Pride and Prejudice on Screen

ISSUE 40 SCREEN EDUCATION 6 Something Old, Something New ‘Pride and Prejudice‘ On Screen BY BRIAN MCFARLANE Vivat Jane Austen! , 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 7 INSETS FROM ABOVE: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940); PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940); PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995); BRIDE AND PREJUDICE (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- 8 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 because 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 period, 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 9 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.

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