Jane Eyre mentions and reviews

Some Jane Eyre mentions in the press today:

The State's reviewer places in the same league the leading character of the new novel Refuge by Dot Jackson and no less that Jane Eyre or Isabel Archer. There are also brief mentions in other reviews of novels that have already been present on this blog. The Decatur Daily review Literacy and Longing in L.A. and The Arizona Daily Star Jane Harris' The Observations.

DVDTalk publishes a review of the recently edited Jane Eyre BBC production of 1973. The review is quite negative:

I think the issue here is that, from the very beginning, this series shows a tension between "showing" and "telling": repeatedly, we'll be shown a scene that advances the plot or develops the characters... and then we're told, via the voiceover, what happened. Not only do we get comments that show Jane's internal reactions, but even comments that describe things like the other characters' expressions, behavior, or reactions. What are the actors supposed to be doing, then? (Not much of use, apparently.) Not only is the voiceover redundant, it's also often quite intrusive, jumping in and out of a scene repeatedly - even, sometimes, between lines of dialogue from the actors. (...)

This version of Jane Eyre feels very much like an animated picture-book, giving us acted-out scenes from the novel, laced together by bits of narrative voiceover.

The odd pacing and artificiality of the voiceover would perhaps be forgivable, if it weren't for one other key factor: the acting is dreadful. It really is. The actors all seem to be cast to type fairly well, in the sense that they all look more or less like how they're described in Brontë's novel, but unfortunately that isn't enough. The acting is almost universally over-theatrical, ringing false and often sounding unbearably cheesy. (...)

I really can't recommend this version of Jane Eyre at all. For a miniseries that's both faithful to the book and well handled as a television production, I would point you toward the 1983 version with Timothy Dalton; that's the version that does justice to a great book. This 1973 version, though, just hasn't aged well at all, and I really don't suggest bothering with it. Even if you liked it when it was originally on television, the transfer quality is poor enough that you should give it a second thought before you bother with it. Skip it.

The review also points out apparently this version is beloved by at least a certain percentage of viewers. Certainly ! If you want to know the opinion (quite different) of this (important) percentage of viewers you can check ThisBeCiel's website, exclusively devoted to this version, or check Brontëana's blog where you could find lots and lots of posts about this production.

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Jane_Eyre,In_the_News