MovieChat Forums > Pride and Prejudice (1940) Discussion > This adaptation is a travesty

This adaptation is a travesty

posted 15 years ago by DWRead201
17 replies | jump to latest

Thirty-something Laurence Olivier is too old to play twenty-five-year-old Darcy. Even less believable is thirty-something-more Greer Garson as the twenty-year-old Elizabeth Bennet.

These miscast roles are the first indication that the producer cared more about the box office than a faithful presentation of the book. It is followed by unthinkable changes to the plot.

A two-hour movie just can't do justice to this great work of literature. I recommend the two television miniseries in 1980 (Masterpiece Theater) and 1995 (A&E). They are beautifully staged and faithful to the text and period.

[–] Julie-30 15 years ago

The book's Darcy wasn't 25. He was 28.

That said, I love this movie dearly. It's not the book, but it is a product of its time. Greer Garson is too old for Elizabeth, but she does a spectacular job of portraying the character. I think she really understands what Elizabeth is all about.

[–] HarlowMGM 15 years ago

Thirty-something Laurence Olivier is too old to play twenty-five-year-old Darcy.

Both of the actors who played Darcy in the two versions you admire were in their thirties as well. David Rintoul was only one year younger than Oliver when he played Darcy at 32 and Colin Firth was actually older , being 35.

And anyway what's the big deal? Are they actors or cheese? Laurence Oliver remains the yardstick to measure Darcys by - and Greer Garson was splendid as Elizabeth. Keira Knightley in the most recent adaption may have been actually 20 but at no point did she suggest to me the burning intelligence of Lizzie just yet another silly Bennet sister.

[–] Julie-30 15 years ago

I disagree that Olivier was a great Darcy. Austen's Darcy is not a flirt, but Olivier's Darcy is an outrageous flirt. In the book, we are as unaware as Elizabeth is that he's in love with her, but with Olivier's Darcy, we're aware pretty quickly of his feelings.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Tristan_Booth 8 years ago

From HarlowMGM: "Keira Knightley in the most recent adaption may have been actually 20 but at no point did she suggest to me the burning intelligence of Lizzie just yet another silly Bennet sister."

Wow. Seriously? Two of her younger sisters were very "silly" of course, but Keira Knightley's Elizabeth was certainly intelligent, and perfect in my opinion. As for this forum's film, I agree with virtually everyone else that Garson was too old, but Olivier seemed fine. His Darcy was actually nicer than Matthew MacFadyen's, but the 2005 version will always be my favorite.

[–] aciolino 15 years ago

Please see my post: "Will you people please forget the novel"????

Thank you.

[–] Cine-Verite 11 years ago

Or, forget the movie; please read the novel.

Instead of this spotty interpretation, watch 1980/1995 versions, both of which are faithful to Austen's work and well cast. If this movie had no connection with the novel, "Pride and Prejudice," Aciolino, the movie could have been called anything. Like, "Rural Life in Regency Great Britain" or some such.

The movie's title implied a relationship with the ever popular book by Jane Austen. Deal with it.

Greer Garson. Great actress; too old for this role by half. (Two years after this movie was released, she won a well-deserved Oscar for her performance in "Mrs. Miniver.")

Warning: Don't write a book report based on this movie.

[–] glass_goblin 10 years ago

If you want us to forget the movie then I suggest you get off the movie forum. This is the place for the movie and NOT the book.

[–] ClassicMovieholic 11 years ago

When will the naysayers understand the difference between cinema and literature? This movie is a great adaptation of a popular stage play. It combines the talents of the greatest masters of day day in both cinema and literature. Greer Garson and Olivier were brilliant, classically trained actors with a real sense of the dialogue, so artfully originated by Austen, but in this case, adapted in a screenplay by Aldous Huxley, one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. The supporting cast is plucked from the best of stage and screen. All, particularly the older supporting players, were consummate professionals. The Bennet Girls are well cast, and include a couple of legitimate stars of the day in addition to Greer Garson. The pacing works well, the more comic aspects of the story combine elements of Austen's rapier wit with a more physical comedy that works well on the screen. This is also the earliest popular adaptation, and sets the standard for the choreographed dance and barbed-tongue exchange that is a staple in subsequent adaptations. This movie won an Academy Award for art direction. The infamous costumes were very deliberately designed to reflect a slightly later era by Adrian, one of the best in the business. This was not a mistake, but a conscious choice. The "unforgivable" plot alterations were also conscious choices, probably made in part because of differences in the stage play, and also to emphasize comedy and a lighter tone. The movie is very affective at what it sets out to do, which is NOT to deliver the most faithful, nor the most historically believable adaptation. We have the BBC for that (and even their prevailing wisdom is not infallible in these matters).

Let us also remember that Saint Jane, while clearly a brilliant writer and satirist, was not universally critically recognized until decades after this movie was released. We owe the makers of the film for the only popular attempt to adapt Austen for the screen prior to her rediscovery by post-feminist literary critics in the 1970s.

[–] xanxei 11 years ago

Olivier was quite right for the part, I thought. He looked good and acted well, even if the alterations to Darcy's character were unfortunate to the point of undermining the very foundations of the story.

What was a travesty about this were the (awful) rewrites. It seems the novel was adapted to the stage in a time when the general public was not half so well acquainted with Austen as it is today, and the writers thought they could get away with it. (And they could, but that's very much in the past tense).

For those of us familiar with the period, it's even worse. I wouldn't mind if the rewrites were improvements or even just adequate, but each departure from Austen is glaringly historically inaccurate, crude, and straining the logic of the story.

For folks looking for a good movie version of "Pride and Prejudice", the 2005 one is quite lovely. Not perfect, a few historical glitches there too, and I'm not a fan of the casting, but it does effectively, (mostly) truly, and evocatively tell the story in question.

[–] Julie-30 11 years ago

I'm interested in knowing what "historical glitches" you are talking about?

http://currentscene.wordpress.com

[–] ClassicMovieholic 11 years ago

I'm not trying to argue that it works as a faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's book (honestly, it's closer than many literary adaptations of the day were). The point I'm trying to make is that is still works as a film. If it were a comedy written for the screen, or based on an unknown author, I think it would be considered a much more successful achievement than connected to the name "Jane Austen." No, people of the day were not as familiar with Austen's work. That's probably part of why it was so well received at the time. But I think that good players, good art direction, good (GASP!) writing...not faithful mind you, good, and the fact that it's generally entertaining also had something to do with it. It is about as good as cinema gets, even if as an adaptation of the book it could be improved.

[–] aciolino 11 years ago

Bravo! Well said!! Give the man a cigar!

But you cannot talk to these Austen-heads. They have a vision of what the novel is and what anything based on that novel SHOULD be. They cannot separate as you say, cinema from literature, or their vision of Darcy from Olivier. It is wonder that they enjoy anything given the absurd barometer with which they measure.

[–] aciolino 11 years ago

“Any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen,”
~ Mark Twain

[–] ClassicMovieholic 11 years ago

I appreciate your support, aciolino, but I would like it noted that I have never intended to deride Austen's work by defending the film. I am a fan of the novel and the 1940 film, and only wish that people could separate them enough to appreciate the best aspects of both.

I am familiar with the Mark Twain quote, but have been hesitant to post it here for fear it would be taken the wrong way. The real truth in it lies not in its sting at Austen's value as a writer, but in its illumination of critical attitudes toward Austen in times past. It is hard for us to believe in our era when she has gained a cult-like reverence as the pop-culture buy in to high literature, that her acceptance by serious critics is a fairly recent phenomenon. In my opinion, she deserves her place in the canon, but the quote illustrates just how shallow her footing in the canon is. People knew about Austen, people read Austen, but she was not universally established as one of the great literary giants until the post-feminist era. That is part of what makes the 1940 film such a priceless cultural artifact. It is one of our only windows into the attitudes of audiences in an era before Jane Austen was a cultural phenomenon. In that respect, it is almost a more balanced adaptation than the recent ones, relying on its own inherent values as a movie rather than capitalizing on the marketing sensation that is today's "Jane Austen" industry.

That being said, I hold her work in much higher estimation than you do. People are so quick to trivialize her work as "romance" (the fans are even more guilty of this than her harshest critics), when in fact she couldn't be more distanced from romanticism in the literary sense. What there is of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Romantic movement in her novels is used ironically as self-parody. She deserves credit as a satirist, but gets it as a weaver of love stories. While she deals with themes of love, she does not do so in a romantic way. Really, her style heralds the coming wave of realism. She was doing incisive, psychological studies of the human character and class distinctions thirty years before Stendhal or Balzac in France, and forty years before Dickens in England. And in many ways her work is sharper, more acute, and unadorned by florid style or melodramatic devices than any of those later (male) writers.

The following pretty much sums up how I think Jane Austen's popular success has paradoxically undermined her literary merit. You should enjoy it.

http://femmedeslettres.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/screen-shot-2011-10 -04-at-8-21-30-pm1.png

[–] nammage 10 years ago

What did it for me was I found no chemistry between Garson and Olivier; sort of like watching the lack of chemistry of Bogart and Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina". I first gave this film a 7/10 but watching it a second time I changed it to 6/10.

-Nam

I'm on the road less traveled...

[–] ClassicMovieholic 10 years ago

To each his own, I guess. Sabrina is one of my favorite romantic comedies, and I thought Hepburn and Bogart had charming chemistry.