Over Christmas, I was thoroughly engaged by I Capture The Castle on BBC2. This film came out in 2003 and I must admit that it passed me by. The film stars the then newcomer Romola Garai (who I knew as Zoe from Attachments) as Cassandra as well as Tara Fitzgerald and Bill Nighy. I loved it.
So I was in my local Ottakers a couple of weekends ago, and the Dodie Smith novel was in the staff recommendations case. (I’m led to believe that certain bookshops now “specify” the books that their staff should recommend. Surely not?)
The first thing to note is that the film is an exceptionally accurate reading of the book. No important plot point is missed and I didn’t recall any changes. The book is completely told from the point of Cassandra and is broken into “books” that represent her exercise books as she fills them. The introduction to the book, which of course I left until I’d finished it, talks of all the writers who’ve been inspired by this novel, and if I’d read it aged 14, I think I would have been too.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it – I did enormously. It was thoroughly charming and well worth reading.
Incidentally I had no idea that Dodie Smith wrote One Hundred and One Dalmations, the work for which she’s best known. Of course given my sometimes irrational hatred of all things Disney (with the exceptions of Fantasia and the Jungle Book), I’m not quite as familiar as some. But there always seems to be a documentary about her on BBC Four which I completely fail to watch.