Clara looked at him, her eyes searching for the subtext he usually avoided. "And for film restorers?"
This reaches its tragic apex in the Victorian adaptations beloved by the BFI, such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 and 2015). Here, the sheepdog is integral to the pastoral romance. But the most devastating use occurs in Lassie Come Home (1943)—a film preserved in the BFI’s “Children’s Classics” section. While ostensibly about a boy and his dog, the subtext is the romance of the boy’s parents. The dog’s epic journey across Scotland to reunite the family is, in truth, a love letter from the mother to the father. The dog is the surrogate messenger of a marital love that words cannot save. The BFI’s curators note that parental romance in children’s films is almost always signaled by the family pet. bfi animal dog sex hit hot