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Home , Benjamin Whitrow, Bride and Prejudice, Joe Wright, Longbourn, Philip French

ISSUE 40 SCREEN EDU C ATION

 Something Old, Something New ‘‘ On Screen

by Brian McFarlane

Vivat !

, I once asked students, do you think you should in the twen- Whyty-first century be readingPride and Prejudice, first published in 1813? Too often, the exam answers I’d read seemed to suggest there would be very high-minded replies to such a ques- tion, replies to do with Jane Austen’s moral insights, the wisdom of choosing marriage partners with care, and the like. Nothing much wrong with that certainly, but it does seem to me that there are few novels which less deserve the stultifying reverence of the ‘great classic’ treatment – and that might ap- ply to filmmakers as well as students.

Perhaps it doesn’t sound serious enough to come right out and say that this novel is enormous fun, that one might value it because it is wonderful- ly witty and entertaining as it goes about its more

serious business. There is razor sharpness about ISSUE 40 Austen’s wit that is equalled in English literature, in

my view, only by the great twentieth-century novel- SCREEN EDU ist Ivy Compton-Burnett, but you don’t find Dame Ivy cropping up on Year 12 syllabuses or on multiplex C screens or lounge-room plasmas, do you? The next ATION point to be made about Pride and Prejudice, then, to account for its enduring popularity (not just the niche market there might be for Compton-Burnett), is its 

insets from above: Pride and prejudice (1940); Pride and prejudice (1940); Pride and prejudice (1995); (2005); Pride and prejudice (2005) less serious. I’d go their work, let us look briefly at what some further and say that of these ‘important things’ are and how all the best comedy is the novel presents them. This is a nov- serious. el about money and marriage, about why people marry each other, and the factors, Mind you, Austen herself may be part- frequently economic, which complicate ly to blame for confusing solemnity and progress towards marriage and make for seriousness in regard to this novel when difficulty within it. For Austen, while it may she mischievously wrote: ‘The work is be wrong to marry for money, it is foolish rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; to marry without it. But in spite of the un- sheer accessibility. Of all the famous nine- it wants shade; it wants to be stretched satisfactory marriage with which the nov- teenth-century novels, it may be true to out here and there with a long chapter of el opens (Mr and Mrs Bennet’s) and the say, none makes so immediate an impact, sense, if it could be had, if not, of solemn, two unwise ones that occur in the course none so easily delights with its sustained specious nonsense.’1 It is light, bright of the book (Lydia and Wickham’s and wit at the same time as it renders exact- and sparkling but the notion that it ‘wants Charlotte and Collins’s), there is never any ly the emotional lives of its characters. We shade’, that it is short on serious matters, doubt here (or in any of Austen’s novels) shouldn’t assume that what is amusing or is surely ironic. We don’t need an explicit that marriage is the desirable end, that it ISSUE 40 easily entertaining is a lesser piece of work commentary ‘of sense’, let alone ‘solemn, constitutes an arrangement in which peo-

SCREEN EDU than a novel more obviously serious in its specious nonsense’, to make us feel that ple can find fulfilment. Virtually everything approach or one that is more obviously important things are going on in it; in fact, of significance that happens inPride and tackling Major Issues. Pride and Prejudice some of the most important things that Prejudice has to do with marriages, and it C ATION is basically serious in its approach, and it can go on in a novel. is Elizabeth and Darcy’s unsteady move- is concerned with major issues, but its be- ment towards marriage which provides the ing so doesn’t make it less immense fun, In order to see how the latest adaptors of novel’s central narrative line, a ‘line’ intro-  and its being immense fun doesn’t make it this most popular novel have gone about duced in the brilliant opening chapter. tance for the light they Darcy. Like all MGM pro- shed on the central pair. ductions of the period, and There isn’t space here to especially its literary adap- examine in detail the struc- tations, this is a high-gloss af- tural skill of the novel in this fair, in which everyone always ap- respect, but it is worth examining pears immaculate. Though it works, how what happens up to Darcy’s first pro- more or less, as a romantic comedy (de- posal tends to push them further apart, scribed by the New York Times as ‘a merry while the process of decreasing the dis- manhunt’), it broadens much of the com- tance between them begins shortly after edy, turning Mrs Bennet, Collins and Lady and reaches its consummation only in his Catherine into mere caricatures. It also second, successful proposal. And anoth- sentimentalizes Austen: ‘I can still dream,’ er (related) structural element is the recur- purrs Jane wistfully, when she thinks she’s ring motif of arrivals and departures and lost Bingley, and at the end Lady Cather- then more arrivals. Austen’s sense of nar- ine is cast as an unlikely fairy-godmother rative rhythm is so sure that she knows who brings Darcy and Elizabeth together. I exactly when a new arrival at one place or don’t want to suggest that the film fails be- cause it is not being ‘true’ to Jane Austen, only that I think it works on a less rigor- Pride and Prejudice is basically serious in its ous, less stimulating level, that it settles for approach, and it is concerned with major issues, the conventional Hollywood manoeuvres, and that, as a romantic comedy, it isn’t in but its being so doesn’t make it less immense fun the same class as several others of its pe- riod, such as The Awful Truth (Leo McCa- The famous first sentence of this opening other is necessary to maintain the novel’s ry, 1937) or The Philadelphia Story (George chapter, ‘It is a truth universally acknowl- emotional momentum. All these arrivals Cukor, 1940). edged, that a single man in possession of and departures have the effect of expand- a good fortune must be in want of a wife’, ing the narrative, of giving it a richer tex- Until 2003, this was the only film version of introduces the twin ideas of marriage and ture, chiefly because of how they bear on Pride and Prejudice, but there have been money, and their connection, which will the novel’s preoccupations with marriage six television versions: in 1938, 1952 (with underlie the whole novel. There is irony and money. Peter Cushing, later to be famous as a in the word ‘must’ but Austen is also un- Hammer horror star, as Darcy), 1958, 1967 flinching about the connection: whatever On screens large and small (with Australian Lewis Fiander as Dar- single men of ‘good fortune’ might have in cy), 1980 and, most famously, 1995. Only mind, there is not much alternative for sin- Given the novel’s popularity, it is perhaps the latter two are currently available on

gle young women of a certain class and of surprising that it was only once in the DVD or video. From the 1980 version, Eliz- ISSUE 40 limited means. If the Bennets’ marriage – twentieth century adapted to the screen. abeth Garvie’s sprightly Elizabeth Ben- of an intelligent man to a silly wife – sets This was Robert Z. Leonard’s handsome net and Moray Watson’s sturdy Mr Ben- SCREEN EDU up a negative standard of reference, eve- MGM version of 1940, starring Greer Gar- net, less cruel than Jane Austen’s but pos- rything else works towards tracing and son, then at the start of her serious war- sibly more believable, stay in the mind, C defining the nature of the central relation- time fame, as Elizabeth, and Laurence Ol- but it is the 1995 miniseries that any new ATION ship, between Elizabeth and Darcy. That ivier, already famous on stage and making film will be measured against. The six ep- is, the other pairings, interesting in their headway on screen as Heathcliff in Wuth- isodes of this TV adaptation were greeted own right, in fact acquire their real impor- ering Heights (William Wyler, 1939), as with a reverence not altogether deserved  But the film never really grabs the novel by the throat, as Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) did when it relocated Emma to LA and a world of dating and mobile phones. Instead, Bride and Prejudice tends to cling to bits of Austen, including odd lines of di- alogue, but this only exposes the empti- ness of the rest. The film seems to think that a lot of noise and colour and some appallingly banal songs (‘We’ll be friends together’, ‘Show me the way, take me to love’, etc.) will take the place of Austen’s rigour and wit, but it doesn’t work out like that, and the film, a pastiche of Bolly- wood musicals, is closer in tone to the old MGM film than to Austen. This is not to suggest that the only satisfactory version in my view. You could see why Austen pur- a ‘latter-day’ (as the US posters appar- of the novel would be one that followed ists would approve, as it follows the book ently, and wittily, announced) version that it slavishly, but more nearly the opposite: with the assiduity of someone painting by seems to have been Mormon-financed in the film would have been tougher, tight- numbers. To change metaphors, as I’ve Utah, and which, as far as I can find, has er and funnier if it had picked up the novel said elsewhere, ‘it seemed to me the work had only very limited screenings in the US and run with it. Philip French puts his fin- of an industrious bricklayer rather than an and Thailand, and on Hungarian TV. 2005, ger on the trouble when he writes: ‘Chad- architect, with one event from the novel re- though, saw the Australian release of two ha, as she has shown in her previous pic- morselessly following another, without any new films inspired by the novel: the Bolly- tures – , What’s Cook- sense of shape or structuring, without any wood extravaganza, Bride and Prejudice, ing?, – is a crowd- apparent point of view on its material’.2 It and the new British version for Working Ti- pleaser, and the chief characteristics of her is no doubt carefully researched as to pe- tle Films, which is the main subject of this new film are populist cheek and cosmo- riod authenticity, but it seemed to have essay. politan chic rather than subtle social ob- nothing to say dramatically about its ma- servation.’3 Chadha just wants us all to be terial, except perhaps that sexual attrac- Bride and Prejudice, directed by Gurind- happy rather than satisfied. tion was more potent than class or wealth er Chadha, who had a popular success – and we knew that if we’d read the nov- with the engaging but soft-centred girls- So, how hard is Austen to el, possibly even if we hadn’t. It was as if in-football comedy Bend It Like Beck- adapt? the Jane Austen Society was breathing ham (2002), has relocated Austen’s plot down its neck, waiting to seize on any di- to present-day India, with excursions to As George Bluestone, pioneer scholar of vergences from the original. Europe and the US. It begins with im- film adaptations of novels, pointed out ages of rural activities and the teem- nearly fifty years ago, the cinema is bet- Oh, I forgot to mention in the preceding ing city of Amritsar, where Darcy (Mar- ter at presenting ‘physical adventure rather paragraph that this is the version in which tin Henderson) asks his friend, the UK- than interior adventure’.4 This may help to emerged from a cooling dip in based Balraj (Naveen Andrews): ‘Where account for the screen’s tendency towards ’s river and became an instant the hell have you brought me to?’ He re- melodrama as a mode which expresses its sex symbol. Firth is actually a considera- sists the charms of the Bakshi family who conflicts in external action rather than in ble actor and deserves to be remembered are looking for wives for their four daugh- the intricacies of thought processes. for more than his torso clinging to a wet ters. The film claims to be ‘inspired’ by shirt; his playing of another Darcy, Bridg- Austen’s novel and there is minor if irrele- From this point of view, Pride and Prej- et Jones’s light-o’-love in two recent mov- vant fun in spotting parallels with the nov- udice is well-suited to filming because it ies, ought to have been seen as a parod- el and the kinds of modernization it prac- emphasizes the outer, social mores of its ic comment on his impromptu swim, but tises. The sleazy Wickham, for instance, period. It is very much concerned with so- try telling that to his legion of female fans. is now a backpacker, rather than a sol- cial life, with the conduct of relationships In fact, Darcy has always attracted impos- dier, who dishes the dirt on Darcy. Darcy in a social setting and within clear so- ISSUE 40 ing performances, and I shall later make is not an English aristocrat but an Amer- cial conventions. Such matters are read-

SCREEN EDU claims for the newest incarnation of this ican hotel magnate. When the Elizabeth ily susceptible to the camera’s lens. On role of the rich, proud, sexily seething aris- character, Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), is im- the other hand, it is ill-suited to film- tocrat. pressed with the size of Darcy’s LA ho- ing (that is, if we have in mind the tedi- C ATION tel we recall the original Elizabeth’s rueful ous idea of ‘faithful’ filming) because much The big-screen drought of adaptations of sense of what she might have been mis- of the novel depends on Elizabeth’s cen- this classic tale of love thwarted and fi- tress of when she first sees Darcy’s an- tral consciousness and this is much hard- 10 nally triumphant was broken in 2003, with cestral home, Pemberley. er to render on film. For most of the time, impose their images of people and plac- seen. This is not because it clings desper- es. Many films and TV versions of clas- ately to the novel as if that would give it re- Austen seems to sic novels go to endless pains to recreate spectability, but because it hangs togeth- be speaking through Elizabeth (‘But peo- times and places remote from present- er as an entity. There is about it the feel- ple themselves alter so much, that there day life, but ‘What was a contemporary ing that its director and screenwriter have is something new to be observed in them work for the author, who could take a worked in tandem with their other collab- forever’ or ‘I hope I never ridicule what good deal relating to time and place for orators to present a unified view of the ac- is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, granted, as requiring little or no scene- tion. It is essentially Austen’s ‘action’ but whims and inconsistencies do divert me, setting for his readers, has become a pe- it feels intelligently true to its own read- I own, and I laugh at them whenever I riod piece for the filmmaker.’5 ing of the novel and of the world in which can.’) – but not always. Clearly Elizabeth it is set. is sometimes wrong and we have to learn These are just a few of the issues relating to discriminate between these occasions to adaptation that one might have in mind As directed by Joe Wright, who has a and those when Austen wants us to identi- when considering the new film version of background in realist television drama,6 fy with Elizabeth’s views. This is something Pride and Prejudice. Certainly, it is first and written by Deborah Moggach, a nov- a novel can do more easily and subtly than and foremost a film and requires to be elist as well as screenwriter,7 the film fol- film can. This is not, however, to suggest judged as such. Equally, though, there is lows the contours of the novel’s main that film has not its own kind of, and ac- no point in pretending that we put aside events. The main arrivals in the con- cess to, subtlety or complexity; only that I all our previous knowledge about the an- fined world of , the Bennets’ suspect those are less readily at the serv- tecedent novel or earlier versions we may home, and the neighbouring village are ice of the interior life than is the case with have seen. It is most useful to have these (1) Darcy () and Bing- the novelist. in mind as part of our intertextuality: that ley (Simon Woods), the latter having tak- is, those other ‘texts’, in a variety of me- en a lease on a handsome local country On the matter of the physical appearanc- dia, which may bear on how we respond house, Netherfield; (2) the dashing soldier es of persons and places, Austen is no- to the new film. If you want to replicate Wickham (), who denigrates tably reticent. In one sense, this may be the experience you had in reading the Darcy while ingratiating himself with Eliz-

said to give the adapting filmmaker great- novel, you will be more likely to do so by abeth (); and (3) the Rev- ISSUE 40 er freedom; in another, it may mean that rereading the novel. erend Collins (), who is set readers have transferred to the screens to inherit Mr Bennet’s estate in the ab- SCREEN EDU of their own minds their particular, indi- Move over Colin Firth: the sence of a male heir. Bingley falls in love vidual idea of what Elizabeth or Darcy or with Jane Bennet (), but is

new Pride and Prejudice C Pemberley look like, and, if they are hop- persuaded by Darcy that she doesn’t re- ATION ing a film version will replicate their read- I had better be clear at the outset: for my turn his affections, and the Netherfield ing experience, they are almost certain to money, this is the most satisfying film ver- party leaves. Collins, advised to marry by be disappointed when filmmakers try to sion of Pride and Prejudice I have ever his patroness 11 (), proposes to Elizabeth who What gives Wright’s film its distinctiveness shot of the exterior, stressing its architec- refuses him, after which he applies suc- is this concern to offer a realist approach tural splendours, but once inside we are cessfully to her friend Charlotte Lucas to Austen: realist, that is, in terms of phys- struck by its grandiose, over-stuffed dé- (). After the departure of ical and social setting as well as the psy- cor, with a lavishness that seems to pre- Darcy and Collins from the scene, Eliza- chological realism of which Austen may be clude human warmth and to reflect not beth next sees Collins in the setting of his seen as the great pioneer and exemplar in so much taste as dominance. When Eliz- parsonage and Darcy in the aristocrat- English literature. In physical terms, this is abeth and the Gardiners fetch up at Dar- ic grandeur of Rosings, home of his aunt the first version of the novel where I’ve ever cy’s home, Pemberley, there is a subtle Lady Catherine, who has plans for him to had the slightest sense of Longbourn as a distinction between Rosings and Pember- marry her sickly daughter Anne. working farm. In the novel, when Mrs Ben- ley: here, the painted ceilings and frescoes net sends Jane off to Netherfield on horse- and the room full of classical statuary point This is enough of the plot to indicate both back, confident that it will rain and that to a taste which has been at the disposal how it sticks to the main comings and go- Jane will have to stay the night, Jane says of wealth but not overpowered by it. And ings of the novel and that, in fact, arrivals she’d rather go by coach, but her moth- this impression is intensified by the home- and departures remain the recurring mo- er says the horses can’t be spared: ‘They ly sincerity of the housekeeper who shows tif. Closure will require the return of Darcy are wanted on the farm, Mr Bennet, are not them around, and the light and warmth of and Bingley and the happy and just out- they?’ He replies, ‘They are wanted on the the room in which Georgiana plays the pi- come of mutually felt emotions. Screen- farm much oftener than I can get them.’9 ano. It is not surprising that when Eliza- writer Moggach notes: I quote this here, not to draw attention to beth first views its handsome exterior, man Mrs Bennet’s ingenuity but to the word and nature having so felicitously com- I tried to be truthful to the book, which has ‘farm’. As far as I recall the word is not bined, she might have pondered wistful- a perfect three-act structure, so I haven’t used in the film, but Wright and his brilliant ly on her refusal of a proposal that could changed a lot. It is so beautifully shaped production designer have made her its mistress. as a story – the ultimate romance about have established at the outset that this is a two people who think they hate each oth- farm which provides the means of support There is not space to do similar justice to er but who are really passionately in love. I for the . Elizabeth is first seen designer ’s costumes, felt, ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.’8 making her way through flapping laun- which use fashions of around 1797, when dry at the back of the sturdy farmhouse on Jane Austen wrote her first draft of the Inevitably, there is some compression which the untidy remains of breakfast are novel, then called First Impressions, be- and omission when a 300-page novel is still on the table. When we finally see the cause Joe Wright found ‘empire line dress- made into a two-hour film, and some- façade of the house, it is revealed as pleas- es … very ugly’, and so settled for a character is so briefly sketched ant, well-proportioned but not at all grand, fashions of the earlier period, where the as not to leave much impression (such as and there is throughout the film the sug- waist on dresses was lower and more flat- Wickham) and an episode (like Elizabeth’s gestion that the farming activities are never tering.11 It would be worth considering how journey with the Gardiners) will seem far away. Geese are seen through the open the variations in dress provide a further rather thinly rushed. But it is true overall back door (imagine either the glossy MGM discourse on matters of class, wealth and to say that the shape – the structure – of film or the picturesquely sanitized 1995 taste: for instance, to compare the fash- the novel has been retained for the film. BBC version even acknowledging a back ionable Miss Bingley with the more plain- door!), and a pig with formidable testicles ly-dressed Bennets or Charlotte Lucas, So too have the serious preoccupations of waddles by. The vistas of field and farm the latter’s style reflecting not merely more the novel – the connections between mar- work recall the paintings of John Consta- modest means but a plainness of demean- riage and money. Wright’s television back- ble: they are aesthetically fine but they also our and sense of very modest expecta- ground has predisposed him to adopt a serve a realist purpose. tions of life. The Assembly Rooms ball ear- realist approach to the events of the film, ly in the film brings together a number of and not to turn it into a winsome romance. On the matter of physical realism, the oth- the sorts of considerations I’ve been allud- It is very clear from the outset how im- er houses in which the action takes place ing to. It is not the usual stiffly elegant Re- portant it is for (to paraphrase the nov- are all represented with an eye to differ- gency ballroom, but a boisterous, cheer- el’s famous opening sentence, which the entiating class and personal taste, not ful place in which you could imagine an film sensibly resists using) a single young as merely decorative, as one sometimes exuberant young woman like Lydia Ben- woman of no fortune to be in want of a feels is the case in what is scornfully dis- net disporting herself. When Bingley’s par- husband. The Bennet daughters have no missed as ‘heritage filmmaking’.10 Com- ty enters, there is a heightening of the pre- prospects; Longbourn is entailed to Mr pare, for instance, the Bennets’ comforta- vailing realism as the locals step back ISSUE 40 Collins; so that it is no wonder Mrs Ben- ble, somewhat messy middle-class farm- to observe their social superiors enter-

SCREEN EDU net () is anxious. Mog- house with the graceful country house, ing. This movement seems more emblem- gach’s recognizes this and al- Netherfield, where all is light and order- atic than strictly realist, but it makes the lows Mrs Bennet to reprove Elizabeth with ly, a house which the upper-class Bingley point about the arrival of a disruptive ele- C ATION ‘When you have five daughters you’ll un- and his sister and friend might find attrac- ment very potently. The upper-class par- derstand.’ This is not a line from Austen, tive enough to lease. Turn then to the over- ty, immaculately turned out and, in the but it suggests a sympathetic understand- whelming display of wealth in Lady Cath- cases of Miss Bingley and Darcy, con- 12 ing of Mrs Bennet, who may be a fool, but erine’s mansion, Rosings. As the Collins- strained in their bearing, contrasts sharp- who does have a point. es and Elizabeth, bidden to dinner, make ly with the preceding high spirits at a low- their way there at dusk, there is a glorious er social level. When Bingley gives a ball at Netherfield, prompted by the wishes of the es Elizabeth about her family, while Darcy, has made. Just prior to this, Elizabeth has young women, it is an altogether grand- watching, is aware of her insolence, and run up the stairs of her overcrowded home er affair, and, on this occasion, Mr Collins’s her daughter Anne’s sickly pallor seems crying to everyone: ‘For once in your life importuning of Darcy and Darcy’s scarce- a by-product of so oppressive a moth- leave me alone.’ The final meeting with ly observing him point again to the ways er. Dench is far from the comic dragon Darcy represents then the overflow of pas- in which one class might behave towards played by Edna May Oliver in the old film, sionate feelings too long held in check. another. but she is formidably ruthless in pursuit of her wishes, and, though it is perhaps odd A magnificent shot of Elizabeth stand- ‘Social level’ and degrees of wealth mat- that she descends on the Bennet house at ing on a cliff in the Derbyshire Peak dis- ter very much in the world of this film and night, this can only increase the sense of trict is pictorially breathtaking, but that is the novel on which it is based. I men- her wilful intrusiveness. In my recollection, not its function. It is the climax to a series tioned Mrs Bennet’s self-justification a mo- Collins has never been other than a grov- of shots of her depicted reflectively alone, ment ago: this seems to me a legitimate elling sycophant who settles into sancti- at such a remove from her family as might extension of what Austen suggests about monious superiority on marriage. He has permit of reflection. In a climax of an- this woman. She knows, in her muddle- often been funny (see, for example, Dav- other kind, the last moments with Dar- brained way, that her daughters must mar- id Bamber in the 1995 series), but he has cy are both a romantic and a realistic cul- ry, that they need to find husbands who never been so acceptable as a three-di- mination and release, for both, of a great can support them since they have no mensional human being as he is here in deal of misdirected intelligence and sup- hope of fortunes of their own. And so does Tom Hollander’s performance. Hollander’s pressed emotion. I’m not sure one can Charlotte Lucas know this. Her role in the shortness and obsequiousness of manner ask too much more of a screen version of film is necessarily somewhat skimped, but still earn their laughs, but there is a gravity this intelligently passionate novel. it is encapsulated in two remarks which in- about this Collins that, however fleetingly, dicate her realism and the film’s: ‘Not all of can make us feel for his being pushed into Brian McFarlane is the editor of The Cine- us can afford to be romantic. I’m 27 years marriage, almost as much as we feel for ma of Britain and Ireland (2005) published old and have no prospects,’ she tells Eliz- Charlotte’s having to accept him. by Wallflower Press, . The second abeth in extenuation of her accepting the edition of his Encyclopedia of British Film absurd Collins’s proposal; and later, when In spite of Wright’s insistence on real- (Methuen/) was pub- Elizabeth visits her at her chilly parsonage, ism as the guiding principle of the film, I’d lished in September 2005. • ‘Oh, Elizabeth, it’s such a pleasure to run still want to claim that, at key moments, it my own home.’ These heartfelt remarks achieves a very affecting romantic deep- Endnotes are typical of the film’s attention to matters ening of tone. In particular, the progress 1 Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra, of social and psychological realism. of the Elizabeth–Darcy relationship needs Thursday 4 February 1813, in Jane Austen’s to command our attention and emotion- Letters, Deirdre LeFaye (ed.), University In other matters of character realism, it al commitment. The secondary love story Press, Oxford, 1995, p.203. is worth noting how the film deals with – that between Bingley and Jane – is less 2 Brian McFarlane, ‘It wasn’t like that in the book three of the novel’s chief comic delights: complex in that it doesn’t depend on over- ...’, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol 28, No 3, 2000. Mrs Bennet, Lady Catherine and Mr Col- coming each other’s failings, only the inter- 3 Philip French, ‘Bride and Prejudice’, The Ob- lins. I’ve suggested already how Brenda ference of others, but it is made true and server (London), 10 October 2004. Blethyn’s Mrs Bennet, vulgar, foolish and touching in this film. These are kind, pleas- 4 George Bluestone, Novels into Film, University of prattling, is nevertheless allowed a vestige ant people, attractively played by Woods Press, Berkeley/LA, 1957, pp.46-48. of sympathetic understanding. Though her and Pike, but the real drama is with the 5 Brian McFarlane, Novel to Film: An Introduc- marriage must still be a wildly unequal liai- other two, who need to overcome the in- tion to the Theory of Adaptation, Clarendon son, she and Donald Sutherland (Mr Ben- ner obstacles named in the title. Much has Press (OUP), Oxford, 1996, p.9. net) contrive in fleeting moments to re- been made of the Darcy-standard set by 6 Wright directed the mini-series Nature Boy mind us that there must once have been Colin Firth in 1995, but though Firth is an (2000), the semi-documentary Charles II: The enough affection between them to ac- admirable actor Macfadyen is at least his Power & the Passion (2002) and Bodily Harm count for the marriage, and in a brief mo- equal, as he has shown several times on (2002), seen on Melbourne TV in 2005. ment in their bedroom, glimpsed through television (as in the series Spooks) and in 7 Moggach wrote the screenplay for the mini- a window, there is a moment of convinc- the powerful New Zealand-set drama, In series Love in a Cold Climate (2001). ing intimacy as Mrs Bennet talks happi- My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, 2004). 8 Production notes for the film. ly of Jane’s engagement to Bingley. He is His is a sombre Darcy, the first real clue to 9 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Everyman’s less cruelly sarcastic than Austen made his capacity for affection seen in his greet- Library, London, 1963, p.24-25. ISSUE 40 him; on the other hand, Sutherland makes ing of his sister when he returns to Pem- 10 This term is sometimes applied (not always

SCREEN EDU him more nearly a whole than some previ- berley. The first proposal to Elizabeth is fairly) to the Merchant Ivory adaptations of ous film incarnations where the filmmak- a matter of real anger, pain and passion E.M. Forster and Henry James. See Andrew ers have seemed to want him to be both suppressed, both from him and from Kei- Higson, ‘Heritage Cinema’ in Brian McFarlane, C ATION cuddly and cruel, without suggesting how ra Knightley’s superb Elizabeth, and when, The Encyclopedia of British Film, Methuen/ these two qualities might co-exist.12 Judi neither of them able to sleep, they meet British Film Institute, London, 2003, p.304. Dench, subduing every trace of her natu- out of doors for the second proposal, the 11 Production notes for the film, 14 ral warmth, makes a wholly credible bul- effect is very moving and truthful – true, 12 See Edmund Gwenn, most notoriously, in the ly of Lady Catherine, as vulgar in her way that is, to what we have seen of both of 1940 MGM film, and Benjamin Whitrow in the as Mrs Bennet is in hers as she catechiz- them earlier and to the adjustments each 1995 BBC series.