Review of The Chatterley Affair (2006) by Edith N — 06 Aug 2007

In 1960, [i]Lady Chatterley's Lover[/i] was the subject of an obscenity trial. The question was whether the literary merit of the book outweighed the sexual nature of the story and the explicit nature of some of the scenes. The prosecution called no witnesses; it might be guessed that he lost the case when he demanded to know if it were the sort of book that the jury would want their "wives and servants" to read. (There were three women on the jury.) That was in his opening statement.

The movie is based on trial testimony with an invented jury and its invented lives thrown in. However, it is my understanding that all the words spoken in the trial are taken from the record. We get to hear good ol' Doctor Who--or Barty Crouch, or Casanova, if you'd rather--tell us that the book is Puritanical, for a strict definition of Puritanical. Over and over, defense witnesses step up and call the book moral.

Meanwhile, two of the jurors are having an affair, leading to the question of how much the book is to blame.

Interestingly, the [i]Lady Chatterley[/i] case is one of the first in which the jury was actually required to read the relevant book. The law held that it was the entire text, not just individual patterns, which must be considered. Therefore, the defense argued, the whole book must be read. The judge agreed.

I've studied a lot about censorship, and [i]Lady Chatterley[/i] was a major case on two continents--possibly three; I'm not over-clear about Australian jurisprudence on the subject. The question is asked, late in the film, if the two World Wars were fought for the right to read dirty books. Leaving aside the arguments about the dirty nature of the books, if any, I consider the answer to be [i]yes[/i]. To read any blessed books we want to, and not have any thrown on the bonfire.