Marianne Dreams

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Film critic Roger Ebert gave Paperhouse four stars out of four and called it "a film in which every image has been distilled to the point of almost frightening simplicity" and ended by saying "this is not a movie to be measured and weighed and plumbed, but to be surrendered to." [3] In comparison to what is shown today this was truly terrifying, and very imaginative. I've never read the book though.

Musty Books: “Marianne Dreams” by Catherine Storr (1958) Musty Books: “Marianne Dreams” by Catherine Storr (1958)

And Paperhouse is, as you said, a relatively loose adaptation, with the major difference being a prominent storyline about the main character’s family. And she’s called Anna in the film. There’s a force in this place. You felt it in the cold wind and now it is in them. It pulls at you, pulls all the energy. I think it would pull the light from the sky if it could.’ SPOILER ALERT: don’t read the following if you intend reading the book or watching the TV adaptation.] Such is the quandary at the heart of Marianne Dreams. When the lively, imaginative Marianne falls suddenly ill on her tenth birthday with a curiously unspecified malady, she is confined to bed: potentially for several months. And her freewheeling lifestyle of riding lessons and slap-up feasts is transformed instantly into a claustrophobic existence of inactive misery; her world reduced to the toys and books that surround her, and the visits of three central adults: her mother, her doctor, and hired-in private tutor Miss Chesterfield. Adam: The father is almost notably absent, I’d say, in Marianne Dreams. He’s mentioned maybe twice, but very much isn’t present, interestingly. So I thought that the film maybe reflected that by having the father not present, and being away for his work.Maybe Marianne is travelling to another planet, or to the underworld where the dead are, or to purgatory, or a parallel excistence? The narrative doesn’t rule it out. Maybe the actual dreamer is elsewhere? Again, the narrative doesn’t rule it out. Chris and Crumble 1 9 8 9 (UK) 10 x 10 minute episodes One of the last series to be broadcast under the See-Saw… Adam: And then an odd thing happens in the film, which is that Mark’s voice in the imaginary voice-over then morphs into the voice of Anna’s mother.

MARIANNE DREAMS by Catherine Storr. Review by Penny Dolan. MARIANNE DREAMS by Catherine Storr. Review by Penny Dolan.

So, would the current generation laugh at it or hide behind the sofa? No idea. They would certainly recognise the concept of two people inhabiting an alternative reality, to them it's just like Cyberspace.Ren: Well, I think it’s immediately creepy from the first time she goes int the dream to the house and it’s this flat-looking house on this absolutely deserted plain because she hasn’t drawn anything else, and the wind whipping through the grass, and it definitely has a pretty eerie atmosphere from the beginning. Anna sketches her father into the drawing so that he can help carry Marc away, but she inadvertently gives him an angry expression which she then crosses out, and the father (who has been away a lot and has a drinking problem, putting a strain on his marriage) appears in the dream as a furious, blinded ogre. Anna and Marc defeat the monster and shortly afterward Anna recovers, although the doctor reveals that Marc's condition is deteriorating. Ali: But then he’s actually… I don’t know. It definitely felt like from that point onwards, the film didn’t seem to be positioning the real father as being threatening? Which I was slightly surprised by.

Marianne Dreams (Literature) - TV Tropes

Adam: Yeah, the walls look really like they’ve got mildewed, and rotten and slimy and stinky. So what was your other (half-singing) Texture of the Week?Adam: Anyway, she’s realised that if she can make bad things happen she can also make good things happen. In Paperhouse, they escape the threat of the father and make it to the lighthouse, but then they feel that the lighthouse is only a kind of resting place, not the final destination. Where was I going with this? Ali: And the book had more of a sense of being kind of an adventure. There’s the threat and they’re trapped in the house with the stones around watching them, but there’s also solving the problem of what to draw that’s going to enable them to escape. They come up with the idea of bicycles, and they make their escape — Ren: And I think this is a pretty good one to join us on, because I thought this was pretty great. So the book is Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr and the film is Paperhouse.