terrible movie

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I watched this film on YouTube just recently and I was ready to really enjoy it.
While I thought that Joan Fontaine did a superb job next to most of the supporting players, it was Orson Welles with his fake nose and forced deep speaking that totally ruined it for me!
I found him really annoying! It seemed to me as if he thought the whole story was all about Rochester and nobody else!
It's so very obvious that this was not his kind of film, a woman's picture!
And how they were exaggerating in hiding his facial flaws with shadows and with the beard in the end was quite pathetic!
If only Laurence Olivier had played Rochester in this version! I think he would have been just perfect!

Yes, I was disappointed too and loved the 2006 version so much better! Not only is Joan Fontaine not the right choice for Jane, but they made her up to look like the Hollywood movie star that she is since they can't have her looking plain, and then they have her act as though Jane is meek, scared and says always the right thing to Rochester as though she is just trying to please him. And they cut out lots of the story, especially so that Orson Welles is in it most of the time!

This ran on TCM the other night, and after DVR'ing it I just got around to watching it last night. We enjoyed it immensely. I thought both Fontaine and Welles were great. The issue of whether Fontaine was too attractive for the role was, in THIS adaptation (perhaps as compared to the book itself) not really an issue, imo. The reason is I think that this version tends to make us see what is described as Jane's plainness as really a combination of a lack of self confidence on her part (about her appearance, if not her steadfastness in other respects) that was caused and reinforced by the plainness of her dress and social station. Jane after all had literally no prior experience before leaving Lowood of being attractive to men.

Rochester on the other hand saw her as attractive from the first time he met her, and in that sense Fontaine was perfect for this role.

The actor who played Brockleburst was almost laughably over the top, until one considers that in real life there are in fact people who are so cruel and hypocritical. In short even he did not play the role to a point of implausibility.

What was great about the film I think was how it showed Rochester's own experience, his own understanding of the hypocrisy of how others would blame him for his wife's insanity, or even somewhat less than that seek to exclude him from their own circles as if he was somehow infected by that insanity, made him question conventional social perceptions. Having done so and in the process of doing so experiencing the superiority of Jane's own personal qualities, his going against those social conventions and in choosing Jane was compelling.

On one level it is just another love story, but this certainly had its particularities, if not outright bizarre elements, both in the book and htis adaptation. But... I think the enduring value of the story itself, and also this adaptation, lies in understanding why Rochester was drawn to Jane.

Why Jane is drawn to him, on the other hand, is somewhat more problematic, both in the book and this film. I have a hard time avioding the thought that Jane knew no better due to lack of experience, but it is what it is, and given who she was, her interest in and love for Rochester is, as played by Fontaine, quite appealing.