Pride and Prejudice (1995)

When this BBC miniseries was first released in the mid-90s with strongly positive word of mouth, I was in elementary school and didn’t understand why my mom and her five sisters loved this long, long movie about people walking around wearing bonnets and speaking politely. Years later, when we got the DVD set to give to my mom for her birthday and we all watched it together, I understood. I was a high school junior who didn’t care what the cliques or the fashion magazines thought of me, so I connected with Elizabeth’s subtly defiant underdog moxie and fell in love with the sexy, brooding Mr. Darcy. I hadn’t read the book yet, so, to me, this was Pride and Prejudice. Judging from a variety of online message boards, even people who did read the book first consider this to be the definitive Pride and Prejudice adaptation to the detriment of all others. In fact, these fights – not to mention the viral videos of Mr. Darcy clips – can be so downright silly that Jane Austen must be laughing in her grave.

             Adapted by Andrew Davies (who won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for the series), directed by Simon Langton, and produced by Sue Birtwistle, this adaptation is widely praised for both its faithfulness to the book and for bringing a fresh interpretation. On one hand, its accuracy is easy to explain – a six-hour miniseries is able to stuff more content than a two-hour film. Pride and Prejudice does more than cover the plot points, however – it captures the novel’s satirical tone, conveys the subtlety of the characters, and nods to the feminist themes.

            All of this is accomplished without high production value. The cinematography, while featuring some gorgeous scenery, is the made-for-TV, point-and-shoot variety. In some ways, this works in the story’s favor to highlight the pettiness and superficiality of characters who make a huge deal out of normal circumstances. The climactic confrontation between Lizzie and Lady Catherine happens not with dramatic lighting or overwhelming music, but with sunny skies and chirping birds. Some of the special effects are on the cheesy side – like Lizzie seeing Darcy in her head, blue-screened onto mirrors or carriage windows. But Dinah Collins’ costume design and Caroline Noble’s makeup and hair received BAFTA nominations and praise for historical accuracy. While period pieces have the tendency to reflect contemporary styles – like Lizzie’s 1940s-style hair in the earlier Pride and Prejudice adaptation and Edward Linton’s David Frost look in the 1970 Wuthering Heights – this particular adaptation is less obviously a product of the 1990s.

            Besides historical accuracy, the production design aids in interpretation itself. While Caroline Bingley and the stuck up society girls wear bright colors and fashions, the Bennetts all wear the white and pastels highlighting their easily maligned bourgeois status. Even the house is a painted a bland shade of cream. Part of the humor of the series is that no one seems really poor (except a couple of London street kids who give Mr. Darcy a “pet the puppy” moment in one scene). The Bennetts are in trouble, of course, but this is not visually emphasized. They talk about their financial woes, but we see a two-story house and servants – they are upper middle class people persecuted by only slightly richer people.

            The series is carried mainly by the strength of its actors. Jennifer Ehle, who won the BAFTA TV Award for her performance, plays Elizabeth Bennett as a happy, free spirit and a fiercely independent rebel in an age where it really doesn’t take a whole lot to be one. The “queen bee” Caroline, who looks down on Lizzie while also being intimidated by her, criticizes the protagonist’s “conceited independence” – when all she did was take a walk alone through in the countryside. She does not fit the mold of the “accomplished woman.” When Lady Catherine confronts her, Lizzie retorts that she is not entitled to her concerns, and she will make her decisions “without reference to you or any other person so wholly unconnected with me.” Declaring herself to be an autonomous individual, she goes against the grain of her time period when women had limited options and were expected to define themselves by their connections.

Lizzie’s flaw, which she overcomes through her interaction with the woefully misunderstood Mr. Darcy, is that she needs to allow others the same kind of autonomy and complexity that she cherishes within herself. This is in her expressions rather than stated directly. She keenly observes people at the dance, but grows visibly uncomfortable when she herself is observed. After nearly losing Mr. Darcy and learning her lesson, she earns the right once again to assert herself without hypocrisy – which she does in the aforementioned verbal battle with Lady Catherine.

            A strong cast of supporting characters maintains the satire. Mr. Collins (David Bamber) is also well-acted as “the stupidest man in all of England” whose hilarious lack of self-awareness clashes with Elizabeth’s strong identity. Davies seems to give him the double entendres (“Such a variety of social intercourse!”) to highlight his role as the awkward “id” character who merrily shocks everybody with his quirks and obnoxious social climbing. Mrs. Bennett (Alison Steadman) wails and rails desperately through the dilemma of living through her daughters.

            Colin Firth’s lead performance as Mr. Darcy made him a sex symbol and basically launched his career. He snubs Elizabeth once, and it haunts him for the rest of the movie. Water is a recurring visual symbol of his surprising new feelings for Elizabeth and the atmosphere of boiling sexual tension. The puppy-eyed aristocrat rises from the bathtub to look at Jane out the window, and later takes off his jacket in frustration and dives into the pond for one of the most erotic scenes in television history.

            These scenes, which purists may point out are not written in the original book, add to it without contradicting it. Jane Austen, not to be mistaken for her more sentimental contemporaries, does not dictate the visual atmosphere of her novel with descriptive, fluffy prose. Her writing style is sharp, satirical, and understated – the literary equivalent of a Don Hertzfelt stick figures cartoon. Thus, in many ways, she leaves the visualization of her story up to imagination.

Any adaptation can get the text – the witty banter and sarcasm – but a visual work like film must try to interpret the subtext. The BBC crew have delightfully constructed a hilarious but also emotionally compelling drama that not only appeals to females of all ages all over the world, but ranks as one of the most successful literary adaptations in television history. 

Wuthering Heights (1970)

Between the earliest adaptations and the more contemporary innovations, I realized my list didn’t include any films between the 1950s and 1980s. I also realized I needed one more Wuthering Heights adaptation to complete my list. So, I confess I picked this one, directed by Robert Fuest and adapted by Patrick Tilley, as an afterthought; the token representative of four whole decades of cinema. To be fair to myself, though, the most well-known adaptations are either really old or fairly recent and thus easy to find. I wanted to see Abismos de Pasion (1954) and Arashi Ga Oka (1988), but they weren’t on Netflix… not even on Hulu or YouTube.

But even though I picked this one as an afterthought, I really liked it. Among the five Wuthering Heights movies, this is one of the two that I would watch again… if nothing else, because I love the “hippie” look. On every other scene, my brain was screaming, “I want that outfit!!!” The costume design in period pieces is never far removed from the time the movie is actually made – so Heathcliff wears a leather vest like he is on his way to Woodstock or something, Catherine has a flower in her hair and the most adorable peasant blouses, and Edgar (in one of his more sympathetic portrayals) totally looks like David Frost from the recent Watergate movie Frost/Nixon. And I loved Michael Legrand’s Golden Globe-nominated score – from the 60’s-style flute riffs to the complete lack of music in some of the most intense scenes, a la Bonnie and Clyde.

Another pleasant surprise was the cinematography. After watching the effective use of black and white in the 1939 version compared to the flat lighting in the too-bright 2009 version, I wondered if it was even possible to capture the feeling of Wuthering Heights in color. I loved this film’s emphasis on Catherine and Heathcliff’s connection to nature – or maybe, again, I’m just a sucker for the back-to-the-land hippie aesthetic. One scene completely devoid of dialogue has Catherine meeting Heathcliff in the country. He does not know how to react, but they end up rolling in the greenery like flower children. The camera turns up-side down with them, and the framing behind long grasses and low leaves is actually quite beautiful.

Following the example of the 1939 version and most other adaptations, this Wuthering Heights ends halfway through the book. This appears to be a common practice in cinema adaptations – not only because a movie has two hours (give or take) to adapt a lot of material, but because killing one of the two main characters halfway through the script would go against the general rules of plot structure that audiences expect.

The movie actually begins with Catherine’s death; almost all the rest is told in flashback. The opening funeral scene, where the lone Heathcliff looks down in the distance to the other characters lowering the coffin, is no spoiler for anyone who is even remotely familiar with the original story. However, it does serve to set the tone that Heathcliff and Cathy’s romance is doomed from the start.

A huge aspect of this ill-fated romance is the fairly explicit interpretation that Catherine and Heathcliff are half-siblings. This is the subtext of Emily Brontë’s novel; many readers choose to believe that Mr. Earnshaw just happened to make frequent trips to Liverpool and just happened to pick up a random orphan there. The character of Mrs. Earnshaw herself derides this notion; she knows what is going on behind her back. She tells the young Hindley (who looks and acts like a stoner here) that he is “the son of this house.” Nelly’s voiceover explains Hindley was lonely after his mother died, taking her resentment on himself. It is the basis of Hindley and Heathcliff’s rivalry but never mentioned again. Yet the fact that Catherine and Heathcliff even grew up together, calling the same man “Father,” should make their relationship at least as strange and incestuous as the adopted siblings in The Royal Tenenbaums.

An interesting note about this film is its overlap with the 1983 BBC miniseries adaptation of Jane Eyre. They share two actors; Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff and Rochester, respectively, and Judy Cornwell as Nelly and Mrs. Reed.

Fuest and Tilley’s Wuthering Heights succeeds in what other film adaptations don’t: presenting Nelly as a distinct personality with her own goals and being the hero of her own story, rather than as a background fixture or a plot device. Judy Cornwell’s Nelly is young and beautiful and passionate in her own right; she only lacks social opportunities and class standing. An unspoken subplot has Nelly in unrequited love for Hindley (who clearly does not deserve her anyway), which perhaps gives her a special sympathy for Heathcliff’s situation. This is an example of a film adapting a book well even while technically contradicting it: while there was no such subplot in Emily Brontë’s novel, it presents Nelly as she is in the book: snarky and colorful and anything but nondescript.

Timothy Dalton makes a great Heathcliff with his piercing eyes and sullen, uncultivated demeanor. When he returns with his rich velvet makeover and superficially cultured demeanor, he is less impressive than slightly awkward and visibly uncomfortable in his own skin. While he starred in a variety of period pieces, Dalton is best known as one of the James Bond actors. Even though he did not accept that role until the late 1980s, EON Productions approached him as early as 1968 to replace Sean Connery. Watching the film, it is easy to see why they sought after him: he is the cold-blooded lover, rough on the women – but they like him for it. The film’s beautiful and spoiled Isabella slaps him when he tries to get her to bed, but like a typical Bond girl, she does not resist for long. Edgar runs around with a gun, and one scene where Heathcliff is thrown out of the house in a musical flourish seems prophetic of exploitation films. Silliness aside, Dalton’s green eyes make the character, and an extreme close-up on his face leads to an ending that shoots down the possibility of the disturbing second half of the book from happening after the movie is over.

I have yet to see a Wuthering Heights adaptation that comes anywhere close to visually capturing the raw insanity, wildness, and random pathology – not just the passion and romance – of the original novel. Robert Fuest’s Wuthering Heights has its share of flaws, but its striking camera angles, dynamic score, and mentally unbalanced Heathcliff create an interesting cinematic interpretation.

Jane Eyre (1944)

One thing to remember is that film adaptations are not only in conversation with the books they interpret, but also in conversation with each other. The 1944 version of Jane Eyre was produced in the wake of Rebecca, the Oscar-winning Hitchcock film, and in many ways responds to it. This film focuses on Jane’s desire for belonging, which reflects the second Mrs. DeWinter’s struggle to be accepted within the rich estate of Manderley. Even then, it takes some things from Rebecca and turns them upside down: the first wife is the total opposite of glamorous, and the closest thing to Mrs. Danvers is a guy.

Joan Fontaine, the second Mrs. DeWinter, is cast as Jane Eyre. This was a deliberately interpretive choice to highlight Charlotte Brontë’s connection to Daphne DuMaurier’s bestselling novel. Fontaine’s acting, however, shows that while the stories are similar, they are not the same. While she brought a playful earnestness to the Rebecca protagonist, who wore her heart on her sleeve, her Jane Eyre is more inhibited, hiding her yearning behind a poker face. While the second Mrs. DeWinter was a beauty disguised in frumpy clothes, her Jane – true to the book – is somewhat plain no matter what she wears, thanks to the unflattering haircut which has apparently become the unspoken tradition for book covers and subsequent film adaptations. 

Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) is perfectly cast as Mr. Rochester, bringing his long and famous history of playing gruff and ambitious yet complex characters. Like Maxim DeWinter, this film’s Rochester is described as having a “bad temper.” Upon his first meeting with Jane, he proves himself to be extremely rude. He tries to intimidate her, but she knows he is just “under his mask… a tortured soul and kindly.” In the subtext, Jane’s poker face is exactly what draws him in.

Behind the camera, Robert Stevenson directs Jane Eyre as a gothic romance with emphasis on “gothic.” The lighting is consistently low, the cinematography milks as many scares from the text as it can, and the Bertha subplot is played up for horror. This is interesting, considering that Stevenson went on to later direct family Disney movies like Old Yeller, Mary Poppins, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Aldous Huxley, as one of the four screenwriting credits, is also an unusual contributor. He is not only the author of Brave New World, but also one of the writers from the light and happy Pride and Prejudice of 1940.

Following Rebecca’s example, Jane Eyre begins with the narrator’s voiceover: “My name is Jane Eyre… Money and position seemed all that mattered. Charity was a cold and disagreeable word. Religion too often wore a mask of bigotry and cruelty. There was no proper place for the poor or the unfortunate.” These words, it must be noted, are not from the original text. Neither are the words from subsequent voiceovers. While Alfred Hitchcock wisely let the camera take over after the intro, Jane Eyre continues to rely on voiceovers, patched over as handwritten intertitles.

At Lowood School, Mr. Brocklehurst is stiff and pompous with ridiculous hair eerily prophetic of television preachers. Helen Burns (played by an uncredited, young Elizabeth Taylor) is her loyal friend, but less obviously religious – this mentor role is taken, curiously enough, by a radically changed St. John Rivers. Or Doctor Rivers – the movie does not give his first name. Dr. Rivers is, for all practical purposes, a new character representing an enlightened Christianity to contrast the hypocritical Brocklehurst. He assures Jane that Helen is with God and inspires her to work hard and grow up to be an educated woman. His name is simply a wink at a character who is effectively eliminated from the 97-minute movie. However, some of the original St. John’s spirit is retained in the movie’s more prominent Mr. Brocklehurst. After losing a verbal faceoff with Jane before she leaves for Thornfield, the creepy headmaster comes back to psychologically haunt her later in the film, asking her to come back to work at the strict school at her lowest point and give up the idea of having a happy life. This film has the strongest interpretation of Mr. Brocklehurst by far, making him a prominent villain – a male Mrs. Danvers, the oppressive antithesis of humanity and acceptance.

Another interesting omission is Jane’s artistic prowess, a departure from not only from the source novel but from Rebecca and subsequent film adaptations. Mr. Rochester notices Jane simply looking at him (“You examine me”), in the scene where he is supposed to catch her sketching him. This omission of her artistic interpretation downplays Jane’s seeing role to focus more heavily on her being seen.

The film’s cinematography and sound design suit its relentlessly dark and gothic atmosphere well. Jane takes a walk in the dark, and Rochester almost runs her over in a startling shot interpretation of their first meeting. Foreboding music marks Rochester’s “Enough!” interjection to Jane’s mediocre piano playing. Grace Poole’s face is shown with the lighting below her eye level, giving her the “spooky campfire tales” look. Adele wakes up Jane with a creepy little musical toy foreshadowing Rochester’s past. Even at the end, Jane and Rochester can’t just kiss. They have to dramatically smash their faces against each other with a loud percussion flourish.

Bertha is, of course, the smoking gun behind the black-and-white horror atmosphere. Her room is eerily lit when everything is dark. She can’t just laugh, she has to laugh like the Wicked Witch of the West. When Jane tries to investigate, Grace won’t let her inside the Bertha’s room – all we get is a slobbery noise. Even when Jane finally gets to see Bertha, we don’t. We only hear the bizarre, inhuman noise she makes while attacking Rochester – and it is probably more effective that way. Showing her would have made the film less scary, dated it, made it unintentionally funny, and most of all, would have given a human face to a character clearly intended to be a monster in the context of this film.

The 1944 Jane Eyre, once again, is a 97-minute movie adapting hundreds of pages of text. For this reason, it should be taken neither as a definitive adaptation nor a bad one. It is only a starting point in examining visual interpretations of the original novel, since it tends to be atmosphere-driven rather than character-driven. It takes a limited angle of the novel, but uses that angle well – the angle of the grotesque. Bertha is the most obvious monster of the movie, an unseen novelty of lighting and sound effects, but not really evil – she is, after all, insane. The real villain, even though he lacks the same amount of screen time and bells and whistles, is self-righteous Mr. Brocklehurst with a horror of a hairdo. 

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

As I write this review, I hear that film studios are bidding over the rights to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a cut and paste job of the original Jane Austen novel inserting zombie fights into random scenes. This idea is not exactly new – Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre already has its own zombified B-movie.

            Like Hitchcock’s Rebecca, I Walked With a Zombie (directed by Jaques Tourneur of Cat People fame) is loosely inspired by Jane Eyre rather than being a straight adaptation. Its premise focuses on Bertha and the novel’s connection to the Caribbean, which is one of the most controversial and, arguably, least developed aspects of the novel. In a story with otherwise believable and human characters, the Bertha story dehumanizes the mentally ill. The novel also hints at racism; depending on how one reads the text on Bertha’s family ties and “stock,” and her “purple” skin, Bertha Mason may have been biracial with her black Creole side being a liability in Brontë’s world. I Walked With a Zombie touches on this – albeit lightly. Rather than being a serious exploration of a theme, it takes it and toys with it playfully, as one would expect from a 1940s horror B-movie.

The main character, Betsy Colonel (Frances Dee), focuses on both Jane’s morality and naïve ignorance of racism – traits that could be extended to Charlotte Brontë herself. Instead of a governess, she is a modern-day Canadian nurse eager to take a job and see the world. She accepts employment at a Caribbean plantation run by Paul Holland (Tom Conway), the Rochester analogue. Paul’s wife Jessica (Christine Gordon) needs a caretaker, but Betsy does not know the details. She meets Paul on the ship toward the Caribbean. Echoing an early conversation in Jane Eyre where Rochester tells the title character she hasn’t seen much of the world, Paul labels Betsy “a newcomer” who does not see “the death and decay.” Betsy, on the other hand, finds Paul to be “clean and honest but hurt. Badly hurt.”

Betsy’s naïveté is highlighted when she arrives at Fort Holland and the surrounding area. When her Afro-Caribbean driver alludes to his ancestors being transported as slaves, she tells him that at least “they brought you to a beautiful place.”

A statue of an arrow-struck St. Sebastian, which had once been a slave ship figurehead, is a prominent tragic image in the deceptively sunny and palm tree-dotted enclosure. “I told you, Miss Colonel, this is a sad place,” Paul Holland tells her as he explains the statue’s history.

Betsy Colonel’s initial ignorance is overshadowed by her will to do the right thing. Like Jane Eyre, she falls in love with her employer. Knowing his wife is still alive (more or less), however, she does not pursue this relationship. Instead, she expresses her love for Paul by trying hard to restore Jessica back to life. In another scene, Wesley tries to convince Betsy to put Jessica out of her misery by euthanasia. Bound by her Hippocratic oath, she again refuses. Similar to the title character from the original novel, Miss Colonel has a passionate love moderated and defined by a pursuit of the higher good – even if her patient is a little creepy.

While this B-horror film’s premise of zombies and voodoo conjures up all manner of eye-rolling stereotypes, one has to take into account that this was merely four years after the blockbuster classic Gone With the Wind, which painted an idealized picture of slavery and stereotyped its African-American characters. Old films like Huck Finn portrayed black people as easily frightened and somewhat immature. In I Walked With a Zombie, the black characters are strikingly normal for 1940s cinema.

For this reason, the character Alma (Theresa Harris) stands out in this film. Harris had the talent, screen charisma, and photogenic looks equal to any white Hollywood starlet, but she was almost always typecast in a maid role. While she plays a servant in this movie, she is not subservient. She lacks privilege and a prestigious job, but she clearly has her own life outside of working for Fort Holland and converses with Betsy Colonel as an equal. I like to think of her as the other Jane Eyre in the movie.

Christine Gordon is another great performance as Jessica, the loose equivalent of Bertha – even though her role involves little more than sitting around listlessly... and walking around catatonically… and following orders… and staring out into nowhere with her genuinely creepy hollow eyes. She has a strong entrance, ethereal against a dark twisted staircase with her blonde hair and long white dress. She frightens Betsy, who says, “Nobody told me Mrs. Holland was a mental case.”

The source of Jessica’s malady becomes a point of contention among the characters and the film’s main conflict. Her history is similar to Bertha’s history: She married the rich male lead, cheated on him – she wanted to run off with Paul’s half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison) – and then grew insane at some point. Paul and Wesley’s mother Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett) dismisses the local voodoo beliefs, insisting that Jessica is plagued by normal causes. The question haunts Betsy: is Jessica a true zombie, or does she just happen to be in a perpetual catatonic state? This core conflict – whether supernatural beliefs have any credibility – has little to do with the themes explored in the original Jane Eyre.

I Walked With a Zombie works as a popcorn B-movie for classic horror fans and is listed on Stylus Magazine’s Top Ten Zombie Films of All Time. Unlike the highbrow Rebecca, It does not work so well if one is hoping for a serious interpretation of Jane Eyre. The one thing it does add is exploring the novel’s Achilles’ heel, the Caribbean subplot, giving a backstory to the land Mr. Rochester left behind. Even so, it is a film made for entertainment rather than deconstruction or post-colonial literary critiques – a way to pass a late night with macaroni and Mountain Dew.

 

Sources:

Cliff’s Notes – Jane Eyre

Internet Movie Database

Stylus Magazine (http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/movie_review/stylus-magazines-top-10-zombie-films-of-all-time.htm)

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

            The oldest surviving adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice may well be the most postmodern. By that, I mean it plays on the subjectivity of words, right from the opening scene. The Bennetts are all in a room, talking about the arrival of Mr. Bingly and Mr. Darcy, speculating on what this could mean for them. It does not actually show the men arriving. Whether this is indicative of a low budget or a purposeful breaking of the “show not tell” rule of screenwriting, it is not easy to tell for sure.  However, Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, is one of the main credited screenwriters – so this was not a screenplay thrown together by amateurs.

Another controversy about Robert Z. Leonard’s film is the costuming – the ridiculously poofy hoop skirts don’t match the original novel’s time period. According to the New York Times, the setting was changed from 1813 to 1835 to fit the costumes. Urban legend has it that, because of budget restrictions, Pride and Prejudice used recycled costumes from other period pieces like Gone With the Wind. It is also possible that the flamboyant and heavy costumes were an intentional aesthetic choice to highlight the extravagance and weight of social class in the story.

Even though the film won an Oscar for Best Black and White Art Direction, it does not play into this type of cinematography as well as Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. One character even mentions Elizabeth’s “blue” dress. It has the atmosphere of a film that perhaps should have been filmed in Technicolor – but again, it is only 1940 and we may be looking at budget restrictions. Far from being a B-movie, however, Pride and Prejudice was generally well-received by critics. While this basically good critical perception continues today, it is far from any Top 100 lists or suggested film school viewing. It is the kind of film where people who automatically love old black and white movies, as well as people who automatically hate old black and white movies, will have their existing prejudices affirmed.

            After playing Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Mr. Rochester (sort of) in Rebecca, Laurence Olivier is back as another literary heartthrob: Mr. Darcy. While he has his moments, this is one of his relatively weaker performances. Sometimes he goes a bit far with the stoic and distant role to the point where he seems to be channeling Keanu Reeves from the future.

            Mr. Darcy’s role is somewhat undermined, anyway, since Lizzie’s main conflict is with Caroline Bingley (Frieda Inescort). In contrast to the ditzy Bennetts, Caroline’s persona is that of a low-voiced, stuck-up, stereotypical Old Hollywood siren.

            While Caroline Bingley takes comfort in her social sophistication and being above “the rustics,” Lizzie Bennett (Greer Garson, Mrs. Miniver) is a strong and independent woman. In 1940, this means a prototype of Rosie the Riveter, energetic and able to outscore Mr. Darcy in an archery match. “To be refined you have to be dead,” she tells Caroline as she shoots. “There’s no one more dignified than a mummy.” There is definitely a black dress/white dress morality here – Caroline and Lady Catherine wear dark clothing, while the other ladies wear lighter colors.

            The film has other instances of content that varies from the original book. One reason for this is that the script was based most directly on the stage play for the book more so than the book itself. Part of the content changed also included modifications to fit the Hays Code. Since the Production Code forbade negative portrayals of clergy, Mr. Collins was changed from a preacher to a random “pudding-face” whom the sisters have seen for the first time. Other content is to fit the slapstick humor of Old Hollywood comedies: Kitty and Lydia get drunk on punch, Darcy “saves” Lizzie from being chased by Mr. Collins during outdoor games, and Lady Catherine trips on things before confronting Lizzie. Together with the jaunty, happy music, the content serves to create a very light and comedic interpretation of Pride and Prejudice. Everything is light and happy; one does not get the sense that the Bennett sisters are in any serious financial danger. All the girls get paired up at the end: even Kitty gets her own officer, and Mary lands another music nerd. There is a little bit of satire, but it tends to be on the nose and less interesting.

            Another “old Hollywood” comic scene shows the doctor diagnosing Jane with some intimidating big words. Bingly translates it to Jane in plain English: she has a simple head cold. This serves not only as part of the humor, but to reinforce the theme about the relativity of words. In another exchange, Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth that honor and dignity should go without saying – contrasting himself with the deceptive Mr. Wickham. It is possible that the “blue” dress remark in the black-and-white film might have been intentional after all.

            The film’s most noticeable variation is its ending and its interpretation of Lady Catherine. A squawking parrot and breaking vases herald her entrance to confront Lizzie Bennett, signaling that she is not to be taken very seriously. After their argument, Lady Catherine steps outside, away from Lizzie’s sight, and cues Mr. Darcy about the exchange and Lizzie’s obvious affection so he can propose to her. “What you need is a woman who will stand up to you,” she says. “I think you have found her.”

            While this take on Lady Catherine is a stretch, it does not actually contradict the book – where Lady Catherine somehow knew about Mr. Darcy’s plans to propose, and where Mr. Darcy somehow showed up soon afterward, apparently confident that Lizzie will receive him. Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is about questioning first impressions based on limited knowledge. Darcy is exonerated from his apparent snobbery directly in the text. The film opens up the possibility that Lady Catherine, traditionally perceived as the villain, is herself unfairly judged by the readers – that she is a behind-the-scenes ally in the story apart from the information directly given in the words of the text.

            The 1940 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice has some humorous moments and gives the audience some themes to think about, but overall, the execution is nothing exceptional and the tone is very light. By itself, the film is a minor classic. As an adaptation, it wants much of the original’s hard-hitting satire. While today’s readers may perceive Austen’s novel as a polite book for polite people, it was sharp and controversial for its time – something this movie seems to have missed.

 

Sources:

Internet Movie Database

New York Times (http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/39130/Pride-and-Prejudice/overview)

Rebecca (1940)

I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca for the first time when I was in middle school, long before I had anything resembling good taste. The memory of the film stuck with me enough to later put it on my “Facebook favorites” when I first signed up for the site a little less than halfway through college. I read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for the first time when I was a junior in high school – not because it was required, but because I was one of those literary nerds or angsty fangirls (take your pick) who devoured it for its entertainment value. At the time, I didn’t make the connection between them. But Jane’s drawing and Rochester’s mysteriousness seemed awfully familiar.

            Rebecca, listed on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 best movies and consistently hovering in the Internet Movie Database’s user-voted Top 250, is most directly based on Daphne DuMaurier’s 1938 novel of the same name. The novel, in turn, was inspired by Jane Eyre.

            In terms of simple plot and character similarities, the unnamed narrator – like Jane Eyre – is a much-maligned young woman who marries a brooding, rich older man with a dark past. The scene where the nameless narrator meets Maxim DeWinter for the first time while dissuading him from committing suicide echoes Jane Eyre where the title character helps Rochester get on his horse. Both female protagonists come at odds with a disturbing servant; while Grace Poole in the original Jane Eyre is only a MacGuffin, Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca is truly evil. The mysterious and somewhat spooky house is haunted by a forbidden room and the husband’s past marriage – to Bertha the madwoman in the original Jane Eyre, and to the title character in Rebecca. The first Mrs. De Winter serves as a conglomeration of Bertha, Blanche, and Celine Varens. Like Bertha, she turns up as a plot point to be a legal impediment to the main characters’ union. Both stories end with the mansion destroyed by fire.

            One of the most important aspect of film adaptations, however, is to recreate the feel of the original source material. Rebecca won Best Picture at the 13^th Academy Awards along with Best Black and White Cinematography for George Barnes’s work. (As an interesting aside, it was also nominated for best Black and White Art Direction, but lost to Pride and Prejudice.) Like the previous year’s Wuthering Heights, it technically had the option of using color, but it was a story best told in haunting shades of gray. And Alfred Hitchcock, the “master of suspense” whose films are known for atmospheric style, mystery, and sexual tension, was a great match to direct a story inspired by Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson – in their roles as the second Mrs. DeWinter, Maxim DeWinter, and Mrs. Danvers, respectively – are very convincing, and all received Oscar nominations for their acting.

            Watching this film again for the first time in years, I remembered why I loved it so much. The atmosphere of smoke and fog takes the viewer into the gothic romance. The shot of waves crashing against the rocks below the cliff has become one of the iconic scenes of classic cinema, even parodied in Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety.

            Laurence Olivier plays a tired and worn-out Rochester analogue – someone who wants true beauty and happiness but is trapped in the artificiality that comes with his social class. He does have a bit of what we would call an anger management problem, and he would probably tick off several of the warning signs on the Heartless Bitches’ Red Flags List. His relationship with his timid second wife is one of those Do-Not-Try-This-At-Home screen romances that are very convincing on film but would not look as good in real life. For all this, however, he never denigrates the woman whom others see as easy target to pick on. He loves her for herself, and they have great chemistry. This love is hidden behind a gruff and somewhat uptight surface, but at the same time it is very obvious and real. He is serious and haunted by his dark past, but nowhere near as witty as the original Rochester.

            For that matter, the second Mrs. DeWinter is also less witty than Jane. She marks marks an even more significant departure from her inspiration. This is not to say she isn’t an interesting character. Her consistent strengths are having “kindness and sincerity and modesty,” as described in the film. She is the plain Everywoman who finds herself in a hostile new world. Her flaw is her timidity, which she eventually overcomes toward the end as she starts to assert herself: “I am Mrs. DeWinter now!” However, unlike Jane who places morality and the order of law above her feelings and loyalty to Mr. Rochester, Mrs. DeWinter follows along in the cover-up to save Maxim from the legal repercussions of Rebecca’s demise. She does not even actively collaborate – she is literally just along for the ride in this scene.

            While Jane Eyre is the story of an already confident woman struggling to be recognized as herself – the title name – Rebecca is about a nameless woman trying not to be assimilated into the title name – someone else’s identity. When she comments that Monte Carlo is artificial, her employer Edith Van Hopper (a very loose equivalent of Mrs. Reed) chides her for being “too forward.” She speaks her mind, rather than saying what others want her to say or being what others want her to be. Like Jane, she is an artist, and she sees her husband for who he really is. Maxim finds her sketching him in one scene, similar to the famous “Do you find me attractive” exchange in the original Charlotte Bronte novel.

            The DeWinter mansion Manderley, like Thornfield Hall, is “haunted” by the first wife. Unlike Bertha, though, Rebecca is no secret. Mrs. Danvers is very protective of the first wife’s memory, haunting Joan Fontaine’s character to the point of tempting her to suicide in one scene. Like Blanche Ingram in the original, the late Rebecca serves as a superficially beautiful foil to the protagonist, prompting her to compare herself negatively against her rival. The visually overwhelming film captures the subtext of Jane Eyre where the title character loves Rochester while knowing his past full of glamorous women – the painful awareness that she is apparently not his “type.” Rebecca is the ideal woman contemporary to the film’s era, with “breeding, brains, and beauty,” yet “incapable of love or tenderness or decency.” Hitchcock and DeMaurier's interpretation of Jane Eyre is pitting the real woman against the ideal woman.

            Film versions of Jane Eyre have tended to either over-emphasize the gothic suspense elements over characters (like the 1944 version), or focus on the romance and beauty while playing down the suspense and horror (like the 1996 version). Except for the noticeable lack of a consistently active protagonist, ironically, Rebecca captures the feel of Jane Eyre better than any direct adaptation.

Sources:

Daphne Du Maurier Society (http://www.dumaurier.org)

Internet Movie Database

Sparknotes

Wuthering Heights (1939)

 Wuthering Heights, the book, is a dark story of disturbed personalities and intergenerational cruelty in the name of thwarted passion. Wuthering Heights, the 1939 movie, is an old-fashioned silver screen love story played straight – conveniently ending halfway through Emily Brontë’s book before Heathcliff unquestionably crosses the line between “bad boy” and all-out vengeful villain.

That said, though, this adaptation by the prolific director William Wyler (Ben Hur, Mrs. Miniver) is a great film and the forgotten orphan brother among other titles in a year that produced some of the most widely recognized classics in cinema. Its competitors for Best Picture in the 12^th Academy Awards included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, and the winner, Gone With the Wind. The latter was another scenic, swooning romance about a pouty heroine, the rebellious hero who sweeps her off her feet, and the tame siblings who come between them; both were also adaptations of novels by female authors.

 This version of Wuthering Heights, in fact, could only have been told in black and white – not only to maintain the stormy atmosphere (which it does masterfully), but to explore the themes as interpreted by the director and screenwriters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. With only 104 minutes to adapt a highly nuanced classic novel and all its possible topics, this film focuses on class conflict and identity as expressed in darkness and lightness. Catherine and Heathcliff’s original home, Wuthering Heights, is always shown in a depressing shade of gray while the tame and wealthy Thrushcross Grange is always whitewashed.

Catherine’s dream about being cast from heaven is directly related in social class terms when she expresses her discontent with Wuthering Heights: “It would be heaven to escape from this disorderly and comfortless place.” She refers to Edgar and Isabella as “the Linton angels.” In another scene, Edgar reassures her that “Heaven is bounded by these four walls.” Cathy, similarly, wears gray as her true self and Heathcliff’s lover on the moors; her dress is almost always white when she associates herself with the Lintons. In the afterlife, she and Heathcliff are back in their dark gray clothes.

While the original novel leaves Heathcliff’s time away up to interpretation, William Wyler’s film explicitly states that the character returned rich from America – both as a patriotic nod and as a way of reinforcing themes of class. At the time the story takes place, the fledgeling United States was well-known for having a more flexible class system than England.

One has to remember that many of the classics were basically summer popcorn movies when they were released – this was especially true in the wake of the Great Depression when cinema was a way for people to escape and perhaps indirectly bring the questions about the nature of class and money when so much wealth and status was lost overnight. Gone With the Wind portrayed the aristocratic Southern culture where the hierarchy of race and class was justified as the natural, divine order. The film based on Margaret Mitchell’s book ends with Scarlett O’Hara surviving and taking strength in Tara, her old plantation. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, presents social class as something unnatural and destructive, with comparisons of wealth to “heaven” being ironic. Catherine dies at the end; she and Heathcliff are presented as elemental humans who would have been happy if they had just stayed on the moors, where they are their own king and queen, away from the artificial order of Thrushcross Grange. And while Scarlett realizes that her marriage should have been more important than her overly idealized feelings for Ashley, Catherine’s forbidden passion for Heathcliff – finally fulfilled in the afterlife – is presented as more real than her mortal marriage.

Overall, the characterization shows this romanticized interpretation of the novel, glossing away any indication that the characters had other problems besides social class. Supporting characters are heavily tamed with their original quirks taken away: Nelly is soft-spoken and sentimental, unlike the novel’s original tell-it-like-it-is guardian of common sense. When Heathcliff and Cathy first see the Linton siblings, they are hosts of a polite dance party rather than immature crybabies throwing tantrums. Joseph has become nice and normal. Would-be rescuer Isabella (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is well-acted and well-interpreted, transforming from naïve beauty queen to the worn-out wife of Heathcliff. Their relationship, however, is not as abusive as in the novel – or if it is, the abuse takes place off screen. The movie goes out of its way to make sure Heathcliff isn’t too bad.

Heathcliff’s character, played by Lawrence Olivier (Rebecca, Hamlet) in an Oscar-nominated performance, has the most dramatic re-interpretation. He is much more sympathetic, especially as a child. The scene where young Heathcliff and Hindley are fighting over a horse has their roles reversed from the original novel: Hindley brattily demands to have Heathcliff’s animal, rather than the other way around. His presentation is that of an innocent who becomes vengeful and somewhat violent later on. With his puppy-eyed intensity and raw passion, it is easy to see why he was a heartthrob of his era.

Catherine, played by Merle Oberon (The Dark Angel, The Scarlet Pimpernel), is a character split between two identities. In one scene, after returning from the Lintons, she stares at her reflection in the mirror. Taking off her fancy white dress, she runs out to meet Heathcliff in her normal clothes, saying, “This is me now.”

Yet she changes back into the white dress, saying, “I have a wonderful brain. It makes me superior to myself” – even though her body language contradicts her words.

Throughout the film, she keeps waffling back and forth about her true identity. “There was a strange curse… that kept me from being myself,” she tells Edgar. “Or at least from being what I wanted to be. Living in heaven.”

“I’m not the Cathy that was,” she says to Heathcliff in her first return from the Lintons. “I’m somebody else.”

Heathcliff retorts, “Not even you, Cathy, can come between us.”

Merle Oberon brings her personal experience to Cathy’s tortured presence. Being familiar with this actress’s life story adds an extra dimension to not only analyzing but also empathizing with her performance. 1939 saw the first actor of color to win an Oscar (Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind), but the best opportunities and starring roles were reserved almost exclusively for white actors. Oberon was pressured to hide her biracial heritage, claiming Australia rather than India as her birthplace. Some of the stories include that she claimed her mother was her housemaid, and that a rich boyfriend broke up with her upon realizing she was half Indian. Color photographs of her later in life show her real skin tone, but the lighting and makeup of old movies like Wuthering Heights show her to be almost literally white.

The film’s recognition as a classic continues to have a mixed legacy among modern critics. In 1998, the American Film Institute included Wuthering Heights in its list of Top 100 movies; however, it was removed from the updated list in 2007. Even so, during that same year, the film was finally inducted into the National Film Registry for preservation. Wilder’s version of Wuthering Heights is not necessarily the best adaptation – critics often point to surrealist Luis Buñuel’s Abismos de Pasion as both the better film and the better representation of the book itself. But while Buñuel’s 1954 version is hard to find, the 1939 Wuthering Heights is available to watch for free on Hulu. Film buffs and Brontë fans alike would find it worth checking out.

 

 

Sources:

American Film Institute

Hulu (ww.hulu.com)

Internet Movie Database

National Film Registry Preservation Board

The introductory post...

So my name is Rachelle and I am just about to be graduate with a B.A. in Cinema and Media Arts at Biola University in southern California. Screenwriting was my main area of study, but I am also into animation and -- partly thanks to my senior year doing movie reviews for the student newspaper --film criticism.

I set up this blog as part of a project for Biola's Torrey program on adaptations of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. But I'll probably keep posting other random film stuff once this is done.

So if you know me... or even if you don' t know me... feel free to leave a comment. Just don't try to spam sell me anything because it's an interesting time to be graduating and, yeah, I have no money :P