The Portrait of a Lady

I can't escape my fate...I can't escape unhappiness...I know that if I'm to find happiness I've to seek out the misery too, or at least not run from it. The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited American girl searching for her own way of truth. Determined to live to the full, at whatever cost, she is brought to England by her Aunt and given every chance to spread her wings. It is at Gardencourt, her Aunt's home that she meets her cousin Ralph who, forced by tuberculosis to be 'a spectator at the game of life,' wants her to have complete freedom to choose her destiny - however disastrous her choices turn out to be. The second BBC classic serial to be made in colour, in 1967, this splendid and authentic dramatisation does real justice to Henry James's great novel. © BBC