The Virgin and the Gypsy

If casting were everything, this sensitive adaptation of DH Lawrence's novella would rate very high indeed: Joanna Shimkus is painfully convincing as the clergyman's virginal daughter trembling on the brink of womanhood when she falls for the smouldering sexual magnetism of gypsy Franco Nero. Despite Alan Plater's faithful screenplay, however, Miles' direction tends too much towards the pictorial, lacking the visual brio that brought Ken Russell's Women in Love so much closer to the dark, physical essence of Lawrence's writing. Miles later directed the turgid Lawrence biopic, Priest of Love.