband John was portrayed differently in the original story and in the adaptation. In the movie, sometimes her husband was aggressive (if not abusive) towards Charlotte. In the book, he carries her upstairs and lies her on the bed, and sits by her and reads to her, but in the movie we do not witness such a scene. Sometimes, the intended message of the movie's (adaptation) director might be different from that of original story's author. Gilman's initial reason to write the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" was to prove Dr. Weir MItchell's rest cure treatment wrong. For years, she suffered from nervous breakdown and depression, and was put to bed by -one of the best specialists of the time-Dr. Mitchell. According to Dr. Mitchell's treatment, she was supposed to live a domestic life as far as possible, have no more than two hours of intellectual life a day and never touch pen, brush or pencil. Her symptoms worsened after she followed Dr. Mitchell's directions for three months. So, she started to work again, and eventually recovered. To inform other people that this particular treatment did not work and maybe even to make Dr. Mitchell acknowledge that his treatment was not affective, she wrote this story. On the other hand, it is likely that when making the adaptation of the story, John Clive might have intended to give different messages. The adaptation was produced in 1989, ninety years after Gilman wrote her story. That is why, it is very likely that Clive's intention of making an adaptation from Gilman's story was not to prove Dr. Mitchell's treatment wrong; that treatment was not valid in 1989 anyways. Clive's intention could be to draw attention to oppression of women in our society. He might have used Gilman's story because it has certain elements in it, which could help Clive make his points. For example, the whole rest cure treatment in the story was based on oppression of women (who was Charlotte in the story). She was treated like a kid, not taken seriously as if she was subordinate. Although she was going through a depression, she could still tell if her treatment was any good for her or not, but still her opinions did not matter. That is why, in the adaptation Charlotte is portrayed more as a victim of patriarchal oppression.

Well then, the prerequisite says to take the time to 'comment on it' and so mine is just that and not a small review. I saw this when it actually aired in San Francisco in 1989 on Channel 9 (Public Broadcasting System), I think it was a series that was called 'Great Theatre' *Yo, I'm not sure about that* and I THINK, this show was hosted by the late Alistair Cook (I hope I spelled that name correctly)....I consider myself to be a genuinely eclectic kind of a person in my tastes and interests, that's just a fact, for example, I STILL remember enjoying watching The Lawrence Welk Show and at the same time watching the Benny Hill show. Moving right along, I was 20 or 21 years old and I was very intrigued about this drama because it happened to air on a particular day that I was in my apartment/home and checking channels. My memory of the story is vague, just as the thought that suddenly flashed to me in my mind about 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and this International Movie Database but yes I do remember that story takes place in the 19th century England (If I'm wrong please forgive me) was about a woman and she is suffering terribly from some kind of depression and so much so that she begins to actually lose her mind....what I remember so very vividly is that when she finally descends into total madness, I think it was her husband who is returning home who, I think was aware of his wife's condition but not until this point how far she finally let's go....he's searching for her in the house and finally finds her and I share his deep horror, dismay, and nausea when he finally finds her and she is on all fours in a yellow dress(?) and I got to tell you....her appearance raised the tiny hairs on the back of my neck so much so that I too felt extremely, extremely uneasy and alarmed by what I saw....and I was 21 years old.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a Victorian American feminist who is now best known for writing 'Herland' (1915), her self-published novel about an all-female utopian society. 'Herland' (narrated by a male protagonist) could easily have become a male-bashing screed, but Gilman makes her feminist points with satire and wit, and this novel remains impressively readable. A sequel, 'With Her in Ourland', is less effective.Gilman's best and most important work is her 1899 story 'The Yellow Wall-Paper'. by far the best and most convincing fictional depiction of a mental illness ever written to date. Gilman's female protagonist descends into dissociative schizophrenia as a result of her husband's insistence that she avoid all mental stimulation. Pent up in a room wallpapered with an intricate arabesque pattern, the unnamed woman begins to hallucinate. I was not surprised to learn that this story was based on Gilman's own experiences: it is an extremely convincing and harrowing narrative, and - with one exception - 'The Yellow Wall-Paper' is the most frightening horror story I've ever read. ('The Man with the Nose', by Rhoda Broughton, is scarier ... but it's very nearly a tie.)I was eager to view this television dramatisation of 'The Yellow Wall-Paper', partly because the original story is a favourite of mine, but largely because I was curious to see how this material would be adapted for the screen. Gilman's story, in first-person narration, places us inside the mind of the woman descending into madness. This sort of internal drama is difficult to depict visually.The opening teaser for 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (no hyphen in the tv version) features a shot of a woman in a Victorian maid's uniform, with her back to us, on a stark moonlit road. She appears to be running away from us at superhuman speed, her legs contorting wildly. What a wonderful visual image for mounting insanity! 'This will be ace!' I thought, in eager anticipation.In the event, I was somewhat disappointed. This adaptation takes unnecessary liberties with its source material. In Gilman's story, the narrator's husband John is genuinely concerned for his wife's well-being, but he unintentionally harms her by adhering to Victorian perceptions of what a woman requires. His wife is emotionally overwrought, therefore he sincerely believes that (for her own good) she must be confined to her bed and denied any mental stimulation. In this tele-version, the husband is openly abusive to his wife. This change (not an improvement!) may have been a PC attempt to impress upon modern viewers that John's wife is a victim of patriarchal oppression. Anyway, it doesn't work.The distraught wife - now named Charlotte, a clear reference to the author - becomes obsessed with the labyrinthine pattern in her bedroom's wallpaper. This dramatisation uses voice-over narration to convey that fact, but fails to dramatise it. There's one disturbing moment when the camera pans along the wallpaper, and suddenly a pair of female eyes open in the surface of the wall.The household has a maidservant (Annie Gurney) who commutes homeward by bicycle each evening. This character contributes nothing to the action except to serve as a visual device to mark the passage of Charlotte's days. Director John Clive keeps showing this bicyclist from different angles, pointlessly. I was disappointed to realise that the 'running' woman whom I had seen in the teaser was actually this maidservant, pedalling at a rapid speed directly away from the camera astride a bicycle I'd failed to notice the first time round.This television dramatisation is in every way inferior to Gilman's brilliant story, but the original material is so strong that its merits shine through here anyway, and this tv film remains quite powerful. I'll rate 'The Yellow Wallpaper' 8 out of 10. But, for a really good scare, you'll do better to read the original story ... one of the most frightening horror yarns ever conceived.

The original short story was, indeed, to inform women that not all medical care of the era was helpful. The story was formed out of her (Gilman's) own personal experiences. In Gilman's original work, John is eccentric, yes; He is a stickler for structure. But he is not as cruel in the story as he is portrayed in the film. The scene where he takes her upstairs and forces himself upon her in the film? In the book, he carries her upstairs and sings her to sleep. Yes, the film does have vague feminist tones, but not nearly to the degree of the film. The sick twisting of John into an arrogant, careless doctor from a confused husband who tries his best to help is very unprofessional.John sincerely wishes to help his wife in Gilman's original storyline; he does everything in his power to do so, using the best medical techniques of his time. The focus is on the fault in the techniques of medicine, not the fault of the man.