Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 film) Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 film) Far from the Madding Crowd is a 1967 British epic drama film adapted from Thomas Hardy's book of the same name. The film, starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp and Peter Finch, and directed by John Schlesinger, was Schlesinger's fourth film (and his third collaboration with Christie). It marked a stylistic shift away from his earlier works exploring contemporary urban mores. The cinematography was by Nicolas Roeg and the soundtrack was by Richard Rodney Bennett. He also used traditional folk songs in various scenes throughout the film. It was nominated for one
Far from the Madding Crowd an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency". "Far from the Madding Crowd" offers in ample measure the details of English rural life that Hardy so relished. Hardy first employed the term "Wessex" in "Far from the Madding Crowd" to describe the "partly real, partly dream-country" that unifies his novels of South West England. He found the word in the pages of early English history as a designation for an extinct, pre-Norman conquest kingdom, the Wessex from which Alfred the Great established England. In the first edition, the word "Wessex" is used only once, in chapter