8 - Delivering Posthumous Messages : Katherine Mansfield and Letters in the Literary Biopic Leave All Fair (John Reid, 1985)

Summary

Abstract

John Reid's Leave All Fair (1985) addresses the controversial posthumous editing of the letters of Katherine Mansfield. It is a new kind of literary biopic that relies upon epistolary themes and structures, to present a dialogic depiction of Mansfield's characteristic of letter writing. Letters are often shown in flashback, creating an alternative discourse from Mansfield's perspective. Meaning ultimately hinges upon whose Mansfield is invoked in the letters and journal entries. If we view the film as modelling the writer–reader relationship, Mansfield's ambiguous last letter has three different readers, who perform the film's dialogism. Although the editors misrepresent the absent Mansfield, a feminist reading of her epistolarium allows her voice to be re-presented, qualifying this as a feminist or post-feminist biopic.

Keywords: literary biopic; literary film; epistolarium; dialogism; temporal polyvalence; feminism

New Zealand director John Reid's Leave All Fair (1985) is a film that uses letters and journal entries to deliver its messages concerning the ethics of posthumous editing, when letters and journals preserve the legacy of a writer. The writer in question is New Zealander Katherine Mansfield (Jane Birkin), famous for her modernist short stories. Mansfield's husband and editor, John Middleton Murry (John Gielgud), is asked to approve a collected edition of her letters and journals three decades after her death from tuberculosis in Fontainebleau, 1923. This request leads to a flashback narrative that begins with Murry delivering a speech at the launch of the edition. The plot is complicated and thus worth outlining from the start. We see Murry seated at his desk, identifying what the film calls Mansfield's ‘last letter’ – in which she gives Murry contradictory advice about editing her work – with her enduring presence. After an argument between fictitious French editor, André de Sarry (Féodor Atkine), and Mansfield's fictitious feminist double, New Zealander Marie Taylor (also Jane Birkin), we see Murry re-reading the last letter, while being driven to De Sarry's estate. This footage is intercut with flashbacks to Mansfield writing it. Subsequent episodes show Murry meeting De Sarry; watching Taylor's play rehearsal; meeting Taylor in a café, and Taylor arguing with De Sarry about his and Murry's sexist attitudes towards Mansfield. Taylor and Murry discuss Mansfield while visiting an island and De Sarry's family chateau.