http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0757175/
http://stagevu.com/video/bqgxwpwcbxdb
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THE CHATTERLEY AFFAIR (2006)
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This programme contains
very strong language
and some scenes of a sexual nature.
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MUSIC: "C'mon Everybody"
by Eddie Cochrane
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Wonder what we'll get.
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I'd like a nice juicy murder,
lashings of blood.
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Oh, don't say that.
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I don't even like
going in the butcher's.
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D'you know how long a trial goes on?
As long as it takes, I imagine.
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No, but,
I mean, do they have breaks,
like if someone wanted the toilet?
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Yes, I was wondering that.
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The jury system has been going for
800 years, so I should think they
would have thought of that by now.
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I should cocoa! Oh, right.
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Thank you.
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Follow me, please.
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Members of the jury, as your
name is called, you will stand,
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take the book in your right hand,
and read the words on the card.
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Raymond Charles Topping.
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I swear by Almighty God...
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..I will well and truly try
the several issues joined...
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Keith Ernest Gray.
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..and a true verdict give
according to the evidence.
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'I don't mind telling you,
I was terrified.'
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I'd never been in a court before,
or even been stopped by a policeman,
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so when the summons came, I thought,
"This is it, they got me now!"
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'I was actually quite
pleased to get the summons.'
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I thought it might be quite
a diversion, for while I was
waiting for what happened next.
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'My life was
at a bit of a standstill,
to be quite frank with you.'
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Members of the jury, the prisoner
at the Bar, Penguin Books Limited,
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is charged with publishing an
obscene article, to wit, a book
entitled Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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To this indictment it has pleaded
not guilty and it is your charge
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to say, having heard the evidence,
whether it be guilty or not.
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If Your Lordship pleases,
I appear, with my learned friend Mr
Morton, to prosecute in this case.
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Members of the jury, it was learnt
earlier this year that Penguin Books
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proposed to publish this book,
Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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As a result of that,
the company were seen by the police,
and so it comes about
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that you find yourselves in
the jury box to give your judgement
on Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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I quote from the Obscene
Publications Act of 1959.
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"A book is to be deemed to
be obscene if its effect,
taken as a whole,
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"is such as to tend
to deprave and corrupt persons
who are likely to read it."
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So, does this book, might this book,
deprave and corrupt anyone who
might be likely to read it?
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And my learned friend will doubtless
argue that the book is not obscene,
and that even if it were,
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its literary merit
would warrant its publication
as being for the public good.
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The prosecution will invite you
to say that this book does tend
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to introduce lustful thoughts in
the minds of those who read it.
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It goes further, you may think.
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It sets upon a pedestal promiscuous
and adulterous intercourse.
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It commends,
indeed, it even sets out to commend
sensuality almost as a virtue.
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It encourages, and indeed
advocates coarseness and vulgarity
of thought and language.
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You may think that it must tend to
deprave the minds, certainly of
some, and you may think of many
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of those persons who are likely
to purchase it at the price
of three shillings and sixpence.
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You may think that one of the ways
in which you can test the book
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is to ask yourselves, once
you have read it, this question -
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would you approve of your young
sons, your young daughters -
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because girls can read as well
as boys - reading this book?
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Is it a book that you would even
wish your wife or servants to read?
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LAUGHTER
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Well, let us turn now
to the book itself.
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I'd actually read the book years
ago, well, glanced through it.
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Ray, my first husband,
had picked a copy up in Paris.
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To tell the truth,
I wasn't really interested then,
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not that interested in
other people's sex lives.
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I was too involved in our own,
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Ray's and mine. Then.
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It is, if I may summarise,
the story of Lady Chatterley,
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a young woman whose husband is
wounded in the First World War,
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paralysed from the waist downwards
so that he is unable to have
any sexual intercourse.
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It describes how this woman,
deprived of sex from her husband,
satisfies her sexual desires -
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a sex-starved girl -
how she satisfies that starvation
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with a particularly sensual man
who happens to be
her husband's gamekeeper.
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There are, I think,
13 episodes of sexual intercourse
described in the greatest detail.
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The curtains are never drawn.
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One follows them not only
into the bedroom but into bed.
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But that is not strictly accurate,
members of the jury,
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because one starts
in my lady's boudoir,
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then one goes to the floor of a hut
in the forest,
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then we see them again
in the forest, in the undergrowth,
in the pouring rain,
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both of them stark naked
and dripping with raindrops.
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Then in the keeper's cottage, first
in the evening on the hearthrug,
then in the morning in bed.
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And then we move to Bloomsbury
and we have it all over again
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in the attic of a Bloomsbury
boarding house!
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When you read these passages you may
well think that sex is dragged in
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at every conceivable opportunity
and you may think that the story
is little more than padding.
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Hmm. Now we come to the language.
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