Film

Far from the Madding Crowd

Name: Far from the Madding Crowd
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Released: 1967
Cast: Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Alan Bates, Peter Finch, Fiona Walker

Other titles called Far from the Madding Crowd: the 2015 film.

John Schlesinger's 1967 adaptation of Hardy's novel is a sumptuous rural romance where a brilliant, restless young woman inherits a farm and navigates the desires of three very different men. Julie Christie commands every scene with intelligence and mischief. It's lush, intelligent, often funny, deeply felt—a genuine masterpiece that treats its heroine as the centre of her own story.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love slow-burning rural romances where the pleasure lies in sharp, witty exchanges between proud people and the wide, weathered Wessex landscape around them.

Skip it if you want brisk storytelling; at nearly three hours, with long pastoral stretches and a formal, stagey rhythm, it can feel like a very long wait for the next scene.

What it asks of you: Patience above all: it unfolds at an unhurried, almost leisurely pace across a long runtime, and it wants you to settle into its characters' pride and hesitations rather than race ahead of them.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Age of Innocence1993

Scorsese brings the same visual grandeur and moral complexity to Wharton's constrained New York society. A woman trapped between passion and propriety, devastating in its quiet way. Purely magnificent.

But At nearly three hours and emotionally glacial, it demands patience. The restraint is the point, but that doesn't make it easy.

Tess1979

Polanski's adaptation of another Hardy novel with the same wounded intensity. Nastassja Kinski is unforgettable. It shares Far from the Madding Crowd's sense of fate, injustice, and a woman undone by circumstance and men.

But It is genuinely bleak. Where Bathsheba endures and chooses, Tess is crushed. The ending will wreck you.

Middlemarch1994

BBC miniseries of George Eliot's sprawling novel about desire, ambition, and thwarted women in provincial England. The same period, the same moral intelligence, the same refusal to judge its characters.

But Six hours across four episodes, and very much a television adaptation of its era. Pacing is glacial by modern standards.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Far from the Madding Crowd

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both are about a woman whose selfhood is unstable, and whose power lies in her refusal to be pinned down by the men who desire her. Both are about performance and authenticity.

Lynch's film is obsessed with the same question: who is Bathsheba Everdene? A woman who performs identity, who may not know who she is, who is destroyed and remade by desire. It's a fever dream version of the same story—fragmented, sexual, modern.

But Non-linear, deliberately obscure, and often genuinely difficult. It rewards obsessive re-watching but actively punishes passive viewing.

The Piano1993

Jane Campion's film about a woman's fierce independence and sensuality, set against landscape and male will. Ada is Bathsheba's spiritual descendant—brilliant, stubborn, and unwilling to be possessed.

But Sexually explicit and psychologically dark in ways that will alienate some viewers. It's a fever dream, not a comfort.

Brideshead Revisited2008

Waugh's exquisite tragedy of desire, class, and the past. Jeremy Irons and Matthew Goode navigate impossible longing with heartbreaking grace. The 1981 TV serial is even better, but this film version is beautiful.

But The 2008 film streamlines the novel and can feel slight. The miniseries is the superior version, and it takes eleven hours.

The Return of the Native1994

Another Hardy adaptation with the same obsessive fatalism and landscape as character. Ray Stevenson and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a doomed love story on Egdon Heath. Grim and gorgeous.

But It is extremely plot-heavy and the BBC TV movie format can feel cramped. Not as visually striking as Schlesinger's film.

Sense and Sensibility1995

Ang Lee's Austen adaptation with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Like Far from the Madding Crowd, it balances wit with genuine feeling, and treats its female characters with real depth.

But More comedy than passion. If you want the sexual voltage Bathsheba has, Austen simply doesn't have it.

The Duchess2008

Keira Knightley as Georgiana Spencer, a brilliant woman trapped by marriage and expectation. The sexual politics are clearer and crueller than Hardy, but the theme of female autonomy destroyed is the same.

But Visually gorgeous but emotionally distant. It lacks the warmth and humour that make Far from the Madding Crowd complex.

The Piano Teacher2001

Both centre on a woman whose sexual agency is the crux of the story, but Haneke explores the psychological cost of that agency in the modern world, where Schlesinger treated it as romantic possibility.

Haneke's devastating Austrian film about Isabelle Huppert's repressed musician and her descent into sexual and emotional chaos. It inverts Far from the Madding Crowd—instead of a woman choosing between men, here desire itself becomes a weapon and a wound. Brutally intelligent.

But Sexually explicit and psychologically abusive. It is bleak in a way that offers no comfort. Some viewers will find it unwatchable.

Stalker1979

Both use landscape as a moral force, and both suggest that the self is not fixed but constantly remade by circumstance and choice. Both are about the gap between what we want and who we are.

Tarkovsky's science-fiction film about desire, choice, and the human soul in a landscape that feels almost alive. Like Far from the Madding Crowd, it moves slowly, it trusts image over plot, and it's fundamentally about whether we know what we want. Philosophical rather than narrative.

But 163 minutes, in Russian, with long takes of empty corridors and grass growing. It is visually monotonous by design. Most viewers will find it genuinely tedious.