A Doll's House

Here we are no longer in the realm of a play brought to the screen with marginal concessions, as was the case with Patrick Garland's version, but in that of film. Losey has deliberately cooled the 'dramatic' confrontations of the play, and drawn them out so that they form a complex emotional tapestry against which his superb floating camera movements, his ominous shots of skating figures and his long vistas through ornate rooms, serve to diffuse the spotlight from Nora herself to those around her. Her husband, as played by Warner, is no longer the dry pedant of Garland's version; he ends up less dismissable, and therefore more dangerous. By, in a sense, playing devil's advocate to Fonda's Nora, Losey has assured her feminist metamorphosis a strength (helped by echoes of the actress' own evolution) not found in a simple interpretation. Both versions are worth seeing, but this one shades it.