Jane Austen movies!
Mar. 19th, 2009 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newmoonstarWell, my marathon viewing of Jane Austen miniseries continues, and proves to be great fun.
The 80's Mansfield Park was quite good, it's the closest to the book, and being a mini-series it had time to develop the story and characters in a more in-depth way than the more recent movies. I actually quite appreciated that it didn't try to 'modernize' Fanny. It's kind of refreshing to see a heroine who is awkward and has phobias, but gets on with her life as best she can. She's not sparklingly brilliant or witty or self-assured, but she's a nice person who at least knows her own mind and sticks to it. It's nice to see a story that says even ordinary people can have happy endings. One of the more intriguing aspects of this version was how it presented Mary Crawford. MP happens to be one of the Jane Austen books I never finished, so I can't judge it against the novel, but they presented her much more sympathically here than in other film versions. She's always presented as scheming and bad, but here she's just angry and not sensitive enough to other people's feelings. Quite honestly, especially considering how stuffy Edmund Bertram is, I think she had as lucky of an escape as he did when he married Fanny instead! He's not good enough for her! Even with her faults, she's the most interesting character in this version by far. The costumes were quite pretty and accurate as well, with only one truly heinous hat, and it was shot in lovely locations, so it didn't have that fakey feel that a lot of the older adaptations have, since in the old days they were mostly shot on stages with bargain basement costumes and decor.
The 80's Northanger Abbey was another story entirely. It was just as awful as everyone says it is, which is a tremendous shame considering the gorgeous Bath locations it featured. Some of the exterior shots were just stunning. And the seriously floofy 1790's costumes were great fun too. There just aren't enough movies that feauture seriously floofy 1790's costumes, in my opinion! But it was a terrible adaptation. They used the outline of the plot, but then missed the whole point by trying to turn it into just the sort of story the book makes fun of. Plus, it was just plain weird. It was like the German Expressionist Northanger Abbey. There were strange fantasy sequences, synthesized music with creepy vocals going 'oooooohhh' through the whole thing, a strange character of some foreign noblewoman in scary grotesque make-up added for no reason, an oddly pointless scene where her page boy takes Catherine outside and starts turning cartwheels, lots of mist all over, it was entirely strange and incoherant. It felt like a foreign film, quite honestly, something from Central or Eastern Europe, but not like an English BBC production. And all the characters appeared in Catherine's fantasies abducting her or whatever, but she's practically having an orgasm over it, so that really doesn't make sense. What are they trying to tell us, she's hot for General Tilney or something? Just weird and creepy. And the acting was SO bad. The kind of stagey-ness you'd expect to find in a sixties production, not a mid-eighties one. I suspect many of the parts I laughed at were intended to be in earnest. It's so bad it's almost campy. I really don't know whether it's more funny or horrifying. But there is a strange entertainment factor in viewing the absolute Worst Jane Austen Movie Ever Made!
Now, on to Emma!
The 80's Mansfield Park was quite good, it's the closest to the book, and being a mini-series it had time to develop the story and characters in a more in-depth way than the more recent movies. I actually quite appreciated that it didn't try to 'modernize' Fanny. It's kind of refreshing to see a heroine who is awkward and has phobias, but gets on with her life as best she can. She's not sparklingly brilliant or witty or self-assured, but she's a nice person who at least knows her own mind and sticks to it. It's nice to see a story that says even ordinary people can have happy endings. One of the more intriguing aspects of this version was how it presented Mary Crawford. MP happens to be one of the Jane Austen books I never finished, so I can't judge it against the novel, but they presented her much more sympathically here than in other film versions. She's always presented as scheming and bad, but here she's just angry and not sensitive enough to other people's feelings. Quite honestly, especially considering how stuffy Edmund Bertram is, I think she had as lucky of an escape as he did when he married Fanny instead! He's not good enough for her! Even with her faults, she's the most interesting character in this version by far. The costumes were quite pretty and accurate as well, with only one truly heinous hat, and it was shot in lovely locations, so it didn't have that fakey feel that a lot of the older adaptations have, since in the old days they were mostly shot on stages with bargain basement costumes and decor.
The 80's Northanger Abbey was another story entirely. It was just as awful as everyone says it is, which is a tremendous shame considering the gorgeous Bath locations it featured. Some of the exterior shots were just stunning. And the seriously floofy 1790's costumes were great fun too. There just aren't enough movies that feauture seriously floofy 1790's costumes, in my opinion! But it was a terrible adaptation. They used the outline of the plot, but then missed the whole point by trying to turn it into just the sort of story the book makes fun of. Plus, it was just plain weird. It was like the German Expressionist Northanger Abbey. There were strange fantasy sequences, synthesized music with creepy vocals going 'oooooohhh' through the whole thing, a strange character of some foreign noblewoman in scary grotesque make-up added for no reason, an oddly pointless scene where her page boy takes Catherine outside and starts turning cartwheels, lots of mist all over, it was entirely strange and incoherant. It felt like a foreign film, quite honestly, something from Central or Eastern Europe, but not like an English BBC production. And all the characters appeared in Catherine's fantasies abducting her or whatever, but she's practically having an orgasm over it, so that really doesn't make sense. What are they trying to tell us, she's hot for General Tilney or something? Just weird and creepy. And the acting was SO bad. The kind of stagey-ness you'd expect to find in a sixties production, not a mid-eighties one. I suspect many of the parts I laughed at were intended to be in earnest. It's so bad it's almost campy. I really don't know whether it's more funny or horrifying. But there is a strange entertainment factor in viewing the absolute Worst Jane Austen Movie Ever Made!
Now, on to Emma!
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Date: 2009-04-10 06:00 pm (UTC)Northanger Abbey is the one JA novel I never really got into! I read it, but didn't really like it.
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Date: 2009-04-15 12:00 am (UTC)Northanger Abbey is actually my second favorite Jane Austen book, and Masterpiece Theatre just did a very good adaptation of it during their Jane Austen season last year; you might want to check it out if you haven't seen it, since it's very cute and it could give you a different view of the book, but if not, it's still good fun in it's own right. And JJ Field plays Henry Tilney! :)
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Date: 2009-04-15 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 11:37 pm (UTC)I've seen Rosemary & Thyme, it's pretty good.
I haven't seen any Upstairs, Downstairs yet, but it's this huge classic, so I'll have to give it a try sometime!
But you totally have to see Jeeves & Wooster! And Lord Peter! (The Edward Petherbridge version is the only one I've seen, but they're perfect, so I haven't even bothered to see the Ian Carmichael ones!) Try interlibrary loan, but if you can't get them there, you could try DeepDiscount.com. They've got a pretty big British Drama section, and their prices are the cheapest I've seen. I got a lot of my DVDs from there.
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Date: 2009-04-16 05:13 am (UTC)