Inspired by Sons and Lovers

Many filmgoers encountered the work of D. H. Lawrence for the first time in director Jack Cardiff’s 1960 adaptation of the author’s semi-autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers. The film visually captures the contrast between a coal-mining backwater and London, where Paul Morel, played sensitively by a young Dean Stockwell, yearns to go. The screenplay maintains Lawrence’s subtlety as well as memorable dialogue, and two of the actors earned Oscar nominations for their powerful performances: Trevor Howard for his portrayal of Paul’s hard-drinking, oppressive father, and Mary Ure for her role as Paul’s lover, Clara Dawes. Sons and Lovers was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it won for black-and-white cinematography.

Lawrence proved to be an inspiration to his longtime correspondent and travel companion, the author and scientist Aldous Huxley, who wrote several portraits of Lawrence. These include a vitriolic sketch in his short story “Two or Three Graces,” and a more sympathetic one in his novel Point Counter Point (1928), in the figure of Mark Rampion. In Brave New World (1932), Huxley’s character John the Savage is based on Lawrence, and part of the novel is set in surroundings based on Taos, New Mexico, where Huxley visited Lawrence.

The works of D. H. Lawrence are sometimes associated with the “free love” sensibility of the 1960s, when the author’s works became enormously popular, but that association would have shocked Lawrence. He was a strict moralist and did not intend for his explicit language and sexual content to encourage or even suggest sexual freedom. Indeed, Lawrence was high-minded about sex. When performed with reverence, he believed, the sexual act connects one with spiritual mysteries and the natural powers of the universe.