I really don't get the whole - it's not like the book - thing, as films really can't be like the book . . . but this is a bit different.
Evensong is an extraordinary book by (Mr) Beverley Nichols about a famous opera singer as an old woman dealing with the agony of impending retirement. Published the year after her death, it is a subtle, fascinating and actually notorious portrait of Nellie Melba (the author was burned in effigy in Australia - I kid you not), who Nichols, as her private secretary and the ghost writer of her memoirs, had known intimately for the last five or so years of her life. It was a huge success and Nichols made a successful stage version which starred Edith Evans.
This film has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with it. Well, not absolutely . . . the last 15 minutes of the film have her as an older woman, but the context and conclusions have nothing do with Nichols, who naturally enough had nothing to do with the screenplay.
Just don't spend the money to buy it, like I did, thinking it's an adaptation of the novel. This is a clichéd, melodramatic nonsense about a young woman becoming a star, made cheaply to cash in on the success of the novel. Interesting I suppose, that they did that sort of thing even in the 1930s.
