The BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre still makes up for the main part of the Brontë news of the day:Jane Eyre: British critics were divided over this dramatisation: The Guardian said it "grips like a car crusher" but The Daily Mail said it's "desperately hard to figure out what's going on - even if you're lucky enough to know the book backwards". Part one of four. TV One, 8.35pm Saturday. (Philip Wakefield)Cathy Salter in her Notes from Boomerang Creek column in The Columbia Tribune also is experiencing some kind of Jane Eyre winter weakness:
My friend is a professional photographer, landscape architect and lover of movies. When I asked whether she’d watched the recent PBS series "Jane Eyre," she said she had.She's not alone.A winter tale if ever there was one, Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel of hardship, love and redemption still casts a haunting spell over all who read and reread it.
The final frigid week of January, I treadmilled indoors while watching the 1944 movie "Jane Eyre," starring Orson Welles as Edward Rochester and Joan Fontaine as Jane. After suffering nine years of cold and deprivation at Lowood - a bleak school for poor, orphaned girls - Jane is hired as a governess at Thornfield Hall, the estate of Edward Rochester.
As Chapter 11 begins, Jane has grown to love Thornfield and Edward, its moody master. Brontë writes: "A splendid midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant." It is as if Jane embodied the very light needed to unlock the dark secret that casts a gloomy pall over Thornfield.
At Boomerang Creek, a hard and gray January has ended. In the kitchen, a chicken is roasting. Kit and I are reading "Jane Eyre" aloud by the fire.
Anne McKee in her column in The Meridian Star also seems to be under the same influence:Recently I tuned into Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s Masterpiece Theatre to enjoy one of the greatest love stories of all time, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Several years ago I read the book, and even had the opportunity to view one of the movie versions of this epic love story, but it all came back to me fresh and new, as the soul mates of passion struggle against all odds to come together, and it happened. I love a happy ending.And the blogosphere is still boiling with comments: Lene Andersen on The Seated View and Jennifer on We Like TV enjoyed Jane Eyre. Eiron not only did not enjoyed it but she suggests some rules for a successful Jane Eyre adaptation:
1. Imperative that the screenplay sticks to the book. A fine balance must be struck between Gothic horror and melodrama. Some how this production lost both elements.And finally, another blog mention but totally different. Remember that some days ago, we posted about the Madonna of the toast blog? Well, finally the Charlotte Brontë toast has its own post :P.
2. Jane is not Ugly Betty nor slapped arse plain - she is 'interestingly attractive with no outward vanity'. She has to have magnetism and bewitch those around her despite her dark grey governess uniform. That is why the pretty socialite gals fear her - just imagine what she would look like after the makeover. Shirley Henderson would make a good Jane. (Read more)
The program was broadcast, not broadcasted.
ReplyDeleteThe past tense of cast is still cast.
Thanks. We stand corrected.
ReplyDelete