The Thorn Birds movie
best moments
a love unattainable forbidden forever
Colleen McCullough
Colleen McCullough was born on June 1, 1937 in Wellington. Her mother was a New Zealander of part-Maori descent. She attended Holy Cross College, having a strong interest in the humanities. In her first year of medical studies at the University of Sydney she suffered dermatitis from surgical soap and was told to abandon her dreams of becoming a medical doctor. Instead, she switched to neuroscience and worked in Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. In 1963 she moved for four years to the United Kingdom where she met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University at the Great Ormond Street hospital in London, who offered her a research associate job at Yale. McCullough spent ten years from April 1967 to 1976 researching and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. It was while at Yale her The Thorn Birds was written. The success of The Thorn Birds enabled Colleen McCullough to give up her medical-scientific career and to try and "live on her own terms". Colleen McCullough finally settled on the isolation of Norfolk Island in the Pacific, where she met her husband, Ric Robinson (then aged 33), to whom she has was married on 13 April 1983 (she was aged 46). Colleen McCullough is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Thorn Bird movie legend:
There's a story, a legend about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree and never rests until it's found one.
And then it sings more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn.
But as it dies it rises above its own agony to out-sing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song but the whole world stills to listen.
And God in his heaven smiles. What does it mean, Father? That the best is bought only at the cost of great pain.
The Thorn Birds movie presentation:
From the raw Australia of the 1900s, comes a turbulent saga that spans the decades in Colleen McCullough's best selling novel: The Thorn Birds.
The story of a priest driven by ambition he never be what he want. Tormented by desire. From the moment he saw Meggie, he knew he would love her forever.
Mary Carson, the richest woman in Australia, and the loneliest.
In the years that followed, no one could stir Meggie's heart: no one till a rover named Luke O'Neill.
The story that travels around the world from the Vatican to the Australian outback. From the islands of Greece to London.
The saga that spans half a century echoing through three generations.
Starring Richard Kiley, Jean Simmons, Ken Howard, Mare Winningham, Philip Anglim, Christopher Plummer, Bryan Brown, Barbara Stanwyck, Rachel Ward, and Richard Chamberlain.
A love unattainable forbidden forever.
The Thorn Birds movie preparations:
The role of Mary Carson was offered to Audrey Hepburn.
Many actresses tested for the role of Meggie, including Michelle Pfeiffer. Finally, it came down to two actresses, Rachel Ward, and Jane Seymour. Producers liked Seymour's acting much better, but felt she was too strong an actress and lacked the vulnerability needed to play Meggie. So the part went to Ward.
Producers found the conditions of shooting in Australia to be impossible. Most of the sheep ranches were to far out in the middle of nowhere for film crews to get to, and the requirements placed on American film crews to shoot in Australia were unrealistic. So the entire ranch, Drohgeda was built in California.
Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown fell in love on the set. They were married in 1983 and have three children.
The Thorn Birds movie actors/characters:
Richard Chamberlain as Ralph de Bricassart, Rachel Ward as Meggie Cleary, Christopher Plummer as Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese, Barbara Stanwyck as Mary Carson, Bryan Brown as Luke O'Neill, Richard Kiley as Paddy Cleary, Jean Simmons as Fiona Cleary, John Friedrich as Frank Cleary, Brett Cullen as Bob Cleary, Stephen W. Burns as Jack Cleary, Dwier Brown as Stuart Cleary, Philip Anglim as Dane O'Neill, Mere Winningham as Justinne O'Neill, Ken Howard as Rainer Moerling Hartheim, Allyn Ann McLerie as Mrs. Smith, Stephanie Faracy as Judy, Barry Corbin as Pete, John de Lancie as Alastair MacQueen, Antoinette Bower as Sarah MacQueen, Bill Morey as Angus MacQueen, Holly Palance as Miss Carmichael, Piper Laurie as Anne Mueller, Earl Holliman as Luddie Mueller, Richard Venture as Harry Gough, Chard Hayward as Arne Swenson.
The Thorn Birds movie open questions:
Meggie Cleary: What kind of God would shut men out of Paradise for loving women?
Mary Carson: When Satan tempted Christ with the whole world is it because he hated him or because he loved him?
Mary Carson: But birthdays at our ages are rather a mixed blessing, aren't they?
Sarah MacQueen: You lecture me on the value of human life when your own son sits in the Melbourne prison for murder?
Fiona Cleary: What's a daughter? Just a reminder of the pain a younger version of oneself who will do all the same things, cry the same tears.
Anne Mueller: You have the face of an angel and the body of a goddess and you don't know how to make a man get you pregnant?
The Thorn Birds movie conclusion:
All your life I've watched you wage your battles against God. Yet you were always closer to his desires for us than I. In the end you've always been able to love. Somewhere in me I must have known from the very first that Dane was mine. But I didn't want to know. I wanted to be Cardinal de Bricassart more than I wanted our son. More than I wanted you. Of all the wrong I've done the worst is that I never made a choice for love. Half given to you, half given to God but really given to my own ambition. I knew it and I did it anyway. I told myself it was meant to be. Long ago I told you a story, a legend about a bird that sings only when it dies. The bird with the thorn in its breast. You said it pays its life for that one song. But the whole world stills to listen. And God in his Heaven smiles.
Driven to the thorn, with no knowledge of the dying to come.
When we press the thorn to our breast WE KNOW, WE UNDERSTAND and STILL WE DO IT.
|
|
|
| | | |
| | | |
| |
Happy. There's a story a legend about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree and never rests until it's found one. And then ... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
Let me tell you something, Cardinal de Bricassart about old age and about that God of yours. That vengeful God who ruins our bodies and leaves us with only enough wit for regret. Inside this stupid body... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
You still think love can save us? It's more killing than hate. Hate is so clean, so simple. Like being in the ring. With hate, you just keep hitting. You hit until they stop hitting back. With love they never stop. | |
| |
| | | |
| |
Our God has given us free will and with that gift comes the burden of choice. It is time, far past time that you took up that burden because until you do you cannot go on. But sending me back to where ... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
I was stupid enough to think so. Thanks to you, Luke, I've had time to get around and to find out what I've been missing! And to realize that the last thing I want is to be stuck out in some dried-up station... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
I was 16 when I met him. He was everything that Paddy wasn't. Sophisticated, cultured, charming. I thought I couldn't live without him. But he was an important man a politician and already married... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
You could be anything that you wanted to be. Yet I'd give up every ambition every desire in me, to be the perfect priest. "The perfect priest." How can I explain? I'm a vessel and sometimes I'm filled... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
Rather shockingly at odds with the teachings of the Church. My dear Ralph, do you not find it humbling to realize that when this play was first performed Rome was still infested with fur-clad barbarians? | |
| |
| | | |
| |
We were farmers, you know, back in Galway. One day, my dad told me to fetch a breeding bull from the next farm up. We were too poor to have one of our own. I tried, but that old bull was a killer. I had ... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
It's very male, though. I mean, with the exception of the Virgin Mary women are relegated to the cheap seats, in the upper balcony. Yeah, but you are forgetting that we call that upper balcony Il Paradiso. | |
| |
| | | |
| |
You have the face of an angel and the body of a goddess and you don't know how to make a man get you pregnant. What you need is a good education. Lady Chatterly's Lover. And Henry Miller... | |
| |
| | | |
| |
But that's daft. You could make more at shearing, anyway. Yeah, but a shearer's a rover. I don't intend to be a rover all my life. And I do like it here on Drogheda. | |
| |
| | | |
| |
When Cardinal de Bricassart learned of this he told me something which has been very useful to me since. That there are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart. | |
| |
The Thorn Birds movie quotes:
Mary Carson: Let me tell you something, Cardinal de Bricassart about old age and about that God of yours. That vengeful God who ruins our bodies and leaves us with only enough wit for regret. Inside this stupid body, I am still young! I still feel! I still want! I still dream! And I still love you! Oh, God, how much!
Luke O'Neill: I think the Catholic Church is run by a bunch of poofters in black nightgowns.
Fiona Cleary: It's curious, you know. When it looked as though the fire might take everything I kept thinking of the most peculiar things. I didn't think of dying or the children or this beautiful house in ruins. All I could think about were my accounts the socks I was knitting for Paddy the heart-shaped cake tins Frank made me years ago. How could I survive without them? All the little things. Things which can't be replaced. It's too late, like all my life. Too late for him, too late for me. I can never take my Paddy in my arms now. I can never say to him the only thing he ever wanted me to say, that I loved him. I do love him, Father.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: The dying youth in the play is Hippolytus. He is cold to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. To punish him for his neglect she causes his mother to fall hopelessly in love with him. But, Hippolytus spurns her. And that's why she kills herself? Hippolytus' father blames him and has him killed by the god of the sea.
Ralph de Bricassart: A cruel story, and so unjust. Hippolytus dies even though he's innocent. In fact, he behaves laudably.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: A good Catholic interpretation, yes, perhaps. But to the ancient Greeks he is quite guilty of the sin of pride. You see, it is that Hippolytus holds himself above human love. He's cold. He will not even admit that human passion exists.
Ralph de Bricassart: And what if he would admit it? Would he then escape his fate?
Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: That is the cruelty because this is his fate. He cannot choose to love anymore than his poor mother can choose to be cold. The gods have willed it for their sport. Cruel, but rather an appealing system, is it not? No decisions to make, no conscience, no agony of free will nothing. All fated from the first.
Ralph de Bricassart: Rather shockingly at odds with the teachings of the Church of Rome.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: My dear Ralph, do you not find it humbling to realize that when this play was first performed Rome was still infested with fur-clad barbarians?
Fiona Cleary: I don't know, and never will how much of our lives we're allowed to choose how much is decided long before we're born. But looking back, I see now choices I could've made and didn't!
Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: And like all self-perpetuating institutions the Church has always a place for ambitious men. In fact you are everything the Church admires in her high officials. You are conservative, quick, subtle. You know enough never to give away what is going on behind those eyes. And you have the most exquisite gift of knowing how to please. Even when it comes to pleasing those you loathe.
Ralph de Bricassart: You make me out to be a Machiavelli, except that he was an Italian.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini-Verchese: My dear Ralph, you are a delight. I can scarcely wait to see your effect on our short, fat prelates in Rome.
Ralph de Bricassart: I wanted to be Cardinal de Bricassart more than I wanted our son. More than I wanted you. Of all the wrong I've done the worst is that I never made a choice for love. Half given to you, half given to God but really given to my own ambition. I knew it and I did it anyway. I told myself it was meant to be.
Fiona Cleary: For years I've sat by and watched you do all the things that I did. Crying for a man that you could never have. Giving all your love to his son, the way I gave mine to Frank. Neglecting Jussie, as I neglected you. You've lived your life as I did mine. Driven, always driven! I don't know, and never will how much of our lives we're allowed to choose how much is decided long before we're born. But looking back, I see now choices I could've made and didn't! Even after Paddy died. Even after I lost Frank. I might have asked your forgiveness years ago. But it's too late for me now, Meggie. But it's not too late for you.
|
|
|
|
The Thorn Birds movie 1 | The legend
