Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 film) and rural life to be "splendid". His strongest criticism is that the film missed the point of the small society of rural life: Thomas Hardy's novel told of a 19th century rural England in which class distinctions and unyielding social codes surrounded his characters. They were far from the madding crowd whether they liked it or not, and got tangled in each other's problems because there was nowhere else to turn. It's not simply that Bathsheba (Julie Christie) was courted by the three men in her life, but that she was courted by ALL three men in her life. The
Far from the Madding Crowd (1915 film) the genuine ones over which Gabriel Oak watched with such care." In February 1916, the five-reel feature film was given a general release in Britain. On 19 June 1916 the film was released in the United States, the first of six Turner productions to be distributed in the U.S. by Mutual Film. The production was panned in a "Variety" review, which criticized the narrative as hard to follow and deemed the 30-year-old Turner as "no longer qualified physically to portray the roles of the simple ingenue type". The reviewer concluded, ""Far from the Madding Crowd" is one of those stories