1
Based on the best-selling classic novel by R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone is a poetic, romantic, and adventurous tale of forbidden love, compassion, and the strength that spans the gulf of hatred to find one man's soul. The tale begins on a somber note. There is trouble in the wind for England, as with the King's death, there will be a dispute over whom is to rule the crown, his heir or illegitimate son. However, this tension does not reach into the countryside, where much more prominent issues are pressing upon the nobility and peasant alike… namely, a band of notorious and brutal outlaws made up of the Doone family. Once noble and possessive of great lands and titles, they are now reduced to pillaging and thievery to satisfy their voracious appetites. And when one young boy's father is murdered in cold blood by Carver, the heir to the ring of cruelty and bloodshed, the lad, John Ridd, swears revenge.
Now laden with the responsibilities of manhood, John strives to provide for his family, and in doing so encounters a dark-haired and mysterious girl named Lorna. Their brief but sweet encounter leaves a lasting impression, even through the years, until one day, John decides to seek her out once more. She is reluctant in his company, but he is persistent, until she reveals the reason for her apprehension… namely, that she is a Doone, and sought by Carver as his wife. John's hatred for the family drives him away, but he finds himself strangely drawn back again, and what follows is a sweet romance. However, all is not well in the Doone Valley. Carver finds Lorna sufficient of age, and demands that they be married as soon as possible. His grandfather, and Lorna's guardian, puts off the match, somehow hoping that she will find love and not lust in marriage.
But Carver is not to be dismissed, and knows that when Sir Ensor dies, there will be nothing to stop his marriage to Lorna. In the meantime, John's uncle has been beaten, flogged and robbed by the Doones, and seeks revenge. John, as the witness and provider for the family, is called away to London without warning, and must find a chink in the cruel hearts of British leadership. But his stay may be longer than he’d thought, and Lorna's defender is on his deathbed. What will emerge from this nest of passions and deceptions is an astonishing and somehow bewitching story of courage, family, and love with only a few minor caltrops that line the way.
The romance between John and Lorna is a pure one, kept to a couple of passionate kisses. Carver's intentions are not so chaste, and he makes that plain. His obsession goes too far, but he never once misuses her, save for a forced kiss and veiled threat. A highwayman-turned-honest flirts with John's younger sister, and John confronts him, saying that she is not “some barmaid to be seduced and left by the roadway,” but the man's intentions are honorable, and they are happily married soon thereafter. John is faithful to Lorna even when a twist of fate pulls them temporarily apart. Language is extremely minimal, with one or two inappropriate uses of “God,” and several of “d*mn.”
Violence, however, is prevalent, and although the film is rated TVPG (available through A&E home video), I would press it into the PG-13 criteria. There are several violent and implied battles (with very little blood), fistfights, and a scene in which John is forced to travel through a battlefield strewn with bodies. (A bloodied stump is shown, but makes up the worst of the gore.) The Doones attack the farm in order to regain Lorna, and struggle with some of the women. Several people are shot and/or threatened by gunpoint at close range, and Carver is once quite rough with Lorna. A character commits suicide by allowing himself to drown in a bog. A beheading is also made apparent, although we merely see the man being lead up to the platform, and then the sound of an axe coming down. (Wealthy socialites in London also cheer as traitors are pronounced to be “hung,” or “beheaded.”)
Moral values are highly praised in this film. Lorna stops John from killing Carver early in the film by telling him that he would be the same as Carver—a cold-blooded murderer. John's compassion is shown again later, when he attempts to save one of his enemies from the bog. However, he is not afraid to stand up for what he believes, and fights against the Doones when threatened. Sex is never implied, nor is impropriety, and even Carver passes up other women for his obsession with having Lorna. The bad guys are bad, the good guys are good, and each side is clearly defined; no shades of gray, but blunt and point lessons of honesty and truth are driven home. The acting is excellent, the quality surprising for the BBC, and the cast explosive and charismatic on-screen, especially eighteen-year-old Amelia Warner in the title role.
It is a pity that God was never mentioned as Lord and Savior in a story so full of unexpected twists and turns, gorgeous costuming, breathtaking landscape, and spine-tingling suspense, but as it stands, Lorna Doone is a surprisingly good—and surprisingly clean—feast for the eyes.
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I N Exmoor, in the county of Somerset, in the year of grace 1661, dwelt the outlawed Doones, who, huge and brutal, defied king and common, committed brazen robberies with impunity, and took refuge after every outrage in the well-nigh impregnable Glen Doone. On the near-by farm of Plover's Barrows dwelt John Ridd, a great-limbed lad who had been summoned home from boarding-school in his teens to learn that his father, a wealthy farmer, had been slain in a night raid by the Doones. John, blunt and honest, was kind to his mother and his two sisters, did his share of the farm-work, and, as he grew to manhood, learned to ride a horse and shoot a blunderbuss with unfailing skill.
One day, while yet a boy, his fishing excursions in Bagworthy Water led him to discover an entrance to Glen Doone, so secret, so re-mote that the robber band stationed no guard there, never dreaming that living soul would discover it. Following a little cascade, John emerged at last into a dell blooming with primroses, and beheld with amazement a beautiful child of eight with hair like a black shower and eyes full of pity and wonder. Her name (pretty, like herself) was Lorna Doone, and John often had her in his thoughts through the six years which followed. He was twenty then and Lorna fourteen, and already John Ridd knew that he loved her, that fate had decreed it so and that all the world was naught when weighed against this girl.
To be found in Doone Valley spelled death for any man, but the thought of Lorna, "light and white, nimble, smooth, and elegant," filled John with yearning and lured him to the hazard. Again and again he sought the maid in the primrose bower above the cascade, and then one afternoon in the splendor of an April sunset John once more threw down the gauntlet which love ever casts 'at danger. To Lorna's tremulous, "You are mad to come; they will kill you if they find you here," John smiled and thought her fairer than the primroses amid which she stood. She lived in constant fear, she confessed, for the gigantic and passionate Carver Doone openly paid her homage and glowered with jealous eyes at any man who durst cast a glance at her.
"I care naught for him or his jealousy," cried John Ridd. "I have loved you long, as child, as comely girl, and now as full-grown maiden. I love you more than tongue can tell or heart can hold in silence." Lorna raised her glorious eyes and, flinging her arms about his neck, cried, with her heart on his : "Darling, I shall never be my own again. I am yours forever and forever." But before he went she was in tears. "How dare I dream of love? Something in my heart tells me it can never be."
That fear of his beloved's spurred John to penetrate into Glen Doone one night at the risk of his life for word of Lorna. Once a guard leveled his gun at him, but went off cringing at the thought that, after all, so huge a form could be only that of Carver Doone.
It was a real danger which threatened Lorna, for old Sir Ensor Doone, head "of the robber crew, lay dying, and he alone had been her protector against the brutal Carver.
For John to play a desperate game and carry Lorna off would but incite the Doones to wreak revenge upon the countryside with fire and sword. At times he swore to smoke out this nest of rascals, but the timid farmers, overawed by their savagery, would promise no support.
Meanwhile an unparalleled winter had set in. Day after day the snow fell steadily and, blown by the wind, almost smothered the low-eaved cottages. Desperate for some word of Lorna, John made his way on snowshoes into the very heart of Glen Doone, unobserved in that feathery fog. John found Lorna's hamlet, stifled her exclamations of surprise with kisses, and felt his heart swell with anger on learning that she and her maid, Gwenny Carfax, were kept in confinement and deprived of food by order of Carver Doone until Lorna should consent to be his wife. Not for naught was John Ridd a giant-and in love. Throwing discretion to the winds, he carried Lorna and Gwenny away upon his sledge that very night to the warm refuge of his mother's fireside.
The Doones, though so openly set at de-fiance, bided their time. With spring the roads were open, and one moonlight night, with an arrogance worthy of Carver, they attacked Plover's Barrows in force. John Ridd, nothing daunted, defended his fireside and loved ones with spirit, meeting the attackers squarely with a handful of men and putting them to speedy flight. A murderous attack by the Doones was bad business enough, but to John's honest soul a worse trouble followed.
His Lorna was discovered to be no true Doone, but the niece of the great Lord Dugal, kidnapped as a child. To London and the protection of her noble uncle she was summoned, her heart as well as her lover's torn by the separation. The thought that he might never again behold his Lorna plunged him into misery.
"After all," he asked himself, "who am I but a simple farmer who dares lift his eyes to the niece of an earl?"
But this was no time for repining, for the ill-starred rebellion of Monmouth flamed out, catching John Ridd, innocent though he was, in its toils. But all came to a happy issue when John, summoned to London, frustrated the intended murder of Lord Dugal, captured the attackers, and turned them over for punishment to the terrible Lord Jeffreys.
Events moved swiftly: his exploit made Lon-don ring, he was knighted by King James, and when the Earl of Dugal died soon after, a well-directed bribe secured Jeffreys's per-mission to let Lorna, his ward in Chancery, wed the redoubtable Sir John Ridd.
Back to Exmoor and Plover's Barrows went John Ridd, knight, to lead the farmers of the countryside, who, infuriated by a new outrage committed by the Doones, took the law into their own hands and swept the robber stronghold clean with fire and sword. Only the scheming old "Counselor" and his son, the brutal Carver, escaped a bloody death.
Now at last the great day dawned for John and Lorna, and they made their way to the little country church to be wed, while all the neighboring farmers came to applaud the event. Scarcely were the sacred words pronounced when a shot rang through the church and Lorna, her dark eyes drooping, her wedding-gown stained with blood, sank into her husband's arms. John Ridd never forgot the agony of that moment and yet he seemed strangely calm. Only Carver Doone could have done this dastardly deed, and as John dashed off in hot pursuit he swore that the world was too narrow a place to harbor him and his enemy another day. For Carver on his jaded horse there was no escape. His pistol missed fire, and' at last in a narrow de-file flanked by a wood and a stretch of bog the two men came to grips. They spoke little and that grim duel was fought with neither knife nor pistol, but body to body as became two giants.
John felt a lower rib crack beneath Carver's terrible embrace, but his iron hand ripped the muscles of his assailant's arm from the bone like an orange pulp and he flung him, crushed and bleeding, upon the ground. In an instant the black lips of the bog fastened upon Carver's huge limbs, swiftly, silently, and John Ridd had scarce time to get his own feet upon firm soil before his enemy was sucked down into those grim depths, his face distorted with agony, but his quivering lips uttering no sound.
Love's true course does not always run awry and both John and Lorna recovered, he to worship her and she to assure him through the serene years with eyes and lips all eloquent, "I love you, John Ridd."
3
Lorna Doone" is a good picture, although there are no particularly outstanding situations in the plot: it contains nothing that other good pictures do not possess. But because the plot has been founded on so well-known a book, by so famous an author as R.D. Blackmore, it should give far better satisfaction than pictures of similar quality that are based on an original scenario; people become fascinated in seeing the characters of a book they love take flesh and blood, and in going over situations they have visualized.
The story unfolds in the days of English Knighthood and banditry, and deals with a heroine, the King's ward, who, while traveling with her mother, is stolen by bandits. She was then a mere child. She is reared by the bandit leader who, as the years go by, feels more and more affection for her. She accidentally comes upon the hero, a peasant, with whom she had become acquainted in her childhood days, and whom she had never forgotten. The hero eventually rescues her from the hands of the bandits, one of whom was bent upon marrying her. When messengers from the King come to take the heroine away, for the first time it becomes known to the hero that the girl he loves is of Royal blood. But, toward the end, the heroine renounces her titles and follows the dictates of her heart.
4
f we might venture to use commercial language in connection with wares so fragile, we should be disposed to say that, at this moment, novels are dull. The fact is not unusual in a literary sense, but the season seems to be so unusually unpropitious, that we find ourselves concentrating our attention upon a novel which is not new, which has somehow managed to get through its first three-volume stage without attracting any particular notice, but which now, in a cheap edition, has mysteriously asserted itself and taken the world by storm. 'Lorna Doone' has several disadvantages that might s well discourage the ordinary reader. It is very long, it is historical, and it is extremely minute in all its details. Something of the elaboration of a child's story of country-life — its love of details simply as details, its narrative of every walk taken, and every change of season — encumbers the tale; but all these details, or almost all, contribute to the making up of so wonderfully harmonious and real a whole, that its historical date is lost in the truth of its actual life, and we cease to be conscious that there is anything antiquarian in the manners depicted.
The historical novel proper is seldom a very satisfactory production; but there is more than one way by which its disadvantages can be neutralised. One of these methods of making an old-world tale as real to us as if it had happened in our midst, Thackeray has made use of in the story of 'Esmond,' the skill of which is simply extraordinary. It is an unpleasant story, but the workmanship is so exquisite that we can but stand and gaze at it in wonder. It has the air of a book written not in this but the previous century. The present, no doubt, intrudes into it by moments; but as a whole it reads as the sketches of the 'Spectator' read — like a book really belonging to the period it describes. The charm of 'Lorna Doone' is not of this kind. The scene is laid in wild Exmoor, in that dreary period of history which embraces the end of Charles II's reign, and the beginning of his unfortunate brother's — as unattractive an age as can be imagined. But there is no antiquarianism about it. "Why, here arc men with helmets!" we heard a reader say, looking with visible dismay at the frontispiece. But the fact is, the men in helmets occupy so little space in the story, and the life, of the farmhouse in which the scene is laid is so entirely simple and true, that one forgets it is not of one's own age. Perhaps, for anything we can tell, people live at the present day in Exmoor as people lived in the days of Great John, otherwise Grit Jan, Ridd. There seems no particular reason why it should not be so; for it is a real life that is set before us — not certain tricks of manner which pass away, but an absolute living, such as changes but little from century to century. Even the melodrama with which the book is full comes natural. We may here and there make a faint objection to it, as in the case of the villain of the piece, who is a very big and a very black villain indeed; but there is nothing him which strikes us, as monstrous in the existence of the robber clan in the midst of these wild and peaceful solitudes.
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本书是英国作家R·D·布莱克莫尔的一部畅销小说。该书以英国历史上的一个动荡时代为背景，即十七世纪末詹姆斯二世与蒙茅斯公爵之间为争夺王位而发生的一场内战，叙述了男主人公约翰·里德与洛娜·杜恩之间历经患难而终成眷属的爱情故事。情节细腻、动人。本书是小说的英文简写本，所用英语词汇1800个。汉语译文忠实、流畅，表达丰富。