Dulcima

Dulcima Gaskain (Carol White) is the oldest daughter of a large, poor Gloucestershire farming family. Rescuing a drunken farmer, Mr Parker (John Mills) who has fallen and cut his head, she discovers his hat is stuffed with cash, and inveigles him to hire her as a housekeeper by voluntarily cleaning his filthy, chicken-ridden house. Her motivation is partly to escape her tyrannical father (Bernard Lee) and mother, who treat her as a skivvy and unpaid child-minder and verbally abuse her.

Parker's sexual interest in Dulcima deepens after she arrives for work in a revealing outfit. A widower, he invites her to become his live-in housekeeper. Dulcima accepts but keeps him at arm's length by creating a fictitious boyfriend, 'Albert', inspired by a male model she has seen in a magazine.

Showing off, Parker introduces Dulcima to his crooked dealings at the local livestock auction. As her employment continues he neglects to pay her. She however keeps a careful tally of money he owes her. The relationship becomes one of mutual deceit as well as mutual convenience.

Parker tries to spy on Dulcima as she bathes, and later invites her to join him for a beer in the parlour, but she excuses herself. Now knowing that he has a lot of cash stowed away, she begins to coquettishly encourage his increasingly lustful interest, from time to time reminding him he owes her wages, but he always deflects the demand.

Dulcima meets Ashby, a young gamekeeper who resembles 'Albert' her fantasy boyfriend (both are played by Stuart Wilson). When Parker spots Ashby rounding up pheasants which have strayed onto his farm he fears that 'Albert' is spying on him and Dulcima. She plays on this jealousy and paranoia.

To try to get Parker to pay her what she is owed she pretends to be packing to leave. Panicked at this prospect, Parker offers to pay, and she claims £40 rather than the £20 or so she is really entitled to. Parker agrees but tries to trick her with only £15. This payment is explicitly linked with her letting him sleep with her (she later takes the £25 shortfall from his secret cash tin). Thereafter there are several dialogue references to sexual favours as 'little extras' that must be paid for−. She spends money on fashionable clothes, make-up and shoes; Parker is impressed by her transformation and begins to lessen his miserliness.

Dulcima goes to visit Ashby. They are clearly interested in each other.

Parker decides to ask Dulcima to marry him but having met Ashby she asks for time to consider. In attempts to persuade her Parker buys a TV set so that they will have something to do on winters evenings when they are married, and 'reveals' the hoard of cash she already knows about.

In town, we see Parker untypically cheerful and benevolent at the market while Dulcima spots Ashby there and purposely gets the same bus home as he does. That evening, Parker has bought himself a new suit and a wedding dress for Dulcima but, distracted, she doesn't unbox it, instead telling Parker she is going out to visit her family. Suspicious, he follows her and sees her meet Ashby in a field, kiss him and head off toward his house (Parker still thinks this is "Albert"). Ashby and Dulcima go dancing. Parker gets drunk and becomes violent and abusive when she returns. She says she will leave in the morning and locks herself in her room. Parker smashes the living room furniture, including the new TV, and tears up the unwanted wedding dress, then remorsefully pleads forgiveness through her locked bedroom door. She remains silent.

In the final scene Dulcima next morning sees Ashby come into the farmyard through her bedroom window. Coming downstairs she finds both the ruined wedding dress and a wedding ring in a box. There is no sign of Parker. Joining Ashby outside, she tearfully tells him she cannot go with him as she is too worried about Parker. Before Ashby can react, Parker shoots him dead from an attic window.

Throughout the film, Duclima never calls the farmer anything other than 'Mr Parker', even after he has proposed to her.

• Carol White as Dulcima Gaskain
• John Mills as Mr. Parker
• Stuart Wilson as Ashby the gamekeeper and as the male model in a knitting pattern advertisement
• Bernard Lee as Dulcima's father
• Sheila Raynor as Dulcima's mother
• Dudley Foster as Symes, Parker's partner-in-crime at the livestock auction
• Cyril Cross as Harris

The story was taken from a novella of the same name by H. E. Bates which was published in the 1954 collection The Nature of Love.[2]

The Canadian television film Dulcima (1969) was based on the same novella, with the setting transferred to a small town in Ontario.[3]

In 1969, Bryan Forbes was appointed head of production at EMI Films. He read a copy of the script and asked John Mills to stay and Nesbitt to direct.[4] Dulcima was announced as part of his initial slate of productions with John Mills and Frank Nesbitt attached from the beginning.[5][6] Nesbitt had directed a number of documentaries, written scripts, directed two dramatic features, and worked as an assistant director but this was his first important feature as director.[7]

Filming started in June 1970.[8] The bulk of the movie was shot on location on a farm, over the summer in and around Minchinhampton and Tetbury in Gloucestershire.[9] Shooting was plagued by rain.[10]

"It's a fabulous part, one of the best I've ever had," said Mills.[11] Carol White called Mills "one of my all-time favourite actors" and prior to filming "spent hours each day going over my part and even studied the scenes that I wasn't in. It was a heavy going romantic drama and, with a script steeped in the Cotswolds’ dialect, it wasn’t an easy part. But by the time filming commenced, I had found my way into the heart of the character; the lines all filed into place and had started to feel whole again."[12]

Bryan Forbes later wrote "Frank was another young director starting out on a career and again I felt he showed great promise in his handling of this melodramatic, bucolic tale, shot entirely on location. But as with And Soon the Darkness [another film Forbes greenlit at EMI], the cinema and distribution arms of the company showed no great enthusiasm for either film. Purely from a commercial standpoint it seemed an irresponsible waste of the shareholders’ money. Properly marketed with a little imagination and given a chance to succeed, their fate could have been quite different."[13]

The film was the British entry at the Berlin Film Festival in June 1971 where it was reviewed by Daily Telegraph's movie critic, who felt Mills was miscasts.[14] The Guardian called it "a kind of reverse Lady Chatterley's Lover" which was "competently, if boringly made."[15] It was eventually released in British cinemas in April 1972. Reviewing it again the Daily Telegraph called it "an entirely honorable failure."[16] Sight and Sound said "the script swerves uncertainly between women’s mag sentimentalism and brooding tragedy, and the prettiness of the locations does much to dissipate both moods."[17]

Filmink later wrote "Dulcima, like Hoffman, was an inexpensive drama, which had been previously filmed for TV about a horny older man going for a younger woman... Also, like Hoffman it was a “small target film” i.e. where everything has to come off for it to work (script, casting, handling). Also, like Hoffman I don’t think it does and no one went to see it... for the life of me I can’t imagine why Forbes wanted to make one drama about a creepy middle aged man who chases after young girl let alone two. Sure, it’s cheap but does anyone like that story ever, unless it’s in the form of a thriller or a horror where we identify with the girl? And it’s not as though EMI had that much competition for story material in 1969 – were there no other scripts available?"[18]

White later wrote that Dulcima "was a good film, like many good films, but it still lacked the magic ingredient that made those reels of celluloid. into cinema history."[19] Mills' biographer argued "the story suffered from neither relationship being believable; nor did the two young actors have the weight to carry the abrupt and melodramatic climax which was straight out of a Victorian novel... What Dulcima really needed was a French treatment by Marcel Pagnol and a director like Claude Berri of Jean de Florette fame."[20]

In 1982 Nica Burns adapted the show for the stage.[21]

• White, Carol (1982). Carol comes home. New English Library.

• Dulcima at IMDb
• Dulcima at Letterbox DVD
• Dulcima at BFI
• Dulcima at TCMDB