Ken Russell's film version of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love is a love's labor's lost: much attention is paid to the letter and spirit of the original, yet the film accentuates the novel's weaknesses and doesn't suggest many of its (admittedly linear) riches and strengths. This film is a serious attempt at "art," for no exchange of dialogue is free from the burden of love, death, sex, or interpersonal relationships….

Women in Love, as a film, achieves a gritty documentary-like authenticity when it explores the social milieu of the lower classes. The envious glances of bedraggled coalgathers at the clothing of the Brangwen sisters; the grimy-faced occupants of the street car, who form a silent defeated backdrop to the dialogue capture in sheerly plastic terms Lawrence's quality of felt life. (p. 1)

The wealth of Lawrencian natural symbols, which serves more than anything else to vivify theme in...