Jane Eyre (1996)

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli is famous for specializing in adaptations of classic literature, especially Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew. Also a devout Christian, he directed the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth and Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a biopic of St. Francis. As a director of adaptations, he is definitely familiar with other interpretations of the same source material – like the famous 1944 Orson Welles version of Jane Eyre. Watching this film, it is obvious that Zeffirelli, as the director and co-writer with Hugh Whitemore, is not only adapting and interpreting Charlotte Brontë’s novel, but creating points and counterpoints to the older film. While the 1944 version focused on the gothic and grotesque elements, his 1996 version focuses on the beauty and elegance of the story.

            In a nod to the 1944 version, Helen and the girl in trouble for curly hair are one and the same character. Confronted with the absurdity of punishing a child for a natural trait, Mr. Brocklehurst retorts with a similar line: “I am here to correct nature.”

Zeffirelli takes the scene further. “Why should you punish her for the way God made her hair?” challenges Jane. Ordered to fetch the scissors, she reluctantly obeys, but lets her own hair down next to Helen. The next scene shows them both with short hair. While this content is not in the book, it visually shows their bond in a way that reflects the spirit of the novel.

            Unlike the 1944 version, where the school is defined by the sinister Brocklehurst, Zeffirelli’s Lowood has more true Christian influence. Grown up, Jane (Charlotte Gainsbourg, I’m Not There) fondly says goodbye to Miss Templeton before going off to see new horizons. When she arrives at Thornfield, it is a beautiful and lush place, and Mrs. Fairfax is a cheerful hostess. A hollow wind accompanies the line, “If there was a ghost at Thornfield Hall, that would be its haunt.” Otherwise, the atmosphere is pretty and colorful – not gothic at all. Even Mr. Rochester (William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman) is actually pretty friendly in the scene where he falls off his horse and meets Jane for the first time. In other scenes, he tries to talk tough, but it is obvious from the start that he is a teddy bear. This sensitive 1996 Rochester is a very different interpretation from the more hardcore Orson Welles version. Charlotte Gainsbourg herself delivers an OK performance as a compassionate and softspoken if somewhat bland Jane – neither bad nor outstandingly good. However, the two leads have great chemistry when they are together. “You have me entirely,” says Rochester when he catches her sketching him.

            It is not as though Zeffirelli is incapable of doing an unpleasant scene. The opening shots of young Jane in the red room are actually quite scary, helped by some jarring editing. Later on, however, the prominent color red is used in much more benign situations, like the color of Rochester’s coat, the color of Rochester’s chess pieces, and the color of the flowers at Thornfield. Red is an unsettling color, but also the color associated with love and passion – so Jane must take all of life. She cannot have passionate love without risk of danger.

            The most notable difference between this adaptation and the early one is the treatment of Bertha’s character. While the 1944 film plays it up for horror, Zeffirelli humanizes Rochester’s first wife. Instead of laughing like the Wicked Witch of the West, Bertha’s voice is more realistic. Zeffirelli’s film is also is the only version I have seen so far to have a black Mr. Mason – highlighting the novel’s possibly racist subtext which has been a source of controversy for modern critics. When Rochester finally must tell the truth to Jane about his wife, he reveals a Bertha who is more sympathetic than the 1944 monster and – to be fair – the source novel itself. She is shy with dark curly hair and white dress – she clearly used to be pretty, and now is just tired and unkempt. No one mentions her having a wild, sinful past.

Mrs. Reed is another threatening character who is downplayed in this film. In the opening is well-dressed and smug but underwhelming. When she summons Jane to come to her deathbed, she admits she was wrong – a blatant contradiction of the novel where she was self-righteous to the bitter end in a very purposeful subversion of the sentimental deathbed scenes in fiction of the time.

Saint John Rivers, on the other hand, does not disappoint in spite of having only a couple of glossed-over short scenes. Actor Samuel West makes the best of his little time on film. His screen presence alone captures the basic essence of the character: blonde and handsome and ambitious and good, but also somewhat cold and uptight – a bad match for Jane in what he himself admits would be a loveless marriage.

Browsing comments on YouTube and IMDB message boards, it seems like this is one of the less popular versions of Jane Eyre. I suppose I am in the minority for actually liking it a lot. This movie is neither played for horror nor self-consciously educational. The cinematography was gorgeous, the score was hauntingly beautiful, and love story was sweet and believable with a lot of compassion for the supporting characters. The director’s devout Christian faith shows through in the imagery and dialogue. While the 1944 version took a dark angle on it, the 1996 film has a more uplifting and humanistic angle – the equally important other side of the coin, emphasizing the “romance” part of “gothic romance.” 

However, I can see where criticism of this film comes from. Early in the film, showing Adele how to draw, Jane tells her, “The shadows are as important as the light.” Franco Zeffirelli’s version seems to overlook the shadows that are very necessary for a balanced interpretation of Jane Eyre. Religious hypocrites hardly do significant damage in this film. Mr. Brocklehurst fades out of sight, and Mrs. Reed repents like the easy sentimental stories that Charlotte Brontë was specifically trying to avoid. In short, no one is really allowed to be bad. While Franco Zeffirelli brings much sensitivity, beauty, humanism, and some much-needed production value to the conversation of Jane Eyre adaptations, the film needs a stronger sense of evil to be more compelling – and to stay true to the basic spirit of the book. 

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)

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