Performing the Edwardian Ideal: David Mamet and The Winslow Boy

When The Winslow Boy, with screenplay and direction by David Mamet, premiered in 1999, critics scrambled to account for Mamet's uncharacteristic choice of subject and setting. Variously termed a costume piece (Null), Mer-chant-Ivory fare (Macnab), and an Edwardian drama (James 22), the film was consistently noted to be far removed from Mamet's apparently typical "hide-and-seek scenarios featuring characters who fire off tough-guy, staccato dialogue at machine-gun velocity" (Sipe) or "lowlifes and con men, gamblers and thieves" (Ebert). Although Mamet himself acknowledges that the film marks a "departure," he qualifies that observation with the statement that he is departing only "from some of [his] other work" (qtd. in Graham 231). Indeed, while critics in one breath note the vast difference between the subject of The Winslow Boy and that of Mamet's films and plays, they tend to search for and ultimately assert a thematic or linguistic emphasis consistent with that of Mamet's work. That similarity has been seen to lie in the film's apparent interest in "whether an offscreen crime really took place" (Ebert), in its use of "trademark" Mamettian ellipses and overlapping dialogue (Kelleher), and in its dissection of assumed social and domestic values (McIntire-Strasburg).

The critical interest in the uncharacteristic nature of Mamet's choice might originate in the fact that The Winslow Boy is "based" upon a pre-existing play. Mamet had already adapted a play in his screenplay for Vanya on 42nd Street. The seminal reputation of the Chekhov play, the necessary fact of a demanding linguistic translation, and Mamet's change of setting to modern America ensured the perception of an immediate relevance and creative legitimacy for his adaptation. The Winslow Boy, however, is based upon a play by Terence Rattigan that neither demands such linguistic translation nor commands the same canonical status as the work of Chekhov. Indeed, the work preceded the heralded innovations of the Royal Court Theatre in the mid-1950s, exemplified by the reception of John Osborne and the plays of one of Mamet's acknowledged influences, Harold Pinter. Rattigan's plays generally have become associated with an outdated interest in drawing-room settings, upper middle-class domesticity, and genteel repression. Such conventions conflict with the settings, conflicts, and dialogue of much contemporary drama. When one of the most well-known and critically acclaimed exemplars of contemporary American drama shows interest in a work considered antiquated in most critical circles, that interest naturally generates some curiosity.

Mamet declares his appreciation for The Winslow Boy to be rooted in the play's dramatic technique as much as in its themes and narratives. He terms the work "a very Apollonian piece" (qtd. in Graham 231), "immaculately crafted" (Sipe). He had wanted to stage The Winslow Boy on Broadway for a number of years but had been unable to get the "calibre of cast" that he had wanted for a "significant length." Despite his enthusiasm for its specifically dramatic elements, Mamet ultimately decided that it would be "easier" to film the play (Mamet, "Commentary"). This blurring of the distinctions between film and theatre is disingenuous. Film and drama differ not only in their narrative methods and representational techniques but also in their implied audience. Both Rattigan and Mamet were associated with particular dramatic styles, thematic interests, and social philosophies. The nature of film reception and creation ensured a relative critical leniency towards Mamet's experimentation within a theatrical, historical, and cultural tradition generally deemed outdated, fundamentally British, and therefore irrelevant within the American dramatic aesthetic with which Mamet was so closely associated. In adapting The Winslow Boy for cinema rather than stage, Mamet was able to distance himself from declaring his enthusiasm for the original as dramatic and thus overcome critical prejudices and expectations of his traditional theatre audience.

Mamet's apparent readiness to elide the differences between drama and film suggests a willingness to forego dramatic enthusiasms and fully translate the work into a different artistic form. This expectation is belied by the film itself. As a film "written" and directed by one whose cinematic reputation...